Who is the “I” according to Judaism?

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asked 7 years ago

Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask, according to Judaism, who is the “I” in the sense of the experiencing, thinking, and feeling I?
Is it defined as a mind? As a soul? As something else?
Until today I thought this was the soul, but it turns out that with the blessing of God’s soul, we see that this is not the case.

As it is said , “ My God, the soul that You have put in me” – meaning that I am not the soul.
And so “ You breathed it into me ” – the soul is not me.

So then who is the self?!? ?

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מיכי Staff answered 7 years ago

There is no such thing as “I” according to Judaism. Who is “Judaism”? Are you asking what the Torah writes? Nothing. Toshvet? Nothing. Therefore, you are left to think and formulate a position for yourself, without any connection to Judaism. Of course, all of this is a semantic question, because the question depends on what you define as a soul or mind in terms of thinking or feeling. Beyond that, you can also interpret the phrase “I am” as a soul that you gave to my body, and I created “myself” which is soul + body. But I don’t see much point in such a discussion. There is no way to determine the meaning of the concepts here.

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Gil replied 7 years ago

http://hagut.org/h/index.php/2014-01-21-07-01-9/27-6983

http://hagut.org/h/index.php/2014-01-21-07-01-9/24-6980

As a rule, these questions are discussed by Kabbalah and the teachings of the Narnakh. But it seems to me that intellectual engagement with a question that Eastern teachings have been dealing with for thousands of years of meditative thought is a kind of joke. Like talking about art or sports. You have to do art and do sports and this is the full understanding of these areas. It is very possible that the ”I” will also become clear to you on the basis of many years of meditation aimed at this. The problem is that the phenomenon of the ”I” experienced in meditation is different from the Jewish one. It seems that the Jewish self is experienced as an external gift or as part of a larger whole and is the God who created it, whereas the Buddhist self is not necessarily like that. In the Aryan language, the Buddhist self is in the mother and not in the father. They say that I am not I, so who am I anyway?

נקודה replied 7 years ago

The ego is the result of the instinct of pride that exists in every person.