Rabbi Kaufman's View of the Afterlife

The question is asked, “Who has gone to the world to come and lived to tell about it?” The Jewish answer is “No one.” The Christian answer is Jesus, as mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed, and why I stress that the Jewish answer is NO ONE. What lies after death is a mystery to us, something that we cannot know before we experience it. We cannot see what lies beyond the veil of death.

In our funeral service, we read, “Sustain us that we may meet with serenity the mysteries that lie ahead, knowing that when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, You, O God, are with us, a loving friend in whom we put our trust.” We know that when we face the unknown, something that always makes us anxious; we will be accompanied by God. We ask of God, “O God of mercy, let our loved one find refuge in the shadow of your wings, and let his or her soul be bound up in the bond of everlasting life.”

Our tradition teaches us that that we do not know for certain what lies ahead for us when our life is over, but that because God is merciful and good, God will help us through whatever we will face. Our faith is not in a specific type of afterlife, but that if there is an afterlife, God will protect us in it.

Most of us are concerned to some degree about what happens to our bodies after we die, even though we generally believe that our bodies are not alive after death in any sense of the term, whereas our souls, for those who believe, do live on.

It is however the case that many in our tradition believe that the remains, the bones in particular, are the home of the soul to some extent. The Orthodox believe that eventually the bones of the righteous will be re-invigorated, that flesh will return to them and the soul return to the body. The Torah clearly indicates that the bones of ancestors possessed some worth and were not simply as dust to return to the earth. For example, the burials of Sarah and Rebecca are noteworthy occurrences and we are told specifically that the bones of Joseph were brought forth out of Egypt by the Israelites during the Exodus.

People wished that their bones would be placed with their relatives’ bones, literally joining their ancestors in death. Re-burial of the bones was not simply an act of mourning or an act of respect, but part of the afterlife. Sometimes bones would be placed in an ossuary, a stone container, which held perhaps a lone skeleton. However, many were placed in large stone sarcophagi that could hold dozens of complete skeletons worth of bones, generations of family members. This post-life existence was essentially an afterlife. Families would visit the gravesite of their ancestors to pray and possibly even ask advice, though officially, consulting the dead was taboo.

The modern tradition of dedicating a gravestone a year after burial is probably a remnant of the tradition of burial or reburial of the bones, which was done a year after death after the flesh had left the bones. In ancient times, markers were placed upon the burial site immediately after burial, so that the bones could be easily found and retrieved for reburial at a later time.

But what happens to our souls after we die?

Psalm 16 tells us:

I have set the Eternal always before me; God is at my side, I shall not be moved. Therefore does my heart exult and my soul rejoice; my being is secure. For you will not abandon me to Sheol, nor let your faithful ones see destruction. You show me the path of life; Your presence brings fullness of joy; enduring happiness is your gift.

What is Sheol? It is the place where the dead go. We know no details about it. In fact, its very name is an acknowledgement of that. The term Sheol is based on the root Sha’al, which means to question. A good translation of the term Sheol may well be “The Place of Questioning.” Not in the sense, that therein we will be asked questions, but in the sense that we have nothing but questions, no answers, about the place where our souls go after we die.

There seems to be a development in Jewish tradition concerning the place where souls go after death that involves a division between righteous and wicked, with the righteous ascending to Gan Eden, Heaven, and the wicked going to Gei Hinom, Gehenna, or Hell. Gan Eden in this philosophy is not necessarily the Gan Eden in which Adam and Eve lived idyllic lives. It cannot be the same with tens of thousands of righteous people living there as it was with two alone. It is better for our purposes to consider this Gan Eden to be roughly the equivalent of Heaven. Putting the three together, Gan Eden, Sheol, and Gei Hinom, you end up with an afterlife much like that of Christianity with Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. But it seems clear that She’ol was originally thought of as an underworld, where all dead, righteous and wicked, went, and that the concept of dividing between righteous and wicked came later.

As evidence of this and perhaps the most interesting of all of the stories about the dead in the Tanakh is that of the Witch of Endor, who summoned the soul of the prophet Samuel for King Saul to consult. Samuel was not happy at being summoned and simply says to Saul, you are having so many problems because you are a schmuck, God is against you.

This conjured version of Samuel tells us nothing of the world to come, nothing of the life after death except that he resided below, having been “called up,” and that he was disturbed by having been called.

These two things tell us some significant things about what people believed in ancient times. The dead resided somewhere below ground in a world where all dead people went, including Samuel, who was clearly among the most righteous people in our tradition. Second, it tells us that there is, for at least some souls, a sense of Shalom that may be disturbed. In other words, souls feel and seem to feel content in Sheol.

What happens in the afterlife?

Rabbi Eugene Borowitz notes that “speaking of life after death creates a major intellectual difficulty for us. Almost all of modern religious thought is based on some aspect of human experience…We cannot follow that pattern if we wish to talk about life after death. We have no experience of “after death.”

Yet some suggest detailed possibilities. The great Rabbi, simply called Rav, “Master,” said that paradise would involve no eating, drinking, business, envy, hatred, ambition or cohabitation: the righteous would simply sit around with crowns on their heads basking in the blazing glory of the Divine Presence. In my view, pretty boring.

Maimonides, in criticism of Rav’s statement said, “Celestial pleasures can neither be measured nor comprehended by a mortal being.” We are not capable of doing so and therefore Rav’s comments were, to use Maimonides words, “Like a schoolboy who expects nuts and sweetmeats as compensation for his studies,” things which in his youth he can readily comprehend, rather than the vast reward that wisdom and knowledge may bring him.

Among the rabbis, there seems to be a general agreement that the time that we will spend in the world to come is much longer than we spend in this world and that therefore no matter what kind of life the world to come entails, its rewards will be more valuable than any we might gain in this life. The Talmud (Mo’ed Katan 9b) tells us that “The world is like an inn, the world to come like home.”

There are many possibilities of what the world to come entails. Are we reincarnated? There are Jews who believe that we are. Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef argues that all of those who died in the Holocaust were the reincarnated souls of sinners, his way of explaining why outwardly righteous people suffered so much. Are we in some sort of limbo, not really alive at all, until returning to our bodies at a later time when the mashiach comes? And after the mashiach comes, do we live forever? Or do we die again and eventually repeat the entire process? Is there a true end, after which we do not live again? The answers are mysteries, unknowable.

If there is an afterlife, what may we do to merit it in the best way? Here we may argue a bit of logic as well as faith.

For some religions, it is only the righteous of that particular religion who are granted a wonderful afterlife. In Judaism, even in Orthodox Judaism for the most part, that is not the case. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 105a) tells us that “Men who are just, whatever their nation, will be rewarded in the world to come.” We are also told that “When one appears before the Throne of Judgment, the first question he will be asked is not “Have you believed in God?” or “Have you prayed and observed the ritual?”- but “Have you dealt honorably with your fellow man?” (Shabbat 31a)

If there is an afterlife, its rewards are earned, according to the tradition, by doing good deeds and being a righteous person. We see this in Psalm 15, also a standard part of funeral service:

Adonai, who may abide in Your house? Who may dwell in Your holy mountain? Those who are upright, who do justly; who speak the truth within their hearts; who do not slander others or wrong them, or bring shame upon them; who scorn the lawless, but honor those who revere God; who give their word and come what may do not retract; who do not exploit others; who do not take bribes; those who live in this way shall never be shaken.

All of this said, many modern Jews feel no need to worry about “after death” at all. They may instead emphasize the good that people need to do while they are alive. They can find satisfaction in the good they have done that will survive their deaths and they are comforted in the knowledge that the Jewish people will carry on their ideals long after they are gone. In other words, many of us believe that we will survive in the memories of our loved ones, the lives that we touched, the works of our hands, our minds, and our hearts.

Yet, what if there is a world to come and we have denied it in life? What if? I believe that God is good and that we all will be treated fairly. The story goes that Rabbi Elimelech of Lyzhansk told his students:

When I die and stand in the court of justice, they will ask me if I had been as just as I should have…. I will answer no.
Then they will ask me if I had been as charitable as I should have….I will answer no.
Did I study as much as I should have? Again, I will answer no.
Did I pray as much as I should have? And this time too, I will have to give the same answer.
Then the Supreme Judge will smile and say:
“Elimelech, you spoke the truth. For this alone you have a share in the world to come.”

If there is an afterlife and if it is attained by our actions in this world, I must believe that we will be judged as human beings, complete with flaws. An omni-benevolent God, a God who is good, would not expect the unattainable from us. I also believe that blind faith in creedal statements cannot be of more value to a benevolent God than the deeds we do when we are alive, the benefits we bring to our fellow human beings. A good God cannot possibly allow one to live a life of sin, simply avow belief in God, and thereby be rewarded as if he or she lived a righteous life; while someone who refuses to believe in God at all when alive, but lives a righteous life and is a blessing to the living, should be punished. That is not the sign of a benevolent God, but of a God without compassion whose prime requirement is submission rather than the betterment of the world.

A good God would not care about stroking of ego, about personal affirmation and praise, or about receiving credit for actions done for humanity, but about the righteousness of human beings, their efforts to make the lives of others better, and to repair what is torn in the world.

This is one of the primary differences that separate Judaism from Christianity and Islam. Both of the latter two demand belief in creedal statements for entrance into heaven. Yet from a Jewish perspective, if God is good, God would never demand that human beings make statements in blind faith, nor even place such statements in value above their deeds. Thus, assuming the God in whom Christians and Muslims believe is a benevolent God, then it is works that will be the key to heaven and therefore, even if Jesus and Mohammed both communed with the deity, Jews may be saved through the practice of Judaism and righteousness to our fellow human beings in general.

I believe that God values our deeds far more than our beliefs, but that if we try to do the right thing, even if we fail, God will give us credit for trying. God will never abandon us, not when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, not on its other side. God will guide us through the mysteries that lie ahead for each of us, beyond the veil.

I conclude my thoughts about the afterlife with the final verse of Adon Olam:

B’ya’do af’kid ru’chi, b’eit i’shan v’a’i’rah;
V’im ru’chi g’vi’a’ti, A’do’nai li, v’lo i’ra.

Into your hands I entrust my spirit, when I sleep and when I wake,
And with my spirit, my body also, Adonai is with me. I shall not fear.