Modern Insights About Heaven And Hell
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By Rabbi Allen S. Maller
An article published December 18, 2023 by Eurasia Review says that studies analyzing the nature and origin of emotions have demonstrated that the elicitation of emotions is a complex process involving both the unconscious and the conscious. Predominantly negative emotions such as fear and secondary positive ones such as hope, each originate in different parts of the nervous system. Hope is associated chiefly with long time thinking-believing; and fear with short time instinctive feeling.
The analyses of hope and fear occur in four different ways. First, it compares the number of times the terms for hope and fear appear in the Qur’an. Second, it compares the number of times terms that could evoke hope and fear in the Qur’an are used. Third, it compares the number of terms used in the Qur’an for heaven and hell as indicators of what evokes fear and hope, respectively.
Finally, it compares the descriptions of heaven and hell in the Qur’an. The results suggest that fear is used much more often in the Qur’an because fear is a more primitive emotion. Hope is much more ideologically complex than fear, and that is why the Qur’an has so many detailed descriptions of heaven.
Most Christians believe that God created a place of eternal punishment and reward: Christian (72%) Americans say they believe in heaven — defined as a place “where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded,” according to the Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study. And 58% of U.S. adults also believe in hell — a place “where people who have led bad lives and die without being sorry are eternally punished”.
American Muslims are much stronger believers in an afterlife of Heaven and Hell: 76% believe in Hell and 89% believe in Heaven. While Muslims are similar to Christians in views of an afterlife, non-Christians, do not have a majority who believe in eternal reward and punishment after death. About half or less of Hindus, Buddhists and Jews believe in heaven. And roughly a third or less of Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews believe in hell. Of the three Abrahamic religions American Jews have the least belief in Heaven and Hell: only 22% of Jews believe in Hell and only 40% believe in Heaven.
Most Christians and Muslims are quite surprised to learn that not only do most Jews not believe in hell, but only 40% of Jews believe in heaven compared to 85% of all self declared Protestants and Catholics who believe in heaven.
The after-life, or as Rabbinic Judaism calls it, the World-to-Come, is mentioned many times in the Oral Torah, but there very little direct reference to it in the Written Torah because the Written Torah is a direct revelation from God to Moses and thus could only include that about which Moses could have a prophecy. However, with respect to the World-to-Come, the Talmud states: All the prophets foretold only about the Messianic Age on Earth. However, regarding the World-to-Come, “No eye has seen, God, except for Yours” (Isaiah 64:3). (Talmud Brachot 34b)
More importantly, Judaism teaches that people should live by God’s commandments not because they fear God’s punishments and seek God’s rewards; but because they love God and His commandments. As Rabbi Jacob taught: “A single moment of repentance and good deeds in this world is better than all of the World to Come.” (Avot 4:17)
Jewish teaching about life after death has varied from historical age to age. The Hebrew Bible refers to an after-life but only very briefly and vaguely. The Rabbinic sages did teach that there is a reward and punishment in store for each individual according to his or her manner of living on earth. The Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah teaches that souls undergo reincarnation. This teaching became widespread during the 16-18th centuries, especially among the Hasidim. The majority of modern Jews are closer to the Biblical teachings. but all the various views can be found among Rabbis today.
Christians frequently wonder why Jews try to do good if they do not expect a reward or punishment in their after-life. Jews in turn find it hard to understand why that is so important to Christians. Judaism teaches that the reason for doing a Mitzvah, is the Mitzvah itself. Judaism places the primary emphasis upon life in this world. Although there have been times when belief in an after-life was an important part of the Jewish consciousness, it never assumed the significance (either in the folk or in the philosophical mind) that it did in Christianity or Islam.
A Gallup poll shows this clearly. People were asked, “Which do you think you should be most serious about – trying to live comfortably, or preparing for a life after death?” 46% of Catholics, 62% of Baptists, 50% of Methodists, 47% of Lutherans and only 5% of Jews said: “Prepare for life after death”. Whether they were conscious of it or not, these Jews were simply articulating the teaching of the Talmud referred to above, “Better one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world, than the whole of the life in the world to come”.
The Hebrew Bible speaks neither of heaven nor of hell. It does on a few occasions refer to the existence that follows death as Sheol. The root meaning of the Hebrew word Sheol, comes from the verb Sha’al which means to question, ask or request. It is possible that the use of this word is due to the fact that while everyone asks about what happens after death, nobody really knows, so the after-life remains an open question. In the Hebrew Bible, Sheol seems to be a place, or dimension of existence, where the spirits of the departed continue their existence. Occasionally Sheol seems to refer to the actual grave itself.
In Biblical times Jewish thought placed primary emphasis on this world, and upon mankind’s obligations to God and to our fellow humans in this life. The number of references to Sheol or to any of its synonyms, and the number of passages devoted to the question of life after death or the soul’s reward or punishment, does not take up even one half of one percent of all the pages in the Hebrew Bible; although in the Qur’an these kind of verses take up 10-15% of its pages.
Interest in life after death and the development of theories concerning life after death occurred primarily at the very end of the Biblical period, and during the early Rabbinic period. During most of the Biblical age, Jews had found justification and purpose for their lives in improving life in this world, and in their commitment to solidarity with the Jewish people.
But, Greek thought seeping into their imagination toward the close of the Biblical period, stimulated the development of individualism. As the central focus of personal concern shifted away from the community, the importance of one’s own personality, there arose an anxiety about personal destiny. Then ideas about individual resurrection, life after death, reward and punishment became popular.
By the first century these were the dominant ideas of the (Rabbis/ Sages) Pharisees. The more traditional priest oriented groups did not accept the teaching of personal reward or punishment after death. Jesus, who basically was a follower of the Pharisees, believed in the concept of heaven and hell. Because of his beliefs, and the fact that the New Testament was written during the period when this concept was dominant among the Rabbis, there is much more stress placed on heaven and hell in the New Testament than in the Hebrew Bible. So, beliefs and anxieties about heaven and hell have a prominent place in the Christian imagination even today, whereas they scarcely prickle the surface of modern non-Orthodox Jewish awareness.
When the Rabbis and the sages who followed the Pharisees looked for names for the realms of reward and punishment, of course, they used names from the Bible to legitimize their ideas. For heaven or paradise they used the term Gan Eden, naming it after the Garden of Eden in chapters II and III of Genesis.
The name they selected for hell was taken from a valley not far from the City of Jerusalem, which is mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. It is called Gay Hinnom (the Valley of Hinnom) or Gay ben Hinnom (The Valley of the Son of Hinnom). This valley was used as a garbage dump. Fires burned there for days on end. More significantly, it had previously been used by the non-Jewish Canaanites as a place where they sacrificed a first born child to their god Molech (Jeremiah 9:31-2 or 19:1-5).
According to the Book of Kings, when King Josiah attempted to reform Jewish society, he destroyed and defiled this place in an attempt to end the fiery sacrifice of children practiced there (2 Kings 23 :IO). In light of the vividness and horror of this derivation, it is not surprising to find the term Gehinnom became the most popular term for the realm of punishment used in Rabbinic literature.
Rabbi Allen S. Maller
Allen Maller retired in 2006 after 39 years as Rabbi of Temple Akiba in Culver City, Calif. He is the author of an introduction to Jewish mysticism. God. Sex and Kabbalah and editor of the Tikun series of High Holy Day prayerbooks.
Eurasia Review