On the night that a couple have intimate relations, God calls the Angel of Pregnancy and informs him that Mr. A is about to fertilize the egg of Mrs. A. He tells him to go and gather the sperm in a cup and to disperse it on a threshing floor into 365 parts. The angel does this and brings it back to God whereupon the angel asks, “What will become of this drop of sperm?” Immediately God decrees whether it will be strong or weak, long or short, male or female, ignorant or wise, rich or poor, but concerning righteous or wicked God does not decree as it is up to each person to choose.
Next, God hints to the Angel of the Spirits to bring him a certain holy soul who resides along with many other holy souls in the Sanctuary of Souls in the afterworld. The soul appears before God and bows down before Him. God tells him to enter the drop of sperm whereupon the soul immediately responds by saying: “My God, I am satisfied in the world that I have been in since the day I was created, so please do not make me enter this impure droplet since I am totally pure and holy.” God responds by saying: “The world which you are about to enter is a better place than the one you are coming from.
Furthermore, when I created you, I had in mind for you to enter this particular droplet of sperm.” Immediately God escorts the soul into the droplet, whereupon the Angel of Pregnancy comes and implants it in the mother’s womb, commissions two other angels to guard it, and they place a candle on the droplet’s head. The droplet then sees things from the beginning of time until the end of the world. In the morning, the angel escorts him to the Garden of Eden and shows him all of the righteous people sitting in their full glory, and says to the droplet: “Do you know what sort of soul was in those righteous people?” The spirit says “No.” The angel then points to one of them and says: “That particular one had a soul very similar to yours, and if you lead your life on earth as they did, after moving into the afterlife, you shall join these righteous ones in the glory in which you now see them. However, if you choose not to follow their way, you will end up in a place that I will show you later.”
That night the angel takes the soul to visit Gehinom (Hell) and shows him wicked people who are constantly being beaten by the Angels of Destruction and proceeds to tell him: “This fire will be your fate if you do not follow in the Almighty’s ways. The next day the angel takes the soul on a tour of every step he will take during his lifetime on earth, where he will live, where he will be buried, and again shows him the good world and the bad one.
That night he returns the spirit to the mother’s womb, whereupon he remains for the next nine months. At the end of this period, the same angel appears and says, “Your time has arrived to come out.” The soul still does not want to come out but the angel reminds him that against your will you shall come into this better world. As he is being born, the soul begins to cry because of the world he is leaving behind. The angel strokes him under the nose and extinguishes the candle above its head, whereupon the soul promptly forgets all that he was shown.
(Source: Yellinek, A. [1967]. Sefer Bet Midrash Cheder Rishon. Third Edition, Jerusalem) Dr. Bernie Kastner's blog text to click on
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