Perfect souls? Huhwha?

August 3, 2006 12:40 PM

I once heard a belief, a tale, a myth (not sure which it falls under) that there are a certain fixed number of "pure" or "perfect" souls roaming the earth, and that the existance of these people is the one thing keeping God from throwing the towel in. Where did I hear this? Have any of you heard a tale like this? Can anyone tell me more?

The closest I have been able to find is from Genesis 18 with Abraham's questioning God about Sodom and Gomorrah, but I am sure that's not at all the story I heard.

Help! It's driving me nuts! What IS this idea from??

posted by Windigo to Religion & Philosophy (11 answers total)

the tzadikim, and you heard it here somewhere on metafilter, because so did I. it was sometime in the last six months or so, I'd say
posted by poppo at 12:42 PM on August 3, 2006

(silly of me to assume you heard of it here, sorry...you of course could have heard it anywhere :) )
posted by poppo at 12:44 PM on August 3, 2006

I wish I could answer your question. I can't, but I can relate a personal anecdote. I had a good friend who was a reincarnationist. He believed that we are born over and over so that we can gradually learn to live perfect lives. Skeptic that I am, I complained that if this was true, there would be amazing, nearly perfect people on Earth -- people who had already lived many times and who had learned from past mistakes.

He turned to me, totally amazed, and said, "You don't think there ARE? I meet them all the time." And I was totally floored by the different ways we saw the world. We're both empathic, but I don't hero-worship. I've never met anyone that I didn't think was flawed (myself included, of course). He felt that he was meeting "super beings" nearly every day. And reincarnation was his way of explaining it to himself.
posted by grumblebee at 12:49 PM on August 3, 2006

I first heard of this through Borges as the Lamed Wufniks.
posted by vacapinta at 12:52 PM on August 3, 2006 [2 favorites]

Here is the MeFi post on them. I also feel as if some recent movie or book had, as its premise, that a main character was one of them, but I'm getting nowhere trying to track that hunch down.
posted by LobsterMitten at 1:23 PM on August 3, 2006

It is also referenced in Sandman #31, "Three Septembers and a January," which is Gaiman's version of the story of Emperor Norton I and appears in the Fables and Reflections collection. So it's possible you heard of it there.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:31 PM on August 3, 2006

Vacapinta, I don't know why that page has them listed as the Lamed Wufniks, since the proper transliterations for it would the Lamed Vavniks. Lamed and vav are two Hebrew letters (all Hebrew letters do double duty as numbers as well) which stand for thirty and six, respectively.
posted by Inkoate at 1:48 PM on August 3, 2006

Response by poster: fantastic!

It was Sandman. I used to have all the comics in graphic novel form...as soon as the Sandman was mentioned, I remembered exactly where I first encountered the idea. And thanks for the other links, as well! Yay! I won't go insane now from not knowing!
posted by Windigo at 2:22 PM on August 3, 2006

Inkoate, it's a Yiddishized version of the Hebrew. There are various Yiddish dialects (and hence ways of pronouncing Hebrew), and many many ways of rendering Yiddish in Roman characters, so G-d knows what you're liable to run into with this sort of thing.

Thanks for linking to Smedleyman's excellent post, LobsterMitten -- I don't know how I missed it.
posted by languagehat at 2:56 PM on August 3, 2006

The Lamed Vav (36) Hidden Tzaddikim in each generation.

Wikipedia Link
posted by Izzmeister at 12:02 PM on August 4, 2006

(sorry i missed the link already above.) yegh.
posted by Izzmeister at 12:04 PM on August 4, 2006