The following was adapted from These Words Upon Our Heart, by Steven Steinbock, published by the URJ Press.
Judaism doesn't claim a single view of death and afterlife. Instead, Jews hold a variety of different views. Jews hold high regard the sanctity of life and an emphasis on the importance of the physical world— (olam hazeh)—as well as the importance of ethical conduct. These ideas have remained consistent throughout mainstream Judaism. These constants aside, Jews have held a wide range of evolving views of life after death. The foundations of the Jewish afterlife experience grew out of Mesopotamian and Egyptian beliefs. The biblical view of Sheol resembles the dark, musty netherworld of Mesopotamian myths. Jewish death and burial customs are a response to, and a reaction against, what Israelites saw as the excesses of Egyptian funerary customs. Along the long path of history, Jews have adopted and incorporated ideas drawn from Persian, Greek, and even Hindu beliefs.
Early Judaism—the religion of the biblical Israelites—offered very little information about an afterlife. Jews then, as now, placed far more emphasis on physical existence than on afterlife. Like the surrounding Babylonians, Assyrians, and Akkadians, the Israelites conceived of a netherworld, a dark, clammy, dreary realm where the dead sleep eternally. As Job says:
But man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more.
As water disappears from the sea or a riverbed becomes parched and dry, So man lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, Men will not awake or be roused from their sleep.
Job 14:10-12
Surprisingly, the Bible is ambiguous about the rewards of the world-to-come. The twelfth-century philosopher Maimonides listed the "belief in divine reward and retribution" as one of the Thirteen Principles of Faith. Yet the Book of Ecclesiastes provides stark and seemingly unfair images of death and reward. The first passage suggests that man and beast may all suffer the same end, and what happens after that is not knowable:
For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth? So I perceived that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?
Ecclesiastes 3:19-22
This passage asserts that there is no reward in death:
For the living know that they will die;
But the dead know nothing,
And they have no more reward,
For the memory of them is forgotten.
Ecclesiastes 9:5
In the Bible, "heaven" (or  , shamayim, in Hebrew) refers to the skies or celestial regions, or sometimes to the abode of God and angels. But the Bible never uses "heaven" as a realm for the souls of the dead. Rather, in the Bible, the dead are said to be "gathered to their people" (Genesis 25:8; Deuteronomy 32:50) or to "rest with ancestors" (Deuteronomy 31:16; II Samuel 7:12; I Kings 1:21). The final resting place of the dead was understood as an underground place, not with the negative implication of the Christian concept of hell, but with the practical observation that underground—whether in caves or in graves—was where bodies were laid to rest.
By the second century B.C.E., the idea of the resurrection of the dead was appearing in Jewish writings, perhaps, in part, an influence of Persian Zoroastrian beliefs. As messianic ideas of the prophets crystallized, one of the events that was agreed would occur in the messianic age was the rising of the dead. This resurrection was thought to be a physical one, in which our whole bodies would live again, and not merely our discorporate souls. Judaism generally rejects the Greek belief that body and soul, like matter and form, are separate entities. Flesh and spirit are intermingled and interdependent aspects that are inseparable and indivisible. The Jewish tradition that bodies are buried whole and the prohibition against cremation are meant as safeguards to bodily resurrection at the time of the Messiah.
The Talmud is filled with references to paradise, Gan Eden (Garden of Eden), and olam haba (world-to-come) as afterlife rewards. While the Rabbis of the Talmud stressed that the reward in fulfilling a mitzvah was the mitzvah itself, the Rabbis also pointed out that our conduct in this world is directly related to our reception in the world-to-come:
Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani said in the name of Rabbi Yonatan: When a man performs a mitzvah in this world, it precedes him—goes ahead of him—in the world-to-come. And when a man commits a transgression in this world, it clings to him and goes before him on the Day of Judgment. Rabbi Elazar said it attaches itself to him like a dog.
Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 3b
The reward and punishment that the Rabbis describe is reminiscent of the Hindu idea of karma. The imagery of actions clinging to a person is identical to that found in Hindu teachings, which refer to karma (action) as a substance that clings to the individual.
There are numerous descriptions of the world-to-come found in the Talmud and other rabbinic writings. In the following passage, olam hazeh (this life) is viewed as a mere prologue to the olam haba (world-to-come):
Rabbi Yaakov said: This world is like an entrance hall before the world-to-come. Prepare yourself in the entrance hall so that you may enter the banquet hall.
Pirkei Avot 4:21
Y'hudah HaNasi (called Rav in the Talmud) describes a differing view of the afterlife, suggesting that it is totally different from this world:
Rav has a favorite saying: The world-to-come is not at all like this world. In the world-to-come, there is no eating, no drinking, no procreation, no commerce, no envy, no hatred, no rivalry; the righteous sit with crowns on their heads and enjoy the radiance of the Presence.
Babylonian Talmud, B'rachot 17a
It's worth noting that Judaism is perhaps the only religion that asserts not only that there is a place for the righteous of all nations in the world-to-come, that Jews are not favored over non-Jews, but rather that it's actually more difficult for a Jew to achieve reward than a non-Jew. "The righteous of the nations of the world have a portion in the world-to-come" (Tosefia Sanhedrin 13:2). While Jews are obligated to observe the 613 laws of Torah, a non-Jew need only follow the seven laws of Noah to be considered righteous.
The expression "Garden of Eden" is often used to describe the abode of the righteous in the messianic age. Is this the same garden that was the home of Adam and Eve in the early chapters of Genesis? Probably not. While this region of reward may be very real, the name Garden of Eden is used metaphorically, just as Geihinom refers to Sheol, and not to the geographical Hinnom Valley.
Regarding Sheol and Geihinom, while the terms appear throughout rabbinic writings, they are never understood as the severe or permanent punishments that they represent in Christianity:
Rabbi Akiva used to say, the punishment of the wicked in Geihinom lasts no more than twelve months.
Mishnah Eduyot 2:10
In kabbalistic writings and in Chasidic tales, reincarnation is frequently described as the experience of the soul after death. The Hebrew term for reincarnation is gilgul (from the Hebrew for "wheel" or "circle"). According to the sixteenth-century kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria, in a teaching that is amazingly similar to the Hindu notions of karma and samsara, we are expected to fulfill the 613 mitzvot during our lifetime before going on to the next plane of existence. Most of us return numerous times to fulfill what we missed in previous births.
In a similar vein, many Jewish stories and folktales propose that reincarnation is God's way of helping people to fulfill their destinies. Common motifs in Chasidic stories include the following:
- A wealthy man who visits his rebbe, who tells the man a story of someone who commits some injustice. At the end of the story, the wealthy man exclaims, "That was me!" meaning that he recognizes his mistake from a previous life, and he vows to atone and make recompense for his mistakes.
- A man and a woman are destined to be together, but circumstances prevent it from being so. In the next life, they are finally joined in marriage.
- At the moment of a man's death, he realizes that, despite his pious lifestyle, he was guilty of the sin of pride. His soul returns to earth in a new body, and without the benefit of the memory of his previous life, he learns the lesson of humility.
We have learned that Judaism offers a variety of beliefs about death and afterlife that in many ways parallel and in many others ways contrast the views and beliefs of other religions. Above all, Judaism emphasizes that holiness can be found in this life rather than in the next life.
Adapted from Steven E. Steinbock, These Words Upon Our Heart: A Lexicon of Judaism and World Religions (New York: UAHC Press, 2003), 121-124). |
