Qwerty, to tell you the truth, I didn’t read every word that Shmei wrote. Perhaps his arguments sometimes sounded conflicting so it couldn’t be understood exactly what he is saying. I myself never read anything clear and consice what he wrote, it was all over the place.
What i do know is that every time I said that Yaacov is alive in a spiritual sensee, not physically , he asked me but what about this mefoiresh and that mefoirsh that says otherwise. One of the meforshim he kept mentioning as contradicting to what I said that Yaacov is alive spiritually is the “Maharsha”.