Out of the darkness and into the light...

Judaism and the Afterlife

Writing that would later be incorporated into the Hebrew Bible names "sheol" as the afterlife, a gloomy place where all are destined to go after death. The Book of Numbers identifies sheol as literally underground (Numbers 16:31-33), in the Biblical account of the destruction of the rebellious Korah, Dathan and Abiram and their 250 followers, although it is speculated that this passage should be read literally, signifying an earthquake or split in the earth.

The Book of Enoch describes sheol as divided into four compartments for four types of the dead: the faithful saints who await resurrection in Paradise, the merely virtuous who await their reward, the wicked who await punishment, and the wicked who have already been punished and will not be resurrected on Judgment Day. It should be noted that the Book of Enoch is considered apocryphal by most denominations of Christianity and all denominations of Judaism.

The book of 2 Maccabees gives a clear account of the dead awaiting a future resurrection and judgment, plus prayers and offerings for the dead to remove the burden of sin.

Maimonides describes the Olam Haba ("World to Come") in spiritual terms, relegating the prophesied physical resurrection to the status of a future miracle, unrelated to the afterlife or the Messianic era.

The Zohar describes Gehenna not as a place of punishment for the wicked but as a place of spiritual purification for the souls of almost all mortals.

An Overview

Olam ha­Ba (afterlife) is rarely discussed in Jewish life, be it among Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox Jews. This is in marked contrast to the religious traditions of the people among whom the Jews have lived. Afterlife has always played a critical role in Islamic teachings, for example. To this day, Muslim terrorists who are dispatched on suicide missions are reminded that anyone who dies in a jihad (holy war) immediately ascends to the highest place in heaven. In Christianity, afterlife plays a critical role; the vigorous missionizing efforts of many Protestant sects are rooted in the belief that converting nonbelievers will save them from hell.

Jewish teachings on the subject of afterlife are sparse: The Torah, the most important Jewish text, has no clear reference to afterlife at all.

Since Judaism does believe in the "next world," how does one account for the Torah's silence? I suspect that there is a correlation between its nondiscussion of afterlife and the fact that the Torah was revealed just after the long Jewish sojourn in Egypt. The Egyptian society from which the Hebrew slaves emerged was obsessed with death and afterlife. The holiest Egyptian literary work was called The Book of the Dead, while the major achievement of many Pharaohs was the erection of the giant tombs called pyramids. In contrast, the Torah is obsessed with this world, so much so that it even forbids its priests from coming into contact with dead bodies (Leviticus 21:2).

The Torah, therefore, might have been silent about afterlife out of a desire to ensure that Judaism not evolve in the direction of the death obsessed Egyptian religion. Throughout history, those religions that have assigned a significant role to afterlife have often permitted other religious values to become distorted. For example, belief in the afterlife motivated the men of the Spanish Inquisition to torture innocent human beings; they believed it was morally desirable to torture people for a few days in this world until they accepted Christ, and thereby save them from the eternal torments of hell.

In Judaism the belief in afterlife is less a leap of faith than a logical outgrowth of other Jewish beliefs. If one believes in a God who is all-powerful and all-just, one cannot believe that this world, in which evil far too often triumphs, is the only arena in which human life exists. For if this existence is the final word, and God permits evil to win, then it cannot be that God is good. Thus, when someone says he or she believes in God but not in afterlife, it would seem that either they have not thought the issue through, or they don't believe in God, or the divine being in whom they believe is amoral or immoral.

All attempts to describe heaven and hell are, of course, speculative. Because Judaism believes that God is good, it believes that God rewards good people; it does not believe that wicked people and good people share the same fate. Beyond that, it is hard to assume much more. Overall, the Jewish faith tends to leave the afterlife in God's hands.

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