Neshama Yeterah – The Additional Soul on Shabbat

B"H

The simple interpretation of the "Neshama Yeterah" is that it is an additional soul every Jew receives on Shabbat. According to the Talmud and some commentators, a Jew receives this soul every Friday night and according to other opinions, a Jew receives this kind of soul already on Wednesdays.
The most general opinion is, however, that the Neshama Yeterah enters on Friday night and leaves the Jew on Mozzaei Shabbat (right after Shabbat is over).

Nevertheless, the Neshama Yeterah is not an easy subject to understand let alone to write about. Kabbalah has further ideas about the additional soul, but here I only want to talk about the general opinion which is "the additional soul on Shabbat".

In the Gemara in Talmud Taanit 27b you can find a highly interesting discussion. Basically the Gemara is talking about fasting but mentions something else as well. We hear about the Nazareans who mostly used to live in the Galilee in northern Israel. The Nazareans were halachic Jews who kept all the Torah laws but additionally saw Mr. J. as their Meshiach. The Meshiach believe was the only difference to other Jews who did not believe in any J. – stories.

Historically, people from the Galilee were mostly living in villages and not too educated. Furthermore, it was always the north of Israel which was very much into messianic ideas and no wonder that J. came from there.

When J. was walking around and preaching, the uneducated type of Jew from the north believed him and this is why he was quite successful there. In cities, however, he could never gain any majority because J. had to face the educated type of Jew.
After J. died, his followers kept all the Jewish Halachot except but additionally saw him as the Meshiach. They never thought about giving up the Halachot and if someone had told them that once there will be a person called Paul denying anything halachic, they would have been shocked.

The Talmud in Taanit 27b discusses a very interesting subject. Rabbi Reish Lakish cannot understand why the later followers of J. changed the Shabbat from a Saturday into a Sunday. This is absolutely ridiculous, as the additional soul enters a Jew on Friday night. On Saturday night, it leaves him already.
So why turn the original Shabbat into a Sunday ? The change into a Sunday is totally absurd and doesn’t make any sense.The Nazareans were definitely no great talmudic scholars.

If you look into Talmud Sofrim 17:5, you can see the same passage but with one difference. There the Nazareans are called Christians.

Why there and not in Taanit ?

Especially during the Middle Ages, the church forced the Jews to take out whole passages from the Talmud. Not too many passages talk about J. and Christians anyway but the church considered other idol worship subjects discussed in the Talmud as talking about J. This is one of their misunderstandings of the whole Talmud, as the Talmud Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) for instance, mostly referred to Roman and Babylonian idol worship and not to Christianity at all.
During the Middle Ages and also later, the church was obsessed with keeping its worldwide power and could not take the risk of something against their claims being published.

The former forbidden passages from the Talmud are to be found in the so – called Hashmatot and many Talmud editions have put those passages back anyway.

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I have published the same article in my German blog and one reader suggested that the Shabbat was changed into a Sunday because the Christians wanted to make it easier for idol worshipers to adjust. In history, many idol worshipers kept the Sunday as a weekly holiday and wouldn't have been willing to give it up when converting to Christianity.