Do the Jewish people believe in life after death?

Answer 1

In Judaism the dead have three possible destinations;

1) The Garden of Eden, believe it or not, now called "The Garden of the Righteous," where even "righteous gentiles" may dwell. Strictly speaking according to Judaism, even if a gentile is a pagan, if they are a good, saintly person, they will still go to the garden of the righteous. This is in stark contrast to Christianity which says their religion must be followed. In Judaism, belief in the one God is expected only of the Jews, and no one else. Of that place it is said Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and most of the 12 patriarchs dwell there. Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, do not dwell there because of their sins; they sleep in Sheol. [Note: This is an interesting story but not a part of normative Judaism.]

2) The most common place where the dead go is Sheol; a dark place where the dead slumber. If you were neither good, but not particularly evil, you end up in sheol. [Note: Sheol is simply the physical grave, it is not a place.]

3) The place for the wicked deceased is Gehenom, a place of fire, brimstone, demons in other words Hell. In the original Hebrew, it is not called "Hell," that is an Old Norse word derived from "Hela," their goddess of the underworld, in the original Hebrew "Hell" is called "Gehenom." [Note: Gehinom is the period of soul cleansing after death. There is not and never has been the idea that there's a place of fire, brimstone, and demons for the wicked in Judaism.]

Jewish Answer

We don't believe in the existence of either heaven or hell. Judaism barely spends any time discussing what may or may not happen when we die, in fact, there's barely any mention of this subject in the Tanach (Jewish Bible) at all.

There are some loose theories of what might happen though:

* When we die, our souls are cleansed of any wrongdoings. This is done by our accounting of every action done in life. It's believed that this process takes no longer than 12 months but most people don't do enough bad in life to warrant it taking a full 12 months.

* Our souls return to HaShem to wait for the world to come.

* Our souls may be reincarnated into different people so that we have additional chances to work to become closer to HaShem.

* Those souls that choose to be truly evil in life, cannot survive the process of cleansing and cease to exist.