What is the "general consensus" among Jewish(religion) people concerning afterlife?
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
January 28th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
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
References :
http://www.jewfaq.org
January 28th, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Today, general consensus often means
general confusion.
We are because we were and we will be.
It’s time to pay attention to current genetic
discoveries dealing with the relationship between
frequencies and bosons.
Creation is a cycle of energy that forms because
every quark formats with it’s given center-frequency.
Time and space are merely by-products of this
phenomenon of nature.
References :
January 28th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
There’s a famous joke/saying in Judaism: Two Jews = Three Opinions.
In other words, the only general consensus among Jews about the afterlife is that there is one. We also believe that there is some kind of judgment. As far as Judaism is concerned, there is no way to know what happens after death because to this day, no one has ever died and come back. So while there are many opinions, and some carry more weight than others because of the prominence of the rabbi teaching those opinions, there is no general consensus about exactly what happens after we die or where we go.
It’s not that you’re getting conflicting information, it’s that you are getting Jewish opinions. The deeper you dig, the more you will find. As far as Jews are concerned, someday we’ll know the truth, but we’re fine with waiting
References :
I’m an Orthodox Jew
January 28th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
The Jewish faith believes that every person has a share in the afterlife, kind of like stocks. If your a bad person they don’t believe you go to Hell, you go to Gehonem. (idk how to spell in English) where you wait for G-d to decide your fate. Heaven is called Olam Habah, or the "world to come." In Olam Habah it is said that all G-d’s decisions will be made clear to you, aka why bad things happened to you. There is a form of reincarnation in Judaism. They say that a crippled person (aka paralyzed, mentally ill, etc) was a great Tzadik (rightous person) in another life, and therefor they only needed to come back to earth in a limited form, so to speak. It means that they did not need to be fully-functional to fulfill what they could not in their first lives. It is all very vague and such. Judaism is more concerned with doing good deeds on the material world than living in the afterlife.
References :
January 28th, 2010 at 11:29 pm
1) there is one.
2) it is just.
3) beyond that, we can’t know for sure, and with the previous two points as a given, the rest of the details do not matter, and aren’t really our concern.
References :
January 28th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
There is a general accepted concept.
After life has reward and punishment for what a person does in this life. "Sheol" means the depth or lowest place. In after life there is a concept called Ga-he-nim which is similar to purgatory. There are times that Gahenim is called "Sheol" meaning the lower place. Gahenim is a painful cleaning process for the soul. It is only temporary until the soul gets cleaned. After the "wash" the soul goes to Gan Edin where it gets rewarded for its good deeds.
I’ve seen such concepts in the Talmud which is about 1500 years old.
References :