http://kavannah.org/ for a revisionist approach to an already wild welter of an unleashed imagination ), the most important and lasting was the centrality of transmigration/gilgul of souls.
This is a complex subject. Early Judaism ( pre-exilic ) was, more or less, in this respect similar to primitive Mesopotamian ( The Epic of Gilgamesh ) and ancient Hellenic ( The Illiad ) systems of belief: you got Sheol/Hades, a post-mortem dungeon where pitiful souls, reduced to shadows, lead a sorrowful and anemic "existence". Then, after two exposures, one eastern ( Persian via Zoroastrism,ie. resurrection; eastern exposure-EX ) and the other, northern ( NX ) ( Greece with Platonic notion of immortality of the soul ), Judaism got permanent "afterlife" ingredient. Sure, true to its original genius it remains ( like Confucianism, for instance ) more a system of ethical conduct. Nevertheless, from Pharisaic times ( BC/AD ), orthodox Judaism expressly affirms its adherence to these somewhat incongruous beliefs: the liturgy of the Synagogue says that God "revives the dead" and "He has implanted eternal life within us". The Pillar of orthodoxy, Maimonides, had clung to immortality. On the other hand, Kabbalists ( especially in the most influential version, that of the 16th. cent., Safed-based visionary, Isaac Luria ) espoused the doctrine of transmigration of the souls ( gilgul ).
Nefesh is, in ancient, as it were, proto-psychology equal to "carnal" soul. This all medieval crap is the same: in Thomist psychology- vegetative, animal and rational soul. So, in the triple division body-soul-spirit, the middle part is again subdivided, Nefesh being a combination of vegetative and animal soul; ruach, passing through many mutations, settled as the rational soul. It's neshamah that, according to some nutty rabbis is a Jewish exclusive property. Although, the nuts are in the minority. Neshamah is, for the majority of Kabbalists, divine spark, spirit/pneuma. Only two terms, Hayah and Yechidah, remain poorly defined.But, that's a confusion which even old Luria had found incomprehensible.
Luria was a 16th cent. Kabbalist, active ( if this word applied to a Kabbalist makes much sense at all ) in Safed in Galilee. Among his numerous colorful innovations ( see http://kavannah.org/ for a revisionist approach to an already wild welter of an unleashed imagination ), the most important and lasting was the centrality of transmigration/gilgul of souls.
Only to add to the confusion: there are many reincarnationist doctrines ( Kabbalist-here parts of the "soul" recircle into existence; some say, neshamah; others, a compound neshamah/hayah/yechidah), Visistadvaita Vedantist (here jivatman-individual "soul spark" circles), Advaita Vedantist (here, since Atman(Self)= Brahman(Godhead), nothing in essence reincarnates, only illusory individual identity, ahamkar, appears and disappears on the wheel of life), Buddhist (since there is no soul, only "strands" ( skandhas ) that constitute the self-ness reincarnate, not the "I", which is illusory- if you have a Porsche made of various parts, you don't have "Porscheness" or the "essential Porsche".)
Back to ol' Luria. Looks like he got stuck somewhere between neshamah and badly defined "upper stores". So much for ill-matched marriage of normative Judaism, Neoplatonism and orphic/gnostic ravings.
Back to normative, ie. Platonized Judaism. Theoretically, you got resurrection and immortality. In practice, this religious culture has retained much of its original, essentially Middle-Eastern cautious skepticism and pessimism re human destiny and posthumous existence.
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