Jewish Beliefs:  Life After Death
Sermon, August 3, 2007
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

If you ask most Jews what Judaism has to say about life after death, they will respond that Judaism really does not believe in life after death, but instead focuses on this life.  While the second half of that statement --that Judaism focuses on this life-- is certainly correct, the claim that Judaism does not believe in life after death is not.  An examination of Jewish tradition shows that Judaism does offer important, although not altogether clear teachings about life after death.  As I continue my series of summer sermons about Jewish beliefs, I turn to what Judaism says about life after death.

There is no evidence of any belief in life after death in the Torah.  When Abraham dies, the text says, “And Abraham breathed his last, dying at a good ripe age, old and content; and he was gathered to his kin” (Genesis 25:8).  To be “gathered to one’s kin” indicates that he was forever united with his ancestors, according to Rabbi Gunther Plaut.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin suggests that the Torah’s virtual silence on the next world may, at least in part, be a reaction to the Egyptian obsession with death and the afterlife.

The Torah does contain references to She’ol, a place to which one goes down, similar to one’s grave.  The book of Ecclesiastes sums it up by saying, “In respect of the fate of a human being and the fate of a beast, they have one and the same fate…. Both go to the same place; both came from the dust and both return to the dust.”  (3:19-20) Later biblical books, however, indicate belief that there is something beyond the grave.  Daniel, for example, says, “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, others to everlasting reproach and contempt.” (12:2-3)  

This concept was further developed in the rabbinic period, particularly by the Pharisees.  In contrast to the Sadducees who, according to Josephus, argued that “souls die with their bodies,” the Pharisees argued that souls are immortal and that they will be rewarded or punished according to how they lived. 

The Talmud develops this idea by asserting that the souls of those who were thoroughly righteous will be inscribed for everlasting life, whereas the souls of those who were thoroughly wicked would be doomed to Gehinom.  Named for a valley to the southwest of Jerusalem notorious for idolatrous worship and child sacrifice, Gehinom was envisioned as a fiery netherworld where both the body and soul of the wicked would be destroyed.

The remainder of the souls, those neither completely righteous nor completely wicked (which would be most of us), go to Gehinom where the souls will be cleansed and then will inherit everlasting life.  The Talmud also offers this description of the “world to come:”  “There is neither eating nor drinking nor procreation nor business dealings nor jealousy nor hate nor competition.  But righteous people sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the splendor of the Shechinah, the Divine Presence.”  (B’rachot 17a)  It is not our physical bodies which inhabit this world, but our souls. 

However, at the end of time according to traditional Jewish thought, God will resurrect the dead, enabling the bodies to reunite with their souls and return to an idyllic life on earth.  This belief was reflected in the second blessing of the amidah, the g’vurot, which spoke of God demonstrating strength by giving life to the dead (m’chayei hameitim). 

While the traditional liturgy maintained this phrase, Reform Judaism, rejecting the idea of resurrection, emended the text to say that God “gives life to all/m’chayei hakol.”  In recent years, some Reform leaders have argued for the reintroduction of the idea of resurrection of the dead, at least in a metaphoric sense.   Thus Mishkan Tefilah will include the phrase m’chayei hameitim as an option, along with the phrase m’chayei hakol.

While many Jews still have a problem with the idea of resurrection of the dead, most are willing to affirm the concept of the immortality of the soul.  Dr. Ron Wolfson, a leading Jewish educator, suggests a number of interpretations of this concept.  It might mean that “we live on through our descendants,” not just through DNA, although that is a component of it, but also through ways that they live their lives in reflection of how we lived ours.

Immortality of the soul can also mean that “we live on through our deeds,” through what we have achieved in our life time and how we have influenced others.  Finally, Dr. Wolfson suggests that “we live on through our common destiny with the Jewish people,”   Whatever may ultimately happen to our individual body and soul, we have contributed to continued destiny of the Jewish people. 

We may not all agree about what it means to say that the soul is immortal, but there is a general consensus among leading Jewish thinkers in the immortality of the soul, that although the body may die and eventually return to the earth, the soul lives on in some way.

There are some Jews who not only believe that the soul continues to exist after death, but that it can enter another body.  “Transmigration of souls (gilgul nefashot), the recycling of a soul from one deceased person into another body, was the subject of great concern and disagreement among Jewish mystics,” according to David Ariel.  The purpose of transmigration might be to complete mitzvot that one did not fulfill in a previous life or alternatively as a form of punishment, giving the sinner the opportunity to atone in a new life.

Thus, as Jews we have a wide variety of beliefs regarding life after death from which to choose.  We might embrace the idea of the immortality of the soul, in one of its many interpretations.  We might also believe that eventually there will be a resurrection of the dead.  And we might accept the mystical notion of the transmigration of the soul. 

According to Rabbi Joseph Telushikin, “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,” he observes.  Whatever we choose to believe allows us to make sense of our world and what happens after we die.

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