It is said that the Messiah will not come until all of the souls that are destined to come into the world are born. Every soul has a unique mission in the world, and must complete this task, or it will be born again (this is the Jewish idea of reincarnation, which will be discussed, Gd willing, in another post). The conduct of the parents during conception has a huge influence on kind of child who will be born into the world. It is said that the way parents behave while conceiving the child will determine the child’s character traits and attitudes. The quality of the soul, however, is something different, and it is not known which children will have lofty souls and which will have ordinary souls. However, many parents are satisfied that children will have good traits, and are happy knowing that there is something that they can do about this even before birth.
Once the baby has been conceived and the soul has been designated, the body grows inside the mother’s womb, while the child’s soul is in Heaven learning Torah with an angel, who is the child’s private tutor. The child will learn the entire Torah and then, right before birth, the angel will touch the child’s upper lip, and he or she will forget everything that was learned. That is why we have that cleft on the upper lip. Perhaps the fact that we have learned Torah concepts before is the reason why many of these things seem so familiar to us. Often I am at a lecture and students will say “Aha!” about an idea, as if it was something they knew all along, but kind of forgot. I don’t think the angel takes all of the knowledge away—it is in the recesses of the subconscious, waiting to be discovered again.