Question 4, © 2005:
The “You Stab Them, We Slab Them” Jewish Funeral Home is co-sponsoring a conference with the “Chicago Future Life Options Exchange.” The topic is “The Afterlife: Attitudes and Views in Jewish Theology.” You are the keynote speaker. What would you say?
Ladies and gentlemen; good evening. The name of your organization, the “Chicago
Future Life Options Exchange” is singularly appropriate when considering Jewish
views on the afterlife, because if there’s one thing Jewish Theology offers,
it’s options. Indeed, Jewish theology
has been likened to a smörgåsbord,[1]
a festive table with many options.
This explains why various equally committed Jews can have such different
views on many a topic. At a
Scandinavian smörgåsbord, one diner may choose the lutefisk and frukt søppe,
whereas another may prefer Swedish meatballs and rømmegrøt; each has an
entirely different plate, yet each has chosen from items germane to Swedish and
Norwegian cuisine. And just as a Jewish
smörgåsbord will not include pork, but may include everything from bagels and
lox to gefilte fish to blintzes, the Jewish smörgåsbord of theological ideas
contains many diverse choices while excluding some others. The “ideas that comprise an authentic Jewish
theology and the texts that may be utilized in its formulation are diverse, but
not without limits.”[2]
Tonight I shall give you a sampling of selections in the “afterlife table” of
the Jewish smörgåsbord, beginning with the development of the idea in ancient
times, and concluding with various options which Jewish people choose today.
According to
Louis Jacobs, “One of the most remarkable features of Jewish belief in the
Hereafter is the absence of any kind of definite information in the Bible.”[3] Though a detailed account of the afterlife
may not be found in the Hebrew Scriptures, there are certainly clues that show
that there was a concept of life after death.
The account of Saul and the medium at Endor in I Samuel 28 shows that,
at least in popular religion, there was a concept of the continued existence of
Samuel and other individuals after death.
Necromancy “continued to be practiced from time to time”[4]
and shows by its existence that people believed in an afterlife. According to S.G.F. Brandon, “the Yahwist
thinkers no more than the Mesopotamians could envisage complete personal
extinction. They believed that at death
the psycho-physical organism that constituted the living individual was
irreparably shattered, and that what survived, which is never defined,
descended beneath the earth to She’ol.”[5]
But the concept of the passage of all people to an
equal fate in the shadowy She’ol gradually gave way, as “the concept of a just
and omnipotent God demanded an eschatology which promised that the justice of
his dealing with individual men and women would be vindicated after death,
since too often it was not demonstrated in this life.[6] In Daniel 12:2,3 we see a clear statement of
the resurrection of the dead back to life, and a differing fate in the
afterlife depending upon conduct in this life:
“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some
to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the
brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the
stars forever and ever.” In the second
century B.C.E the author of II Maccabees recorded an account when a number of
Jewish soldiers who had fallen in battle were found to have been wearing “tokens
of the idols of Jamnia.”[7] Prayers were offered that this sin may be
blotted out, and a collection was taken for a sin offering. The motivation for these actions is clearly
attributed to the belief that those who had fallen would rise again and that a
sin offering and prayer could make atonement for the sins of the dead.[8] “For if he were not expecting that those who
had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray
for the dead. But if he was looking to
the splendid reward that is laid up for those who fall asleep in godliness, it
was a holy and pious thought. Therefore
he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.”[9]
Though the belief in the resurrection of the dead was
common among Jews in the centuries following the writing of the Hebrew Bible,
it was by no means universal. The
Pharisees deduced the concept of the afterlife from certain verses in the
Torah, but the Sadducees rejected the idea because it was not explicitly
mentioned.[10] The three connected but contrasting ideas of
the immortality of the soul (connected with Greek thought), the doctrine of the
Messiah (entirely Jewish in origin) and the resurrection of the dead (connected
with Persian beliefs) ultimately combined into the Jewish scheme of eschatology
in which the soul lives on after death, and sometime after the coming of the
Messiah the body is resurrected and the soul returns to it.[11]
Philo of Alexandria (d. c. 50 C.E.), who represents the
first major blend of Judaism and Hellenism[12]
“throughout his works speaks of the immortality of the soul rather than of the
resurrection of the body.”[13] Literature from the Rabbinic period,
including the Tannaitic Period (to the beginning of the third century C.E.) and
the Amoraic Period (200-500 C.E.),[14]
includes numerous references to the hereafter.
Rabbinic and Jewish liturgical texts describe the afterlife as “an
academy on high,”[15]
projecting their society’s highest value onto the afterlife. The abode of the souls of the righteous is Gan Eden, “the Garden of Eden,” and the wicked are judged in Gehinnom, “Hell,” for a period of twelve months.[16] The
hereafter is often called “the World to Come,” and “All Israel has a share in
the World to Come with certain exceptions.
But the righteous of the nations also have a share in the World to
Come.”[17]
Maimonides,
in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries C.E., has a “highly spiritual”
doctrine of the hereafter, holding a theory of immortality “based upon the
Aristotelian view in its Arabic garb that only that part of man’s intellect
which he has acquired, as it were, through metaphysical thought (the ‘acquired
intellect’) is immortal. This alone,
through its contact with the ‘Active Intellect’, survives the death of the
body.”[18]
“Obviously embarrassed” by the resurrection, Maimonides counts belief in the
resurrection as the 13th of his 13 principles of the Jewish faith,
but “refers to it in a most casual manner.”[19] But he taught that one should accept belief
in the afterlife as a principle of faith, though since it “represents a completely
different dimension of existence than the one we now inhabit, we are unable
even to understand its nature.”[20]
Meanwhile,
the Zohar, the “preeminent Kabbalistic writing,”[21]
possibly written mostly between 1280 and 1286 C.E.,[22]
taught that “human development progresses over 6,000 years. During this period, souls undergo a
continuous process of growth, at the end of which all souls reach the highest
level of spirituality and wholeness.”[23] Reincarnation, or the transmigration of
souls, is an element in Kabbalah, and many Hasidic sects believe in it today.[24]
What
can we say about the options on the table today, as to current Jewish beliefs
concerning the afterlife? “Some modern
Jews clearly have no use for any doctrine of a Hereafter and, oddly enough,
this includes some religious Jews.”[25] Many regard Judaism as a religion that
focuses on the here-and-now,[26]
and some consider the entire notion of the afterlife irrelevant.[27]
Yet
there are many who find the notion to be very relevant. Some Orthodox Jews today believe that wicked
souls will be tormented by demons of their own making, or cease to exist
altogether.[28] Many Jews today “place the stress on the
immortality of the soul rather than on the resurrection of the dead.”[29] But others have recently “tried to defend
the doctrine of the resurrection and to prefer it, in fact, to that of the
immortality of the soul” on the basis that the doctrine of immortality of the
soul is Greek, not Jewish.[30]
Part of the strength of the doctrine of resurrection in Jewish theology is that
it is “stressed in talmudic literature, in Jewish liturgical texts, in Jewish
burial ceremonies and in medieval Jewish discussions of dogmatics.”[31] “The idea of resurrection of the body
articulates God’s concern for the individual person. It also expresses the hesitancy in biblical and talmudic
literature to view the human creature as a being with two conflicting aspects:
body and soul.”[32]
The
idea of transmigration of souls is common among many Jews, especially those
influenced by the Kabbalah. “Some hold
that the souls of the righteous are reborn to continue their good work, while
other sources indicate that a soul is reincarnated only if there’s a need to
complete some unfinished business, such as repaying a loan.”[33]
What
about ideas concerning heaven and hell?
“The
idea of hell does not play a major role in Jewish eschatology. There is purgatory where the souls of those
who have died are purified, are prepared for eternal life. However, even the worst sinner, spends no
more than a year in purgatory. Being a
very optimistic religion, Judaism does not have the idea of eternal
damnation. There is always hope, always
the opportunity for repentance and spiritual rehabilitation.”[34]
So
there are many options on the Jewish smörgåsbord table when it comes to beliefs
concerning the afterlife. One can be a
good Jew and believe in the resurrection, or the immortality of the soul, or
disregard the concept of the afterlife entirely, or believe in incarnation, or
simply consider the nature of the afterlife to be beyond understanding, or even
take more than one of these selections from the table at the same time. These are some of the options. Perhaps you will find one or more of them to
your liking.
[1] Byron L. Sherwin, Toward a Jewish Theology: Methods, Problems, and Possibilities (Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 15.
[2] Byron L. Sherwin, Toward a Jewish Theology: Methods, Problems, and Possibilities, 15.
[3] Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology (New Jersey: Behrman House, 1973), p. 301.
[4] Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible With the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 369, note on I Samuel 28:9; see also Is. 8:19 and 2 Kg. 21:6.
[5] S.G.F. Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), 57.
[6] S.G.F. Brandon, The Judgment of the Dead, 63.
[7] II Maccabees 12:40.
[8] Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible With theApocrypha, p. 287 of the Apocrypha, note on II Macc. 12:39-45. See also II Macc. 12:43-44; 7:11; 14:46.
[9] II Maccabees 12:44,45.
[10] Richard D. Bank, The Everything Judaism Book (Avon, Mass.: Adams Media Corporation, 2002), 214.
[11] Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 306-307.
[12] Samuel Sandmel, Philo of Alexandria: an Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 4.
[13] Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 308.
[14] Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 308.
[15] Byron L. Sherwin, Toward a Jewish Theology: Methods, Problems, and Possibilities, 163.
[16] Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 308.
[17] Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 309.
[18] Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 312-313.
[19] Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 313.
[20] Byron L. Sherwin, Toward a Jewish Theology: Methods, Problems, and Possibilities,
163.
[21] Richard D. Bank, The Everything Judaism Book, 28.
[22] Lawrence Fine, “Kabbalistic Texts,” in Barry W. Holtz, ed., Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (New York: Summit Books, 1984, pp. 305-329), reprinted in Jewish Theology: Background Readings (Chicago: Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, 1995), 206.
[23] Richard D. Bank, The Everything Judaism Book, 29.
[24] Richard D. Bank, The Everything Judaism Book, 213.
[25] Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 318.
[26] Richard D. Bank, The Everything Judaism Book, 212.
[27]
Richard D. Bank, The Everything Judaism Book, 213.
[28]
Richard D. Bank, The Everything Judaism Book, 213.
[29]
Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 318.
[30]
Louis Jacobs, A Jewish Theology, 318.
[31] Byron L. Sherwin, Toward a Jewish Theology: Methods, Problems, and Possibilities,
163.
[32] Byron L. Sherwin, Toward a Jewish Theology: Methods, Problems, and Possibilities, 163.
[33] Richard D. Bank, The Everything Judaism Book), 213.
[34] Byron L. Sherwin, Toward a Jewish Theology: Methods, Problems, and Possibilities,
166.