Kabbalah

Ibbur — A Soul's Impregnation Into the Living

In Lurianic teaching a departed righteous soul can attach itself temporarily to a living person's soul to help them complete a mitzvah or unfinished spiritual work, without displacing their own identity.

Ibbur, literally "impregnation" or "gestation," names a specific category within Lurianic soul-doctrine distinct from gilgul (a full reincarnated lifetime) and from the malevolent dybbuk possession described in later Kabbalistic folklore. Chaim Vital's writings on the soul describe ibbur as typically temporary and purposeful: a righteous soul that has already completed its own tikkun enters a living person to help them perform a particular mitzvah, study a specific text, or survive a difficult period, then departs once the task is done. Some accounts describe two souls occupying one body simultaneously without conflict, since the visiting soul acts as reinforcement rather than replacement. The concept reflects Luria's broader picture of the soul as porous and composite rather than a single fixed unit, capable of gaining and shedding extra layers according to the needs of a given moment, much as the neshamah yeterah is added on Shabbat.