Afterlife

if you believe in an afterlife, please give a brief explanation of what you believe happens in the afterlife.
wow, that is interesting. thanks!
good grief, who’s giving out thumbs down?
Who said anything about eternal torment? I asked about Jewish beliefs, not a discussion of Christian beliefs.

answer: there are many views because the afterlife isn’t described in Judaism. Most Jews don’t focus on the afterlife, they let G-d worry about that. Jews focus on the here-and-now: keeping G-d’s commandments, studying Torah, caring for others and helping to repair the world.

Some Jews believe that when someone dies and they are righteous, they go to join G-d immediately. If they aren’t righteous they spend a short time away from G-d.

Some Jews believe that we enter a sleep-like state until the Messiah/Messianic age and then join in the new world to come.

Some Jews believe in reincarnation until the Messiah/Messianic age or until one becomes righteous enough to join G-d.

I’m trying to find out what exactly the Jewish faith says about afterlife.

I’m getting rather conflicting information where it is a place called "Sheol" where both good and evil people go and then a place where only good people go and evil people cease to exist.

Can some one help me understand what the "general consensus" is??

Traditional Judaism firmly believes that death is not the end of human existence. However, because Judaism is primarily focused on life here and now rather than on the afterlife, Judaism does not have much dogma about the afterlife, and leaves a great deal of room for personal opinion.

Some scholars claim that belief in the afterlife is a teaching that developed late in Jewish history. It is true that the Torah emphasizes immediate, concrete, physical rewards and punishments rather than abstract future ones. See, for example, Lev. 26:3-9 and Deut. 11:13-15. However, there is clear evidence in the Torah of belief in existence after death. The Torah indicates in several places that the righteous will be reunited with their loved ones after death, while the wicked will be excluded from this reunion.

Belief in the eventual resurrection of the dead is a fundamental belief of traditional Judaism. It was a belief that distinguished the Pharisees (intellectual ancestors of Rabbinical Judaism) from the Sadducees. The Sadducees rejected the concept, because it is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah. The Pharisees found the concept implied in certain verses.

The place of spiritual reward for the righteous is often referred to in Hebrew as Gan Eden (GAHN ehy-DEHN) (the Garden of Eden). This is not the same place where Adam and Eve were; it is a place of spiritual perfection.

Apostolic Believer In One God, Jesus

A Rabbi stated as much at a recent Philosophy of Religion conference I attended. The topic was "Hell".
Sigh, why couldn’t I have been born Jewish instead of Mormon…I have total Jew envy right now.

Most American jews are secular. But generally, judaism is a religion of life.

There is a concept of afterlife in judaism, though it’s not a focal point of the religion and most jews know little about it.

The jews/Israelites of scripture seemed to harbor the believe that if they transgressed God’s laws, they would be punished with destruction, and this is threatened. They also seemed to believe that some people were prosperous because they were blessed by God (either for their righteousness or in order to enable them to carry out some task).

Most jews today do not have such a literal concept of this though. Those who keep the laws of the Torah usually do so out of sense of obligation and love for God.

That’s not to say that christians live righteous lives only to get into heaven. Many christians are very sincere in their beliefs and love for God, of course, but the afterlife still is usually a prominent feature in the christian religions.

Some do. This was the major debate between the Sadducee’s and the Pharisees. Pharisees believed in a afterlife while Sadducee’s did not. This is the argument for his defense that Paul used when he was being judged once–that he was for a life in Heaven which was an ongoing debate in the Jewish Faith so why was it all of a sudden a crime to debate this just because he said that Jesus was an integral part of this afterlife.

Shalom! A question for Jews.

Let’s say that my Saviour was just a Dionysian/Mithraism construct, but that I lived a godly life (to the best of my knowledge). When I die(d), would I be resurrected and or go to "heaven", as per Jewish theology? Or would I stay in Sheol?
Trish JPA (or any other knowledgeable Jew), from what Torah orJewish books do you derive this world to come for everybody?
Danke!

Righteous Gentiles have a place in the World to Come, and are deemed "righteous" by the 7 laws given to Noah after the destruction of the world by flood. The "no false gods" clause, as you point out, could be a deal breaker. We don’t really judge that, whether or not someone is written in the Book of Life is up to God to judge whether their idea is false or not. Even then, moderately so-so righteous may have the chance to go to Gehinom (Yiddish Gehenna), which is a temporary place of rectification of that soul. It takes a certain amount of righteousness to get to "hell" or Gehinom. One must merit it prior to going to Paradise. If one doesn’t there are several options. (The very righteous don’t spend much time if any at all there, but no one spends eternity there). Sheol is an earlier term than Gehinom appearing in Genesis and refers to a common grave or holding place for both Jews and Gentiles, all humanity until the resurrection of the dead when Mashiach comes.

According to oral tradition there are a number of other ways to rectify a soul, e.g. gilgul or coming back to earth to finish learning whatever was left undone, or by being lost – a lost soul wandering the earth like a ghost for a while. This is a more severe punishment than "hell" or Gehinom, but it is needed for recalcitrant types.

Both Jew and Gentile will experience the resurrection when Mashiach comes. The Hebrew word Olam Ha-Ba ("the world to come") is used for both the messianic age and the afterlife, Gan (Garden) of Eden. The world to come is the final destination for humanity to look forward to. A Mishnah passage says, "This world is like a lobby before the Olam Ha-Ba. Prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter the banquet hall." The tractate Moed Katan teaches, "This world is only like a hotel. The world to come is like a home." RaMChaL says it’s like a entry hall, and Olam Haba is the room you want to go to.

Everything in the world and in the celestial realms is for our rectification and spiritual advancement to get to Olam Haba. The goal is to get everyone up to speed eventually. The totally evil, however, will be destroyed at the end of time as will all evil. It will have served its purpose in guiding the righteous to the truth and away from evil.

Easiest to Read Source for how Olam Haba works (A Jewish Theory of Everything): Derech Hashem by Moses Chaim Luzzatto outlines this and the footnotes will give Talmudic references in Oral Torah for these ideas.

Not in the same way as other religions. Judaism teaches that, if you lived life properly, you will become one with god after death. But you won’t exist as an individual being in some sort of paradise.

You’ve asked the question correctly — *beliefs* plural. There are many and all are acceptable since no one has ever returned to tell us about it. On one thing we can all agree — there is no eternal torment.

Personally, I would like to believe in reincarnation, but I really don’t know and I don’t obsess over it. God took care of me in my *new* life outside the womb, I have faith that He will continue to do so in the afterlife (if there is one).

Read more *beliefs* here:
http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm#Resurrection

Messianic Era (Chabad Lubavitch)
In the Messianic Era, the Divine plan for the world will be fully realized. There will be universal peace, prosperity, goodness and knowledge of God. The coming Moshiach will not cause a break with the past and the beginning of something entirely new. On the contrary, it is the culmination and crowning stroke of all our efforts toward a world of peace and consummate holiness.
Moshiach will free the Jewish People from all servitude to foreign nations, rebuild the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and gather all the Jews of the entire world to Israel. Peace and prosperity will be universal and all the nations of the world will serve the one God. Moshiach will reveal Godliness in every facet of the Creation. He will elevate each of us from our respective limitations and open our eyes to the Godliness that is the inner reality of our life.
We will still have our family, friends and possessions. However, they will be more wholesome and meaningful because we will see their true value-their Divine purpose.
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From "The Book of Words," by Lawrence Kushner
Tradition wisely warns against "forcing the hand of the Messiah." On the other hand, imagining how much better things could be than they are now only guarantees despair.
Sometimes "the best" is the enemy of "the good." If you allow yourself to measure existence against a perfect standard, life will certainly be miserable. Things, by definition, could always be better than they are now. On the other hand, succumbing to the way things are now is to cease dreaming. The balance, perhaps, is to accept the way things are because, like it or not, for better or for worse, that is literally the only way things are. They, of course, can be different, but only later. To worry about "later" is to miss "now." Remember, one of us may be the Messiah. That possibility shouldn’t, but nevertheless does, affect how we treat one another.

http://www.aish.com/sp/ph/69742282.html
In Kabbalah, it is not only God who judges us. As we bid farewell to the world, we are shown a film that contains scenes of our entire lives. We are witnesses to every moment of our days on Earth as they pass before us with incredible rapidity. And as we watch our own story unfold, there are times when we cringe with embarrassment; others when we smile with glee. Our past moral lapses cause us to shudder in pain; our victories over our evil inclinations provide us with a keen sense of spiritual triumph. It is then that we realize in retrospect that we alone are the greatest judges of our own lives. What happens after death is that we gain the wisdom to evaluate our own life by the standards of Heaven — because we have finally glimpsed an eternal perspective.
What is Hell? Remember when you were in eighth grade and something utterly embarrassing happened? The shame you felt and how you just wanted the ground to open up so you could disappear. That is Hell. It is the deepest realization that our life (or part of it) has been squandered, which creates a deep regret and shame in our soul.
The good news is that God — in His infinite kindness – established this as a cleansing process, where after one year (or less), all the negativity has been forever washed away.

When will the messiah arrive?
When we master the violence that fills our world.
When we look upon others as we would have them look upon us.
When we grant to every person the rights we claim for ourselves.
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We focus on life here on earth instead of the afterlife. Here’s a few opinions on the afterlife:
http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm#Resurrection

There’s nothing about it in the Hebrew Bible, and no one has been there and returned to tell us about it. It’s a post-Biblical concept borrowed from Christianity.
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Judaism is about what we DO in this life, not about what we believe. Because Jews have total intellectual freedom, there is no common belief about the afterlife. You can read some opinions here.
http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm#Resurrection

BTW, it’s okay to call us Jews.
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i know that some Jewish people believe in reincarnation.. but does this come from a book? personal interpretation or black and white.. or what? basically if i wanted to learn about Jewish reincarnation or any Jewish afterlife beliefs… where should i look…

There’s no Biblical source to it – and it’s not a standard Jewish belief. Because Judaism doesn’t have a set dogma about what happens after death, many many opinions arose about what the afterlife would be.

The belief in reincarnation in Judaism mostly comes from Kabbalah texts, though I believe there are also some Chassidic folktales that also consider it a possibility.

For a more detailed view, try here:
http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm