Here’s Cecil’s take on the OP as well as this specific question about what’s the point of a religion with no afterlife.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_143.html
Arjuna34
Oops, the Cecil column I refered to doesn’t really address the OP, it just answers Jonny L.A.'s question.
Arjuna34
From the English edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
[quote]
The Church and non-Christians
839 “Those who have not yet received the Gospel are related to the People of God in various ways.”[325]
The relationship of the Church with the Jewish People. When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People,[326] “the first to hear the Word of God.”[327] The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. To the Jews “belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ”,[328] “for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”[329]
840 And when one considers the future, God’s People of the Old Covenant and the new People of God tend towards similar
goals: expectation of the coming (or the return) of the Messiah. But one awaits the return of the Messiah who died and rose from the dead and is recognized as Lord and Son of God; the other awaits the coming of a Messiah, whose features remain hidden till the end of time; and the latter waiting is accompanied by the drama of not knowing or of misunderstanding Christ Jesus.
[quote]
(italics mine)
The “through no fault of their own” (while it certainly appears condescending from an outside perspective) does not indicate people in the Amazon jungle who have never heard the Gospel preached, but people who, by culture, education, or prior belief do not “recognize” the truth presented by the Gospels (as moderated by the RCC, of course < eg > ).
As to Scriptural references: in Paul’s great essay on faith, Romans, the first two chapters are devoted to the required response to God by those who are believers and those who are not. The RCC differs from various Fundamentalist groups in interpreting those passages in the manner of section 847, above, rather than in the manner of those Fundamentalists who say “that’s all very well, but if you don’t say ‘I believe’ you are damned.” Obviously those are different views of Scripture, but people who follow the RCC interpretation (which includes most Anglican-based groups and several groups in the tradition of Luther) do not hold that only people who say “I believe in Jesus” are saved–and that certainly includes Jewish people.
I’m going to need the help of people who know more commentary than I do, but I seem to recall somewhere reading that the reason the Torah doesn’t talk more about the afterlife (What’s the reward for doing mitzvot? "That you may live long in the land that G-d has given you) is because the Egyptians talked about it constantly. They were a culture obsessed with death and the afterlife, and their religion revolved around life after death, and this led to them doing all sorts of terrible things. So, G-d decided not to tell the people (who were already grumbling that they had left Egypt) about the afterlife, because He knew that people would just do right for the reward, and they’d become like Egyptians. On the entire other side of the coin, you’ve got the Karaites, who don’t think there’s a life after death (among other things). Not that I agree with them, but one of them said something about the afterlife that does make sense…“Don’t be like servants serving a master for a reward…be like servants serving a master without hope of reward.”…we do what’s right because it’s right.
I honestly disagree with tomndebb’s interpretation of this statement. If, the blind follow the blind, they both fall into the pit. At what point does not knowing the truth presented in the gospels become a person’s fault? By your understanding it is never their fault. But I’ll start a thread in GD.
Johnny L.A. said:
The point of having a religion is to explain the unknown and have a system of morals.
There are other religions without an afterlife, you know.
Wow, this thread’s almost 24 hours old, and still no sign of Chaim Keller. That must be some sort of record for a thread with “Jews” in the title.
Jodi, I think you are off-base here. Unless my memories of the New Testament are hopelessly corrupted, I believe that J.C. says, “I come not to bring peace, but the sword.” Assuming this is what jmullaney was referring to, I can’t see how referencing a quote from J.C. qualifies as a “not-so-veiled-attack” on Christianity.
Sua
Agreed, and this is not restricted to the RCC.
In Ancient Jewish Apocalyptic writings we moved off on a tangent from discussion of Daniel 7 to Church doctrine. My Professor, a most liberal Christian, was finally pinned down into admitting that he believed, and based upon NT statements, that those while those ignorant of “the Truth” (i.e. church doctrine) could still be saved, those deliberately rejecting same after having been made aware of it were not only damned, but qualified as having accepted the Mark of the Beast (making us members of the army of the damned which will harass the saints in the last days).
Yeah but most Christians think Jesus was a cracker too so you have to wary of the source. 
Hey, and if thats you that keeps trying that in the back of my car, cut it out!
Pushing back to the OP on Jewish beliefs on the question of afterlife, there is no one particular “standard.”
The Torah itself does not mention an afterlife, nor a Messianic Era. Later books suggest or hint at such (King Saul raises up the ghost of Samuel, and the prophets certainly predict a Messianic Era.)
The Biblical view of life is fairly simplistic: God is just, so good is rewarded, evil is punished, here and now, in this world. As the centuries passed and people noticed that the world doesn’t work that way, the question arose of how a Just God could tolerate injustice; and the answer tended towards, well, it seems like injustice here on earth, but in an afterlife, this will all be resolved and justice (and mercy) will prevail.
Hence, in the hundred years or so before Jesus, there were a number of sects of Judaism heavily preaching an afterlife. Jesus, of course, and his followers made this the main premise of their new religion.
There was certainly an attraction in the notion that there is an afterlife of reward for the good (you) and punishment for the evil (your enemies), which was one of the reasons that Christianity spread so rapidly among pagans. Over the Centuries, Judaism and Christianity borrowed from each other – OK, technically, I should say, both contributed to and took from the common sociological culture. So, Jews and Christians living together in Europe came to share a few thoughts. Thus, Judaism took on a more Christian notion of heaven, while Christianity took on a more Jewish notion of Messianic Era (when Jesus comes again.)
So, where are we today? Wide range of beliefs within Judaism.
At the one extreme, a heaven after death, where the righteous study together at the foot of the heavenly throne. Hell, as a place of atonement for sins, lasting from 11 to 12 months. And oblivion for those who are just TOO dreadful: not a hell of eternal torment, but simply oblivion (the soul being “cut off”).
At the other extreme, death is viewed as a time of sleep/oblivion until re-awakening when the Messiah comes. Heaven will be on earth, on a completed and perfected earth, when the lion lies down with the lamb and so forth.
And then there are plenty of Jews who reject it all, and say that this world is what there is, and death is the end of life.
In any case, all Jews (OK, almost all, my cousin Fred disagrees, but he’s a nut case) agree that the focus of life should be here on earth. The goal is to do mitzvot (commandments) and tzadakah (good deeds) here and now, to be a partner with God in helping to clean/perfect/fix THIS world… and to leave any afterworld in God’s hands.
That is, the purpose of doing good deeds is NOT to get into heaven… but for doing the good deeds themselves.
Five:
I usually don’t contribute when I have nothing to say but “Zev (zev_steinhardt, that is), I agree with you.” As you can see now, though, I have been keeping my eyes on it.
I do have something to add now, though, and that is a bit of disagreement to CKDextHavn’s statement:
I find this notion hard to accept, simply because any Jewish writings you’ll find on the subject are clearly rooted in the Midrash and Talmud, which were written either before Christianity became popular in the Roman empire, or in Babylon, which was beyond Christianity’s reach…and all of it was certainly prior to the massive Jewish emigration to Europe in the later half of the first millennium. Perhaps it’s fair to say that some of the ideas that became incorporated into the Midrash and Talmud were influenced by the same sources that influenced the earliest, Jewish Christians, but by the time Christianity became the world-spanning religion we know today, the Jewish sources on which all later writings are based were already in their final forms.
I think we’ll agree to disagree on that, Chaim.
I guess the question is to what extent things spring from their sources (Talmudic and Midrashic) and to what extent things develop and evolve.
I suspect that if you ask most American Jews to describe an angel, however, you will get the Christian version (blond hair, halo, harp, big fluffy white wings). If you ask American Jews to describe heaven, or the role that angels play, you’ll get the fluffy cloud Christian version.
I think that rabbis would prefer this were not so, but the Christian perspective so permeated the culture in which Jews live, that it’s difficult not to have some osmotic effect.
I think you need to qualify this, CKDextHavn. The reason that many American Jews would describe an angel in Christian terms is because, unfortunately, most American Jews are woefully uneducated about their own religion and culture. I’m willing to bet if you ask most American Jews who have more than a fleeting knowledge of their religion and traditions to describe an angel, you wouldn’t necessarily get the Christian version of angels. It’s not because Judaism adopted the Christian version of an angel, but because Jews are unaware of their own traditions regarding angels.
Zev Steinhardt
Fair enough, Zev, and that raises the question of whether, when we talk about “Jewish beliefs” we mean the beliefs held by many/most Jews, or the beliefs held by Judaism. And I guess I don’t wanna go there without a few beers.
Shabbat shalom.