Life After Death

One of the commonest misconceptions about Judaism, both among Jews and non-Jews, is that
it has no doctrine of life after death. It is true that in modern times Jewish thinkers have
played down teachings about the afterlife, but earlier stages of Jewish thought are rich in ideas
about the destiny of human beings after death.

Judaism traditionally distinguishes between halakhah, or legal norms of behaviour, which can
be laid down in great detail by religious authorities, and aggadah (literally: narrative), which
includes matters of theology and belief, in which there is no single normative view, but where
a wide range of opinion is accepted.

Beliefs about life after death, which do not affect legal behaviour, come within the area of
aggadah, and therefore there is no religious authority in Judaism that can lay down
compulsory beliefs about the details of the afterlife. To say there is no single dogmatic view,
however, is not the same as saying there is no view at all.

Part of the reason for the misconception is that no clear doctrine of an afterlife emerges from
the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and therefore those who equate Judaism with the religion of the
‘Old Testament’ suppose that Judaism has never had a doctrine of immortality. This is far
from the truth.

The Tanakh contains no doctrine of Heaven and Hell. The general Biblical view is that the
dead inhabit a shadowy underworld called She’ol, sometimes translated simply as ‘the grave,’
where there is silence and an absence of pleasure. According to the Psalmist “The dead cannot
praise God, nor any who descend into silence.” (Psalm 115:17)

The most desirable outcome for a person who dies, in this view, is to be “gathered to his
ancestors,” that is, to be decently buried in a family tomb by his sons who mourn him and
carry on his name. To die childless or be buried in a foreign place is to be ‘cut off’ from life
and posterity. Reward and punishment, in the standard Biblical view, take place essentially in
this world.

Judaism is thus considered, both by many Jews and some non-Jews, to be a ‘this-worldly’
religion, which emphasises the ethical obligation to work for Tikkun Olam (mending the
world) – to make this world a better place for present and future generations – and not to
worry about the unanswerable questions of an afterlife which can be left in God’s hands. This
is often contrasted with Christianity, with its perceived ‘other-worldly’ emphasis on the need
to get to Heaven and the details of the afterlife.

In the late Biblical period there are signs of a change in emphasis, with many verses in the
later psalms and prophetic books suggesting that the righteous person is saved from death by
God, in a sense that seems to go beyond simple preservation from earthly danger.
Nevertheless there is still no clear doctrine of spiritual afterlife.

Most of the focus on future life in the Bible concerns not the individual, but the people as a
whole, whose redemption from oppression and glorious future is foretold at length. This gave
rise to the belief in the Messianic age (which is discussed in another session). It is often
difficult, in ancient Jewish literature, to distinguish between the future of the individual and
that of the people as a whole; between the fate of the individual after death, and the destiny of
the world at the ‘end of days.’

Both these subjects come under the heading of ‘Eschatology,’ namely that part of religious
doctrine that has to do with the ‘last times.’ It is useful, but often impossible, to distinguish in
Judaism between ‘personal eschatology’ – the fate of the individual – and ‘universal
eschatology’ – the fate of the world. This may be another reason why little is said in Judaism
nowadays about personal immortality.

In the last phase of Biblical literature, a new belief appears concerning the Resurrection of
the Dead, that is, that bodies will at some point rise from the grave and live again. This is
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found in two passages: Isaiah 26:19, “Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise – awake
and sing, you that dwell in the dust …;” and more clearly in Daniel 12:2, “Many of them that
sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproaches and
everlasting abhorrence.”

The former passage might be interpreted figuratively, as foretelling a glorious revival of the
people’s national life (like the famous ‘dry bones’ prophecy of Ezekiel 37) but the latter
clearly supposes an actual bodily resurrection. It is likely that this belief arose as a reaction to
persecution by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the mid-second century BCE,
when the experience of martyrdom aroused a hope for a future reward and better life.

It is possible that this reflects some influence of Zoroastrianism, the religion of ancient Persia
with which Jews were often in contact, and which had developed beliefs in resurrection and
future salvation.

The belief in physical resurrection of the dead became one of the hallmarks of belief of the
Pharisees, the religious party in late-Second Temple Judaism that emphasised the study of
Torah and observance of traditional unwritten laws, and which had the allegiance of many of
the poorer people. This belief was rejected by the Sadducees, the party that represented the
Temple priesthood and Jerusalem aristocracy, and which adhered to a more literal reading of
the Bible.

After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Rabbinic movement, descended from the
Pharisees, gradually came to define normative Judaism, and made resurrection a key belief.
Thus the Mishnah (c. 200 CE) states: “All Israel have a share in the world to come … And
these are they that have no share in the world to come: he that says there is no resurrection of
the dead according to the Torah …” (Sanhedrin 10:1).

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) was the first and most influential Jewish thinker to propose a
set of dogmas, his ‘Thirteen Principles of Faith,’ of which the thirteenth is the belief in the
resurrection of the dead (Hebrew: techiyyat ha-metim). Nevertheless Maimonides himself
elsewhere seems to downplay, and was accused of denying, belief in physical resurrection.

In modern times Progressive (i.e. Liberal and Reform) Judaism, from its inception, decisively
rejected the belief in physical resurrection as being contrary to reason and to a scientific
understanding of the human being and death. On the other hand, Liberal Judaism has
traditionally embraced the other main Jewish belief about the destiny of the individual – the
Immortality of the Soul.

The Rabbinic doctrine of resurrection is expressed in the second blessing of the daily Tefillah
(Prayer), which states: “You are mighty for ever, O Lord, You revive the dead and are
powerful to save … You keep faith with those who sleep in the dust … faithful are You to
revive the dead. Blessed are You, O Lord, reviver of the dead.”

In the first Liberal Jewish Prayer Book of 1926, Rabbi Israel Mattuck (the first rabbi of the
LJS) retained the Hebrew text which speaks of resurrection, but paraphrases it in English as
follows: “Thou art mighty, O Lord; thine is the power to save … Thou hast endowed man
with eternal life to exalt his life on earth and to overcome death; so that he rejoices in the hope
of immortality … Praise be unto thee, O God, Source of eternal life.”

In the next Liberal Siddur, Service of the Heart (1967), the Hebrew was changed (following
older American prayer books) from “revives the dead” (mechayyeh ha-metim) to “gives life to
all” (mechayyeh ha-kol), and the prayer concludes as follows: “Our trust is in You, the Source
of life. We praise You, O Lord, who have implanted within us eternal life.”

In 1995, amidst some controversy, the Hebrew text of the prayer was changed back to the
traditional wording in Siddur Lev Chadash, translated “You are the source of eternal life … in
Your compassion You grant us eternal life … Trusting in You, we see life beyond death. We
praise You, O God, Source of eternal life.”
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
This belief in the immortality of the soul entered Judaism in antiquity probably as a result of
contact with ancient Greek thought. The Hebrew view of the human being made no sharp
distinction between body and soul, the latter being understood simply as the ‘life-force’ of the
former. The Greeks, and especially the philosopher Plato, saw the soul as a refined spiritual
substance temporarily imprisoned in the body, and set free at death to live on in a purely
spiritual life.

This view gained wide popularity in Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity, and it came to
be thought that the soul, which is the true essence of the person, was judged after death
according to how the person had lived, and either rewarded with eternal bliss or condemned to
punishment. This was harmonised in various complicated ways with the belief in physical
resurrection at the ‘end of days.’

This belief was a way of dealing with the perennial problem of evil: why do good people
suffer and the wicked prosper? The Biblical doctrine of reward and punishment in this world
consistently failed the test of experience, so one solution was to postpone retribution to the
future life, when all injustice would be righted and the good would enjoy their just reward.

At the same time, the Rabbis emphasised that one should not do good, or refrain from evil, out
of hope for reward or fear of punishment, but only out of devotion to God and a commitment
to doing right for its own sake. They maintained that “The reward of a good deed is a good
deed, the punishment for a transgression is a transgression.” (Avot 4:2)

In Christianity the belief developed that if a person dies in a state of mortal sin, they are
condemned to eternal damnation in hell. Rabbinic Judaism rejected the idea of eternal
punishment, except for a select few sinners, and taught that most people only endure twelve
months of painful cleansing in Gehinnom, before the soul is freed to ascend to Gan Eden, the
spiritual ‘Garden of Eden’ or Paradise.

The name Gehinnom (Gehenna) derives from a valley outside Jerusalem, Gé Hinnom (Valley
of Hinnom) where rubbish was burnt in ancient times, and came to be applied to a spiritual or
subterranean place of perpetual burning. Later Rabbinic folklore elaborated on the varieties of
punishment awaiting different kinds of sinners, but modern Judaism has abandoned such
speculations.

The key Rabbinic term for our future hope is Olam Ha-Ba, the ‘World to Come,’ and the
righteous are said to ‘have a share in the World to Come.’ Very often the term is used in the
sense of the future hope of the world as a whole, a period at the ‘end of days’ when the world
will be miraculously transformed. In popular usage, however, it came to be applied to the state
of the soul after death, and means much the same as ‘Heaven’ in common English usage.

The early Rabbis disagreed about the fate of non-Jews, but the view of Rabbi Joshua ben
Hananiah (1st–2nd century CE) became normative, that “The righteous among the nations have
a share in the World to Come.” (Tosefta Sanhedrin 13:2) The righteous among the nations
were defined as those who kept the ‘Seven Laws of the Sons of Noah’: not to murder, steal,
commit adultery, worship idols, blaspheme or eat flesh from a living animal, and to set up
courts of justice.

The task of a person in this life was to prepare for the World to Come: “This world is like a
vestibule before the World to Come; prepare yourself in the vestibule that you may enter into
the feasting hall.” (Avot 4:21) Nevertheless, the true moral significance of life was the good
that can be achieved in this world: “Better is one hour of repentance and good deeds in this
world than the whole life of the World to Come; and better is one hour of blissfulness of spirit
in the World to Come than the whole life of this world.” (Avot 4:22)

Everything in the World to Come was imagined as the reverse of this world: “Not like this
world is the World to Come. In the World to Come there is neither eating nor drinking; nor
procreation of children nor business transactions; no envy or hatred or rivalry; but the
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righteous sit enthroned, their crowns on their heads, and enjoy the radiance of the Shekhinah
(the Divine Presence).” (Berakhot 17a)

A particularly rabbinic way of imagining the World to Come, also known as Gan Eden (the
Garden of Eden; Paradise), was as a great heavenly academy, in which the righteous soul will
study Torah and Talmud in the company of patriarchs, prophets and sages under the benign
eye of the supreme teacher, God.

A more earthy conception of Gan Eden is that the righteous will enjoy there a feast on the
Leviathan, the huge mythical sea-monster, amidst bejewelled pavilions and aromatic breezes.
Another passage imagines God arranging a dance for the righteous around the heavenly
throne, and all the souls will point with their fingers at God and sing: “Lo, this is our God, we
have waited for Him and He will save us; this is the Lord, we have waited for Him, we will be
glad and rejoice in His salvation (Isaiah 25:9).” (Taanit 31a)

For mediaeval Aristotelian philosophers like Maimonides, it was not true to say that the soul
is a distinct entity separate from the body. The soul, as the ‘form of the body,’ perishes with it,
and all that survives are the accumulated true ideas we have learned in our lifetime, the socalled ‘acquired intellect.’ This is united with the source of all knowledge, the Active Intellect
or God. The way to eternal life, for these thinkers, was through knowledge of that which is
eternal.

According to Maimonides, there is no Gehinnom for punishment of sinners. Those who have
failed to devote their lives to knowledge, and the good deeds that flow from knowledge, are
simply extinguished and cease to be.

The rich variety of Jewish conceptions of the afterlife is shown by the fact that, in Jewish
mysticism (Kabbalah), a belief developed in the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation,
called in Hebrew gilgul ha-nefesh. The idea is that each soul is created with a sacred mission
to accomplish, and if in one lifetime the soul fails to achieve its purpose, God may send it
back in another body, human or animal, to continue the task until it is accomplished.

This belief arose under the influence of Gnostic conceptions that were in turn influenced by
Eastern religious thought. Many legends later grew up about reincarnation. Moses, for
example, was seen as a reincarnation of Abel who had been murdered by Cain. The
philosophers rejected the idea of reincarnation, and while held by mystical sects like the
Hasidim, it has never formed part of mainstream modern Jewish belief.

In modern times many Jews, including rabbis and thinkers, have questioned the existence of a
spiritual soul separable from the body, and hence doubted the doctrine of immortality. It is
quite possible to be a faithful and practising Jew without subscribing to this belief.

Instead of the traditional doctrine of immortality of the soul, many people advance naturalistic
ideas of immortality: one lives on in one’s children (tough on those who don’t have any); in
the good deeds one has done and the effect they have had on people’s lives; in the memories
that loved ones cherish (but how long, really, do memories last?); in the very atoms of one’s
body, which endure and become part of other growing, living things.

Nevertheless, many continue to have faith in the traditional hope of a spiritual afterlife, in
which the soul enjoys knowledge of God and closeness to the Divine Presence (devekut); in
which all that is hidden and incomprehensible in this life becomes clear; and in which one’s
spirit is reunited with those of dear ones who went before.

This is based on the faith that, just as God is a pure, invisible spirit whose existence is beyond
the scope of science, but who pervades the universe, so there exists an immortal soul which
shares something of the divine being, and which is the true essence of the person that cannot
die. Each person is unique and irreplaceable, and nothing that is good can utterly perish.
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