Do Jews believe in a afterlife or not?

Factual Questions
1

A couple of postings on another thread, here seem to imply that Jews believe in an afterlife.

But I was told that the doctrine that people have immortal souls or that people go on to Heaven (or Hell, I guess) after they die is NOT a doctrine of Judaism.

Or is it optional? Just at a guess, what percentage of Jews would you say believe in an afterlife?

Are there any writings of Jewish sages that speculate on a reward-filled Heaven and a punishment-filled Hell?

On of the factors that I have always found most attractive in Judaism is precisely that people are urged to live lives or morality, goodness and service to others and to refrain from evil WITHOUT childish threats and rewards.

Say it ain’t so, Joe (or Schlomo)!

2

I didn’t see anything in that thread that suggested a belief in the afterlife – just respect for the body of the person-that-was.

While I am by no means a Jweish scholar, I’ve always been told that the Afterlife is in the category of “unknowable things” – interesting to philosophize about, nothing to hang you hat on.

3

There is an afterlife in Judaism. People who do good in their lives are rewarded and those who do evil are punished.

There are extensive writings in the Talmud and other sources regarding the afterlife. However, there is very little of it that is concrete - often the matter is discussed in a vague manner.

One important aspect is that while there is punishment for one’s misdeeds in the afterlife, it is not comparable to some Christian versions of hell (i.e. a place where one spends eternity in torment). Most people (aside from the truly Hitler-esque evil types) spend no more than 12 months in punishment before being rewarded for thier good.

In addition, everyone is rewarded for the good they do, regardless of their other evil deeds. In many places in the Talmud an otherwise rotten Biblical personage will be examined and it will be pointed out that they received this-and-this reward because of one particular good deed they did.

Zev Steinhardt

4

Jews do believe in an afterlife. It is very clear from I Samuel 28 that the Jewish Scriptures believe that the soul continues to exist as an independent entity after the death of the body.

Most Jewish thought relating to the afterlife, though, is in non-scriptural sources, e.g., the Talmud and Midrash. But its importance cannot be overstated. The Talmud compares this world and the afterlife to an antechamber and a banquet hall, respectively…i.e., Torah-observant Jews consider this life to be mere (but necessary) preparation for the next.

5

Some do, some don’t. There are polls saying that about 46% of American Jews believe in an afterlife of some sort. Among those who do, there is disagreement on the details (heaven, hell, reincarnation).

There isn’t much emphasis on the afterlife in most denominations of Judaism. If you go to an average synagogue for a Shabbat (Saturday) or holiday service, you’re almost certainly not going to hear a sermon about how people who do such and such will burn in hell, or speculation on what heaven or hell are like. This is especially true in liberal (non-Orthodox) Judaism- teachings about the afterlife really aren’t a key part of liberal Judaism.

If you look in the Hebrew Bible (basically the Protestant Old Testament), there really isn’t much written there about life after death, and the Torah (first five books of the Bible, and to Jews the most important books) has nothing at all about an afterlife. There is some speculation that this lack of emphasis on the afterlife might have come from a rejection of the heavy emphasis on the afterlife in Egyptian religion.

The prayer that mourners say, the Mourners’ Kaddish, says nothing at all about death or an afterlife. In fact, other Kaddishes appear in the service to mark transitions between different parts of the service, and they’re quite similar in wording to the Mourners’ Kaddish.

One reason why there isn’t much emphasis on the afterlife in Judaism, other than the paucity of references to it in the Hebrew Bible, is that Judaism is more concerned with what people do than with what people believe. The existence of an afterlife or the details of it aren’t really too relevant to that, as long as you believe that people are somehow rewarded for good deeds and punished for bad deeds (and that wouldn’t even necessarily have to be in an afterlife).

Among Jews who do believe in an afterlife, there are a lot of variations on what they believe. We have a strong tradition that hell isn’t eternal- it’s limited to twelve months (possibly except for the absolutely worst sinners, on the level of Hitler or Stalin- you’d know, if you were one of them). There is a tradition that someone mourning the death of a parent says the Mourner’s Kaddish every day for eleven months- it used to be twelve, but that was changed because it might imply that your parents were wicked enough to be sent to Gehenna (hell) for the full twelve months. Some people do say it for twelve months, though.

Some Jews, and not just sixties-liberal types like me, believe in reincarnation. There are a lot of Chasidic stories of reincarnation- Yonassan Gershom has written an excellent book that has a selection of Chasidic and other Jewish stories about reincarnation.

6

I have a theory that the Jewish lack of emphasis on an afterlife may be partly due to the need for Jews living in Christian or Muslim cultures to differentiate themselves from the Christians or Muslims they were living with. Teachings about the afterlife have historically been so important in Christianity and Islam, so Jews living in those societies de-emphasized the afterlife in Judaism because speculating about the afterlife was seen as a Christian or Muslim thing to do. There are other Jewish customs, such as not having flowers at funerals, that arose from a similar desire to avoid acting like the Gentiles.

7

The practice of placing rocks on tombstones instead of flowers was explained to me as placing something in remembrance that won’t itself wither and die like flowers, and I’ve always liked that explanation. I don’t think that that is necessarily ‘canonical’ though.

8

It’s like so much else in Judaism- what you do is more important than why you do it. There are several explanations of the custom of putting rocks on tombstones, and I don’t think any of them are what you could call canonical.

9

So what happens to the truly Hitler-esque evil types? Do they get 13 months of punishment? 12 years? A millennium? Forever?

Also, I assume this doctrine was developed long before Hitler’s crimes, so who was used as an example of a “truly evil type” back then? That is, with which ancient figures of note will Hitler be sharing his otherworldly punishment?

10

Haman, from the scroll of Esther.

11

I recently took a belief-o-matic test to see which religion I would be most campatible with. Reform Judaism was the only one that scored 100% compatibility. My birth religion, Roman Catholicism, came 27 out of 27 possible choices, just ahead of Jehovah’s witnesses.

So I am especially pleased that Judaism does not command you to believe in an afterlife, and that in any event, you are sentenced to a meximum 12 months.

Now, If I get a smart Jewish lawyer to defend me, do you suppose I could get that 12 months cut down to a suspended sentence? :smiley:

Just joking, folks!

But seriously, it occurs to me that the jEWISH temporary hell after which you are eligible for reward for the good you have done is very similar to the doctrine of Purgatory, which the Catholics believe in but not the Protestants.

Protestants believe that you will either be damned or saved for all eternity.

The Protestant view is based on the idea that God takes everything into account and decides UP OR DOWN.

Except that some Protestants believe in predestination, namely, that it has nothing to do with your works. They believe you are justified by Faith alone. Doing good and avoiding evil is just a consequence of Faith, in their view.

Now, the Protestant view may sound harsh, but the Catholic view is that you will go to Hell if you die wih an unconfessed mortal sin (which could include masturbation) on your soul.

So theoretically, according to Catholic theology, you could spend your entire life feeding the poor, helping others, discover a cure for cancer and bring world peace. But if one day you jerk off and then get hit by a truck 5 minutes later, you will burn in Hell for all eternity.

Of course, this doctrine ensures that believers stay close to the Catholic Church and its sacraments.

12

Actually, Judaism only commands you to believe that God exists and that no other gods do. And there’s an opinion that it doesn’t make sense to command someone to believe something- you either believe it or you don’t, and you can’t really make yourself believe something if you don’t.

The rest of the 613 mitzvot, or commandments that Jews are obligated to follow, have to do with behavior, not belief. (I should mention that there is no canonical list of the 613 mitzvot, but the linked list comes from Maimonides, and is one of the more common ones). That’s, IMO, one of the key differences between Judaism and Christianity- Judaism emphasizes faith and believing the right things much, much less than Christianity does.

It’s certainly much closer to that than to the Christian or Muslim concept of eternal hell.

I sometimes wonder how bad a year of Gehenna could be, compared to four years as an outcast in high school :wink:

13

Actually, there’s a view (that is the majority view in the Talmud) that all sinners are limited to 12 months in Gehenna. Some rabbis, including Maimonides, said that really evil people’s souls are destroyed after the 12 months in Gehenna. I personally believe that maybe really evil people could be sent there for longer than 12 months, but not forever. There is no official Jewish teaching about Gehenna that you have to agree with to be a good Jew, so there’s no official Jewish answer to that question- just various Jewish people’s opinions.

14

I would imagine forever. However, I’d have to be honest and state that I don’t know for certain.

The archetypical “bad guy” from Scripture is Bilaam.

Zev Steinhardt

15

Info on Bilaam (also spelled Balaam) for those who don’t know who we’re talking about.

16

psychonaut:

Forever. The Scriptural basis for this aspect of Jewish Afterlife belief is Isaiah 66:23-24 -

Verse 24 clearly implies that those who actively rebelled against G-d will never have the fires burning them quenched nor the “worms” consuming them die, in other words, everlasting torment. Since it’s clear that such a thing does not exist on the earthly plane, the Rabbis interpreted that as referring to the dead souls of said evil people. Since verse 23 speaks of others seeing these souls in their torment, it is interpreted as referring to the evil but not quite as bad. The “12 months” limit is because the phrase which is translated above as “from one New Moon to another” more literally says in Hebrew “from a month to its month,” i.e., when the same month on returns, i.e., one year.

17

By the way, most of us believe that, whatever good afterlife we might believe in (be that heaven, reincarnation, or what have you), non-Jews are eligible for it as well, and that hell is limited to 12 months for non-Jews as well as for Jews (with a possible exception for really evil people). The Talmud says that the righteous of all nations have a place in the World to Come (which is what the good afterlife is often called).

18

Conservative Rabbi Joseph Telushkin in Jewish Literacy comments, “In heaven, Moses sits and teaches Torah all day long. Fot the righteous people, this is heaven, for the evil people, it is hell”…he continues, “All attempts to describe Heaven and Hell are, of course, speculative. Because Judaism believes that G-d is good, it believes that G-d rewards good people; it does not believe that Adolph HItler and his victims share the same fate. Beyond that, it is hard to assume much more. We are asked to leave the afterlife in G-d’s hands.”

19

Speaking of Hitler, most Christian sects that I’m aware of teach those verses of the Bible where it says that the path to salvation is believing in Christ, and that alone.

So Judaism lets Hitler off easy with only 12 or 13 months of punishment, but Christianity sends him straight to heaven.

20

Of course, that’s assuming that he doesn’t qualify for the rare eternal ticket…

Zev Steinhardt