What the kabbalists actually taught about soulmates — and why it matters less than you think.
You’ve been told you have a soulmate.
Somewhere out there, created with you before you were born, is the other half of your soul. The bat kol announced it forty days before you were conceived. All you have to do is find this person — recognize this person — and everything will fall into place.
This idea keeps people waiting. It keeps people saying no. It keeps people sitting alone on Motzei Shabbos, turning down suggestions that don’t feel like destiny, holding out for a recognition that never comes.
And it is built on a misunderstanding.
THE GREAT ERROR
Four hundred years ago, in the city of Hebron, Rav Avraham Azulai — author of the Chesed L’Avraham, great-grandfather of the legendary Chida — sat down to write about marriage and opened with an accusation.
בענין הזיווג נפל טעות גדול בדעת המון העם
“In the matter of the match, a great error has fallen upon the thinking of the common masses.”
Not a minor mistake. A great error. And not among the uneducated. Among everyone.
The error, he explains, is this: people believe the match is determined by externals. Some chase wealth. Some set their eyes on beauty. Some on family name, on power. And he writes plainly: there is no doubt that all of these things are improper. Then he says something remarkable. He holds two readings of reality in suspension and refuses to choose between them. Either most people today are unworthy, and no one actually receives their true match — everything is according to happenstance, “like snatching wives from the vineyards.” Or there are still worthy souls, and Hashem manipulates the circumstances so that people’s misguided motivations end up aligning with the divine decree anyway. The evil and improper thoughts of human beings coincide with the decree of His wisdom.[1]
Two possibilities. He holds both. He does not choose.
But notice what the first possibility means: for most people, the entire soulmate system doesn’t apply. Shidduchim happen not by cosmic design but by improvisation. Chance. The grab in the vineyard.
This from a kabbalist who, in the very same chapter, proceeds to map the architecture of zivug with a precision that takes your breath away. To understand why he could hold both possibilities at once, you have to understand what he was mapping.
THE VIEW FROM ABOVE
The Zohar in Lech Lecha describes what happens before souls descend. When Hashem sends souls into the world, all spirits are joined together — male and female, one being. They are handed to the appointed emissary who oversees human conception, whose name is Lailah — Night. And at the moment of descent, they separate. Sometimes one arrives before the other. When the time of their pairing comes, Hashem — who alone knows the two halves — reunites them as they were. “And when they join, they become one body and one soul.” The proclamation bat ploni l’ploni is not a new decree. It is a restoration of what already was.[2]
But then the Zohar asks the obvious question. If the pairing was arranged before they descended — if all Hashem is doing is restoring what was — why do the Sages say that zivugim are difficult before Him? What is difficult about returning something to its original state?
The answer opens a door into the abyss.
THE OTHER
The Other.
That is the word the Torah uses. When a divorced woman remarries, she goes to an ish acher — another man. Not “a different man.” Not “someone else.” Acher. The Other. And that word opens a door into the abyss.
The Gemara in Moed Katan discusses writing on Chol HaMoed. When the Sages decreed this prohibition, they explicitly excluded engagement contracts — lest Acher preempt him and take her. Not lest a man preempt him. Not lest his fellow. Acher. Who is this Acher that warranted his own exclusion in a halachic ruling?[7]
The Talmud preserves the story of Elisha ben Avuya — the great sage who entered the Pardes and emerged a heretic. He became known only as Acher. The Other. His name was erased from the lips of the Sages. A heavenly voice declared: return, backsliding children — except for Acher. And yet when he lay dying, his student Rabbi Meir came and urged him to repent. Acher wept. Rabbi Meir rejoiced.[3]
The Sha’ar HaGilgulim explains what happened to his soul. Because Elisha was a great Torah scholar, the fires of Gehinnom could not touch him — one who has truly learned Torah is protected from that form of purification. But if he cannot be cleansed in Gehinnom, how is the soul rectified? The answer is gilgul. He must reincarnate to complete what he could not complete, to repair what he damaged.[5]
This is the secret behind the asymmetry of gilgul itself. The verse says: “A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever.” Dor holech v’dor ba — these are the men, cycling through incarnation after incarnation. V’ha’aretz l’olam omedet — the women, called earth, stand and do not reincarnate. Because women, not bearing the obligation of Torah study, can be purified in Gehinnom. But men who have learned Torah — and the fire of Gehinnom cannot touch one who has truly learned — must reincarnate instead.[6]
And when such a soul returns, it may come without its original match. The Zohar reveals why: the soul that returns in gilgul without its bat zug “descended and became an aspect of achorayim — the back — and is considered in itself a feminine aspect. Therefore it has no bat zug.” It has turned from panim to achorayim, from face to back. It contains within itself the aspect it was meant to find outside itself. It is Other to its own nature. And precisely because it has no match of its own, the Zohar says, “the practice with him is that he takes the bat zug of his fellow.”[7]
“And therefore,” the Zohar concludes, “the Sages did not say lest a man preempt him or lest his fellow preempt him — only Acher. Because this Other is not like other people. He comes in gilgul.”[8]
This is why zivugim are difficult before Hashem. Not because the original pairing is hard to restore. But because a gilgul soul has preempted the match through mercy and tefillah. And when the original man merits it, Hashem must take from one and give to the other. “Difficult before Him — to displace one for the sake of another.” Like Egypt and Israel at the water’s edge. Judgment for one, mercy for the other, in a single act.[9]
The Arizal inherits this framework and builds it into a full architecture of how souls pair and re-pair across lifetimes.
THE TWO PAIRINGS
The Arizal, in Sha’ar HaGilgulim, maps the mechanics. When a soul enters this world for the first time, its match is born with it. Marriage comes without struggle. This is zivug rishon, and it happens smoothly because both souls are fresh, unburdened by the weight of past lives. But a soul that must return is different. Sometimes his match returns with him — as the verse says, “And his wife will go out with him” — reincarnating not because she needs to, but to accompany him. Sometimes she does not return because she has completed her work. And so Heaven arranges another wife for him — not his true zivug, but the woman closest to him in spiritual compatibility from among all the souls of the world.[10]
The Arizal is careful to clarify what these terms mean. Zivug rishon and zivug sheini do not mean first wife and second wife. “Many second pairings are better than first ones,” he writes, “as we see with our own eyes every day.” The second refers to the pairing, not the person. A man and woman who are true soul-mates, created as one before they descended — but meeting again after gilgul, for the second time — this is zivug sheini. The same souls. But the second round.[11]
And the second round is harder. Because the soul sinned and was forced to return, there are accusers in the upper worlds who try to prevent the reunion. They create quarrels, obstacles, resistance. The couple that fights bitterly before the wedding and finds peace only after — the Arizal says this may be the signature of a true match encountering spiritual resistance. The struggle is not evidence against the pairing. It may be evidence for it.
This is the true meaning of “as difficult as the splitting of the sea.” Not that finding any wife is hard. But that reuniting soul-mates after gilgul requires overcoming forces that would keep them apart.
The couple that fights bitterly before the wedding and finds peace only after — the Arizal says this may be the signature of a true match.
Think about that the next time a shidduch falls apart before it reaches the chuppah.
In the Arizal’s framework, marriage is not simply choice — it is binding across lifetimes. If a man marries a woman who is not his true zivug, he does not simply live out one life with her. When he reincarnates, she comes with him. Lifetime after lifetime. And herein is the paradox: the very marriages that were not with the original bat zug become, through the soul-bond they create, the bonds that shape every life that follows.[10]
The Chesed L’Avraham takes this architecture and maps it in full.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CHESED L’AVRAHAM
The Chesed L’Avraham, writing a generation after the Arizal, expands the two pairings into a more detailed architecture. In Ma’ayan 2, Nahar 65, he identifies five distinct ways a soul can relate to its zivug, each carrying different consequences across lifetimes.[1]
Two ways to find her. The first: a fresh soul meeting its match for the first time, unblemished by any prior incarnation — like Avraham and Sarah, Yitzchak and Rivka. The second: a returning soul whose zivug returns alongside him, because she too has unfinished work, or because in the wisdom of Heaven she accompanies him — as Moshe with Tzipporah, David with Bat Sheva.
Two ways to lose her temporarily. Through his sin, she may be given to another man — just as he did not guard himself, so she was not guarded for him. Reuniting them then requires what the Chesed L’Avraham calls dchiyas nefesh mipnei nefesh, the displacement of one soul for the sake of another. This is the same difficulty the Zohar describes — the taking from one to give to the other. Judgment for one and mercy for the other in a single act. Or she is not given to another at all — she is simply held, waiting, while he undergoes what he must undergo.
And one way to lose her forever. Through divorce — which the Chesed L’Avraham calls the permanent severance of du-partzufin, the two-faced being that was meant to be one. Even the altar weeps at this, he writes, because it is a rupture that cannot be undone. This is why the Torah gave us the Sotah ritual rather than immediate divorce: better she drink the bitter waters than that a get sever forever what was joined at the root of creation.
And one more principle governs all of it: the match must be equal. A man who has achieved only Nefesh will receive a wife at the Nefesh level. A man who has achieved Nefesh, Ruach, and Neshamah will receive a wife with all three. Nefesh with Nefesh. Ruach with Ruach. Neshamah with Neshamah. The match is proportional. It reflects not who you were at the dawn of creation, but who you have become. This is what l’fi ma’asav — according to his deeds — truly means. Not punishment or reward. Equilibrium. You receive what you are.[1]
But the architecture has one more layer. What happens when the soul returns and the zivug does not?
HE CAME BY HIMSELF
The Arizal references the verse from Parashat Mishpatim: “If he came by himself, he shall go out by himself.” On the plain level, this speaks of a Jewish servant who entered service single. But the Arizal, citing the Zohar in Sabba d’Mishpatim, reads it as a statement about gilgulim: the soul that returns into this world without its zivug. She has completed her rectification. She rests in Gan Eden. He must return — and he returns alone.[13]
The Arizal teaches: if such a soul marries another woman — even a good woman, even one arranged by Heaven as the closest possible match — “when he sins and reincarnates, he will do so with this wife, even though she is not his actual soul-mate.” He will reincarnate with her. And again. But if he completes his mission without marrying, he will return to his true zivug — fused for eternity. The reunion is certain.[14]
Perhaps the soul that refuses every match is refusing, at some level deeper than consciousness, to bind itself to someone who is not its eternal other half. Perhaps what looks like an inability to commit is, in some cases, a kind of fidelity.
The Chesed L’Avraham calls this category “a righteous man for whom the hour does not stand” — tzaddik she’ein hasha’ah omedet lo. His zivug has completed her work. She waits for him. And when he finishes, she will return — sometimes even in his old age, explaining those cases where we see men marry young women late in life and find, suddenly, a quiet joy that signals something entirely different from what came before.[1]
And sometimes the zivug is not merely waiting. Sometimes she cannot come at all. The Arizal reveals that for certain soul-roots, the female counterparts are trapped within the klipot and cannot emerge until Mashiach comes. “All the female souls from the root of Chur ben Miriam will not emerge until the coming of Mashiach.” And then, almost as an aside, the Arizal adds: “Even Aharon HaKohen did not marry his true bat zug.” Aharon. The Kohen Gadol. The man who loved peace and pursued peace, who made peace between husband and wife. The man whose very essence was the joining of what had been separated.[15]
Even he.
WHEN THE ZIVUG IS HERE BUT CANNOT COME
Rav Zamir Cohen teaches a further dimension of this. Even when one’s predestined soulmate exists in this world, the union cannot occur until both souls have reached the same spiritual level. When they haven’t, Hashem in His mercy prevents either from marrying someone else — holding them in waiting. Yes, Hashem not only orchestrates shidduchim but, out of compassion, also delays them. Yet this protection has limits. If after extended time their spiritual trajectories fail to converge, Hashem will pair the bashert with another, and the person must marry someone else entirely.[23]
A person can be single not because the system has failed but because it is working. They are being held. The problem is not that no one is right for them. The problem is that the soul they are meant for has not yet arrived at the same place. And the question of whether that gap closes is not settled in advance.
And there is one more way the zivug can be present in this world and still unreachable — a case so strange and specific that the Arizal maps it in clinical detail.
WHEN THE ZIVUG IS PRESENT BUT CANNOT UNITE
The Chesed L’Avraham identifies one further category. A man can reincarnate as a woman. “Know that a man can reincarnate as a woman due to the sin of mishkav zachar and similar transgressions.” In such a case, the male soul now inhabiting a female body cannot unite with its original zivug — still matched to the male soul, still searching — because the body it has entered is now female.[16]
The Arizal maps the consequences precisely. A woman who is the gilgul of a male soul cannot produce mayim nukvin — the feminine spiritual waters required for conception. She cannot conceive at all, unless another female soul enters her through ibur, a kind of spiritual pregnancy within a pregnancy, lending her the feminine essence she lacks. And even then, such a woman can only bear daughters. Because “the verse says ishah ki tazria v’yaldah zachar — when a woman produces seed she bears a male — but this woman is male like her husband,” and cannot generate the feminine seed from which a son is born. Each daughter born is the gilgul of the female soul that entered through ibur. After the birth, that soul departs. Another must come for the next conception.[17]
Rabbi Chaim Vital — the Arizal’s primary student, the one who recorded all of these teachings — lived this reality himself. The Arizal told him that his wife Chana was the gilgul of Kalba Savua, Rabbi Akiva’s father-in-law — a male soul in a female body. Because she was fundamentally a male soul, she could only conceive daughters, and only through the ibur of another female soul. The Arizal told Vital that his true bat zug would come only after he completed the rectification of his Nefesh and received his Ruach — and that she would come intertwined with the soul of Rabbi Akiva’s true wife. Even the man who wrote down the secrets of soulmates did not marry his own.[18]
Even the man who wrote down the secrets of soulmates did not marry his own.
Which brings us to the question the entire system leaves hanging. If the original match can be displaced, trapped, unreachable, or bound to the wrong body — if even Aharon and Vital could not reach their true bat zug — what guarantee is there? What is left?
THE PROMISE THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN
The Arizal does not leave us in uncertainty. He teaches that some souls are so entangled in this world’s challenges that they cannot find their true zivug in any of their lifetimes. The separation seems permanent.
It is not.
At Techiyat HaMetim — the resurrection of the dead, when all gilgulim have run their course and the final rectification is complete — every soul will be joined to its true zivug. Every soul. The Sha’ar HaGilgulim describes the mechanism. Through the sin of Kayin and Hevel, all the souls of humanity became mixed within the klipot, good entangled with evil, like silver mixed with dross. And from that moment, the work of history has been the birur — the sifting, the refinement, the extraction of sparks from the husks. This continues until all the souls that fell into the klipah have been completely refined, down to the very soles of his feet. And when the last soul is refined, the klipah collapses of its own accord. “This is the meaning of bila hamavet lanetzach.” The first letters of those three words spell Hevel. For until Hevel’s gilgulim are complete, Mashiach cannot come.[19]
The woman who married the wrong man in gilgul after gilgul will meet her true other half at last. The man who wandered through lifetime after lifetime will finally embrace the one created with him. All the waiting, all the years of singleness — temporary. The reunion is guaranteed. No soul is forgotten. The match exists and has always existed.
This is the system. Complete. Guaranteed. Operating with precision across centuries and lifetimes.
Now return to where we started.
ANY ONE
And now return to the great error.
Rav Azulai mapped all of this. Every category, every mechanism, every way a soul can find or lose or await its match across lifetimes. He understood the displacement principle, the equilibrium of Nefesh-Ruach-Neshamah, the permanent rupture of divorce, the five ways a soul relates to its zivug. He mapped the cosmic architecture with the precision of a master who inherited the Arizal’s tradition.
And then he opened the entire discussion by telling us that most people in this generation aren’t operating within it.
V’hakol l’fi hamikre — everything is according to happenstance. His image for how shidduchim actually work: like Bnei Binyamin snatching wives from the vineyards of Shiloh. And the Zohar itself points to this same episode: “The passage of Bnei Binyamin testifies regarding the gilgul souls, who must preempt through mercy and take from another his bat zug.” Not orderly cosmic design. The grab in the vineyard. The best you can find before someone else finds her.[20]
The Midrash Talpiyot confronts this directly. It explains that the bat kol announcing bat ploni l’ploni forty days before conception is not a decree at all. It is “the knowledge of the stellar influences at that moment” — the natural alignment of the mazal, not an irrevocable command. “And free choice is in the hands of the person in everything.” The bat kol is not destiny. It is potential. And potential can be overridden. “Since the proclamation is not a decree, another can preempt through mercy — for through tefillah one can nullify the power of the mazal.”[21]
And then the Midrash Talpiyot adds something that should reshape how we think about shidduchim entirely: “Many times people err, thinking that certain actions that come through free choice are actually compelled upon them regarding a specific match — and this is untrue.” People convince themselves that their attraction to a particular person, their gut feeling that this is The One, is a sign from Heaven. A cosmic echo of the bat kol. The Midrash Talpiyot says plainly: this is a mistake. What you experience as compulsion may simply be choice — your choice, dressed in the clothing of fate.[21]
This is also why Avraham needed to make Eliezer swear an oath about finding a wife for Yitzchak. If the match were a sealed decree, what purpose would the oath serve? The oath exists because the outcome is not guaranteed. Because human effort and human faithfulness matter. Because in Olam HaAsiyah, zivug is not found — it is built.[22]
Everything the Arizal teaches is true. The mechanics of souls splitting and merging, the gilgulim binding husband to wife across lifetimes, the promise of reunion at Techiyat HaMetim — all of it describes with precision how pairings are orchestrated in the upper worlds.
But we do not live in the upper worlds.
Kabbalah maps the architecture of creation at the level of Atzilut, of Beriah, of Yetzirah. We live in Olam HaAsiyah — the world of action, where we actually choose and build. We cannot see which gilgul we are in. We cannot know if our zivug descended with us or remained in Gan Eden. We cannot determine whether our soul is here for the first time or the fifteenth. We have no access to the information the kabbalists describe.
And we were never meant to.
The Chesed L’Avraham knew all of this. He mapped the system — the five categories, the equilibrium principle, the displacement mechanics. And he opened the discussion by saying: most people today are outside it. Not because the system doesn’t exist. Because we have no access to it.
Holding out for the cosmic soulmate leaves a person alone, year after year, faithful to an idea that was never meant to be a decision-making framework in Olam HaAsiyah.
Holding out for the cosmic soulmate — waiting for a sign from the upper worlds that this is The One, the zivug rishon, the original match created at the dawn of existence — is to search for something you were never given the tools to find. It turns the impossible dream into the enemy of every possible marriage. It makes the perfect the destroyer of the good. And it leaves a person alone, year after year, faithful to an idea that was never meant to be a decision-making framework in this world.
And yet — the Chesed L’Avraham held both possibilities. Im shenomar… o shenomar. Either we say this, or we say that. The system exists. The soulmate exists. And if you do happen to stand under the chuppah with the soul that was created as one with yours — without knowing it, without any way of proving it — then what you have is not merely a love that lasts a lifetime. It is a love that lasts many lifetimes. Not only until the end of time, but after the end of time.[1]
You will never know in this world whether that is what happened.
And that is exactly the point.
You were not asked to know. You were asked to choose.
The Chesed L’Avraham mapped the heavens and then looked at the earth. He described what happens above with breathtaking precision. And he opened by acknowledging what we face below.
Choose. Build. Love until the end of time. And trust that after the end of time, the rest will be taken care of.
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REFERENCES
[1] Chesed L’Avraham (Rav Avraham Azulai), Ma’ayan 2, Nahar 65: “לבאר ענין הזיווג”
[2] Zohar, Lech Lecha — “HaKadosh Baruch Hu Mezaveg Zivugim”
[3] Talmud Bavli, Chagigah 14b–15b
[4] Talmud Bavli, Chagigah 15b; Yirmiyahu 3:14
[5] Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 9: “כי האנשים לפי שמקיימים מצות עסק התורה, אינם יכולים ליכנס בגיהנם”
[6] Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 9: “דור הולך ודור בא והארץ לעולם עומדת”
[7] Talmud Bavli, Moed Katan 18b; Zohar, Lech Lecha: “כי אותו המגולגל שאין לו בת זוג, הוא משום שירד ונעשה לבחינת אחוריים”
[8] Zohar, Lech Lecha: “לכך לא אמר שמא יקדמנו איש או חברו רק אחר”
[9] Zohar, Lech Lecha: “ודאי שקשים זיווגים לפני הקבה”
[10] Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 8; Hakdama 20; Talmud Bavli, Sotah 2a
[11] Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 20: “אין הבנת זווג א’ וב’ כפשטו, כי כמה זווגים שניים הם טובים מן הראשונים”
[12] Shemot 21:3
[13] Zohar, Sabba d’Mishpatim 105b
[14] Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 8: “כאשר חטא ונתגלגל, מגלגלים עמו לאשה הזאת, אעפיי שאינה צריכה לגלגול”
[15] Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 8: “כל השרש של חור בנה של מרים, לא יצאו נשמות הנקבות שלהם עד ביאת המשיח... גם אהרן הכהן לא נשא בת זוגו”
[16] Chesed L’Avraham, Ma’ayan 5, Nahar 20: “ודע כי האדם יתגלגל באשה על עון משכב זכר וכיוצא”
[17] Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 9
[18] Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 38
[19] Sha’ar HaGilgulim, Hakdama 20: “עי חטאם של קין והבל, נתערבו כל הנשמות בתוך הקליפות... בלע המות לנצח ראשי תיבות הבל”
[20] Shoftim 21:21; Zohar, Lech Lecha: “פרשה של בני בנימין מוכיח על הנשמות המגולגלות”
[21] Midrash Talpiyot, Anaf Zivug: “ביד האדם תלוי הבחירה בכל... ואין ההכרזה גזרה”
[22] Midrash Talpiyot, Anaf Zivug: “הרבה פעמים יטעו בני אדם, ויחשבו קצת פעולות האדם הבאות בבחירתו, שהוא מוכרח עליהם בזווג פלוניתא, וזה בלתי אמת”
[23] Rav Zamir Cohen; www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6N-u3kzVdg