The idea of afterlife vs no afterlife was being debated among Jews in Jesus’ time. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection from the dead (an afterlife), while the Sadducees did not. This is recorded when the Sadducees come to Jesus to ask him the stumper:
Matthew 22:23-33
23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”
29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” *
Whether or not you believe the New Testament, the Sadducees vs. the Pharisees is well known.
What you and cmkeller are saying is correct for orthodox Judaism. It is not, however, correct for Judaism as a whole, which includes the other branches, members of whom have varying opinions on the matter.
What is universally correct, in that it is something that pretty well all Jews agree on, is that whether an afterlife exists or not, the existence of an afterlife is not the primary ‘motivator’ for Judaism.
I’m not a Jew, but my understanding of the afterlife beliefs in general, which comes mainly from conversations with Jews and from Karen Armstrong and other writers, is that you should live your life as if there were no afterlife since
1- Whether you believe in one or not, you can’t know for certain
2- If there is one then you can’t really know what it’s like since you won’t have a physical body
3- (and most importantly) If you are only doing good things due to fear of punishment/hope of reward after death then you’re not really a good person, you’re just a guy (or gal) doing a job for pay; good works should come from a good heart
Is this at all accurate? (Is or isn’t, it’s still a view I really like.)
Certainly, and I think I made that quite clear in both of my posts. However, “Judaism as a whole” has traditionally included belief in an afterlife as a central tenet of faith.
By comparison, this article by a Reform Rabbi dances around the fact that most Reform Rabbis are not really theists, but I’d feel quite comfortable saying that theism or monotheism has traditionally been an essential part of Judaism.
Pardon a possible hijack, but I went to a very conservatively religious (private) elementary school and one of the times the teacher got really flustered was when I and other students pursued Jesus’s answer on this. “But the preacher says we’ll all be reunited in heaven- does this mean we won’t?” and “So in heaven can grandma and grandpa date other people?” and “Well what will it be like if there’s no marriage? Will our parents still be our parents? Will they be like Kenny and Abby’s parents who are divorced?” etc… Thirty some odd years later I find it still is one of the glossed over well known sections.
In any case as an adult I read it with a “The afterlife is nothing like Earth so don’t dwell on it” interpretation. When several of my older relatives people would say “Well she’s through suffering now, and when you see her again she’ll be alert and healthy”, which leads to “So she won’t be senile because… well, she won’t have a brain at all, but since our personality and consciousness comes from our brain chemistry and our experiences will she still have the same personality at all? What about memories- surely she’ll remember us, but it would be weird in heaven to have memories of outhouses and World War II and all, plus you’ll be mingling with people who remember everything from medieval peasants lives to slavery to life in English factory towns to life in colonial Ghana to life in ancient Rome and presumably even life in caves of prehistoric France and the plains of Africa before language even developed if they lived good lives… or will none of them have memories of this, or will the memories be completely unimportant? And if they’re not important wouldn’t it all be a waste of time down here?”
Anyway, afterlife is one of those things that still flummoxes and flusters people when they talk in depth about it. It’s almost like one of those “suppose everything in existence just popped into existence Thursday morning last at 3:32 p.m., BUT we were created with an earth that shows all signs of being billions of years old and our own bodies that have aged to what we were when 3:32 Thursday’s creation came around and memories of an existence prior to that and photographs and videos and remains of things that went before, then that being the case did everything before Thursday really exist or not?” philosophy games.
Well, there we are I suspect headed for a slippery slope - the nature of the slide being whether Orthodoxy is a more “correct” form of Judaism than the others, and thus more or less embodies Jewish religious thought.
Given that this is exactly the issue which divides the various branches, I doubt there is any way to resolve that particular dispute. At least, in our lifetimes.
However, when asked by outsiders who are not part of the Jewish tradition, I’d say the more accurate answer is:
‘in Medieval times, Judaism did indeed, as a religion, conceive of an afterlife, and major Medieval Jewish philosophers gave prominence to such belief. In modern times, this tradition is continued by the Orthodox branch of Judaism, which believes itself to be the “normative” Jewish opinion. The other branches - Conservative and Reform being the major divisions - are not united on the matter, some holding that an afterlife exists, and some that it does not. The majority of Jews a non-Jew is likely to encounter in N. America belong to these other branches.’
Sure. I’d just amend “medieval times” to “until the 19th century”. Incidentally, I don’t think any branch of Conservative or Reform Judaism explicitly holds that an afterlife doesn’t exist. Conservative Judaism seems to believe in a soul which survives an individual’s death, although they allow a wide variety of interpretations as to what that means - see page 26. Reform Judaism is a bit more agnostic on the issue.
But he’s right. Jesus’ answer obviously adds little to the discussion here, but the fact that the afterlife was debated 2000 years ago by the Pharisees and Sadducees is of importance.
The Universalist Church emerged in the late 18th century, eventually merging with the Unitarians, to form the modern Unitarian Universalist church. You may not consider the modern church a Christian denomination, but they definitely grew out of Christianity.
I was raised Jewish, and while I was never taught to believe in an afterlife, I don’t recall ever being taught that there’s ***not ***an afterlife. It’s as if the subject were so irrelevant that it didn’t even need to be mentioned. All I knew was that my Christian friends definitely believed in Heaven and Hell, and it wouldn’t occur to me to have a belief either way.
And as others have mentioned, “doing good” was our primary obligation and motivation, as an end in itself. It wouldn’t have occurred to us to look for a “reward.”
I was a kid in the 50s, and I know that there were many Jewish people, including my parents, who were active in the Civil Rights movement. It was just something that they did, and nobody would think of asking why they did it or what they got out of it.
You are correct in that - none of the three major branches of Judaism unequivocally holds that an afterlife does not exist. What the other two branches believe, is that belief in an afterlife is basically an issue on which reasonable Jews can disagree - and it makes no difference. In short, a religious Jew who is not Orthodox can fully believe that there is no afterlife and remain a religious Jew in good standing - something that the majority of Christian denominations cannot do.
The Conservative Jewish statement you cite puts it thus:
[emphasis added]
This is not a full-blooded requirement to believe in an afterlife. Rather, it is saying that Conservative Jews have a choice - they can believe in a “literal” afterlife if it they so choose (“… they are literal truths which enable us to confront death and the death of our loved ones with courage and equanimity…”) or they can regard these “traditional teaching” to be things understood “… in a more figurative way”.
This I think is probably the “mainstream” position of Judaism. There was a vague and grab-bag of traditions concerning the afterlife (containing both bodily resurection and a place of repose of the soul - be it sheol or whatever), which you can, if you so choose, either believe in literally, or not.
