So I saw the film recently.  I really enjoyed it though I agree with those critics who said the plot was a tad superficial-sort of like a “Dances with Wolves” in space.

Anyway, the aspect that really appealed to me was the idea that one’s consciousness could be transferred from one body to another (in Avatar’s case between humans and huge, skinny blue aliens).  I once saw a Hare Krishna (!) display in Central Park that depicted a series of models of one person through his life-from infancy through old age.  The guy pointed out to me that the bodies were all radically different.  Can it really be said that the 2 month old is the same person as the 80 year old?  If so, how?  All the cells of the body are regenerated in totality every 7 years!  Another way of looking at this might be if you started with a axe and got a nick in the blade and then replaced it, and then broke the handle and replaced that-is it the same axe?  Are we not forced to say that the only thing holding our “bodies” together as unified entities is our consciousness?

In Judaism, the “neshama” (soul) is the same as this consciousness.  It is the “me” that we think of when we think of ourselves.  From a Jewish perspective, the body is the Avatar-it’s the vessel that holds our true selves, but it doesn’t need to be the only one.  Despite popular conception, we do believe in reincarnation and the continuity of the neshama post death.

I think that these films sometimes come along to illustrate to us true spiritual ideas that might otherwise seem very foreign.  The great thing with this one is that it’s also tremendously entertaining…

Shabbat Shalom