Transcription
What does Judaism teach about hell? Is it like, uh, Christianity? Not so much, in the fact that if you don't accept Jesus, you go to hell. But the fact, putting all that aside, if, uh, whatever happens again, and Hashem's not pleased with you, do you go to a lake of fire forever? Or is this, uh, just a different place? Is it a different idea altogether? Um, so, you know, and, and I'm going to have a few more questions to go with that as you go along. But I think putting them all in the same pot at the same time might not be conducive to the right answers. So I'm going to let you take that and go with that one for starters.
Okay. Yeah, there's, uh, a number of layers here, and I think it's important to, to, to build the foundation before we go to the fourth floor. Um, one thing that's very striking when you just, even a cursory reading of the Christian Bible, it's almost impossible not to notice that in almost every book, almost on every page, there's a very, uh, there's a threat that if you don't accept these beliefs, the central tendency of Christianity, that Jesus is the son of God and he died, that you're going to go to hell. Eternal damnation is described in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 8. The end of Mark is very, very clear. I mean, in every book, it's very clear. The message is conveyed very clearly that if you don't believe in Jesus, you're going to hell. If you do believe in him, you can have everlasting life. In fact, it even is conveyed very clearly that if you believe in Jesus but stop believing in Jesus, so if you believe in Jesus, you're saved, and then if you wind that back and then don't believe him, you can't come back anymore. In the language of Hebrews, you can't, Hebrews 6, you can't crucify Christ twice. Now, this is very, very frightening for many Christians, as it should be. I mean, these are, that's a very, very serious threat because people are, uh, people of people, we have all buried those that we love, and we, we wonder what's on the other side. I mean, part of the, the grief and the pain and all of it is what lies ahead of, of us in the grave. We spend a lot more time being dead than alive. You kind of want to get that part of your career right. So, so the Christian threat is, is, is, is, is, is very effective. It's, uh, ubiquitous. All, it's all over the Christian Bible. It's so impossible to ignore them.
But what is very striking is if you look at the Jewish Bible, although heaven and hell are spoken of there, there is such a place, and there is a punishment for the wicked, uh, afterlife, and there is a reward for the faithful, and the resurrection of the dead. We don't, we find only very few mentions of heaven and hell, very, very rare, and it is never posed as a threat. We're never told, if you do, if you live your life properly, then you'll go to heaven. And the question is why? My, I posed this question. I just did a seminar, fabulous seminar. I had the gr, I had the best students in the world here in Southeast Asia. Did a seminar and tried to figure out why. Because the Jewish Bible, the God of Israel, does tell us there are consequences for our bad behavior. So why doesn't he tell us that, look, you're, you'll go to heaven or you go to hell? It would shake us up. And the reason is, it's very simple. It's unverifiable. So it's very important. It means there's no way to tell. If God would say, look, you're going to go to hell if you don't, if you don't follow, if you don't follow my Torah, how would you then know that in fact that was the case? You can't test it. You can't take a shuttle and go to the cemetery and dig up a body. You know, the Torah never does that because that's how you treat people like children.
I have met so many wonderful, uh, thoughtful Christians in my life who, in every other aspect of how they think and processing information, their cognitive, um, their cognitive abilities are right or very sharp, but they're, they're very frightened of going to hell, as they should be. It's, it's a very serious threat. The reason that when God introduces himself, I'll just, 10 seconds longer, he does not talk about, I will do this, but he says, I am the guy that took you out of Egypt, out of bondage, out of slavery. I brought you through a dry land, across the sea. I brought you through a wilderness. I brought you the promise. Then I also threw you out of the promised land, but I brought you back again. It's very, it's verifiable. Just like if you went to the bank for a loan, banks make money by giving out loans. The bank is not interested in promises of you repaying your loan. The bank is going to be very interested in your credit history. How have you behaved in the past? The past that said, there of course is heaven and hell. There is punishment and there is reward. Without heaven and hell, there could be no justice in the world, couldn't be. And frankly, a child dies as a teenager, and Hitler gets to live, not an old age, but, you know, he lived a lot longer than she did. So the, the crooked roads have to be made straight. There could be no, um, no justice nor without it. And in fact, Tanakh discusses it.
Now, there are two parts. First of all, heaven is, is a place where a person, we can't describe. We can't. I, I'm just going to use the language of a soul. It's not a physical place. It enjoys intense pleasure in the presence and radiance of God. That's all I can tell you. And then there is a resurrection of the dead that falls in the Messianic age. With the sight of the hell, Gehenna is again, very, um, this scant information throughout Tanakh, but we do have a tiny bit in the Oral Torah. We have a considerably more literature, but again, using language that we can possibly grasp. So a person, if you want to look it up, one can look it up and track. Take Rosh Hashanah and Talmud 17A. A person could go to Gehenna for a short period of time because we find in Isaiah 22 that a person's sins can be atoned for after they die. Personal sins could be atoned for. The Catholic Church took this from the Jewish people, the idea of, um, purgatory. They took that from us. And a person, now, once we slip here, we're going outside of the purview of just mentions that iniquity can be atoned for after you die. And that's it. Just like the Torah doesn't tell us that Moses' parents got married twice. They remarried each other. But you could see it clearly in the text that Moses was the younger of the three siblings, and yet the parents get married. And so Talmud fills in all the spaces, the gaps. They had separated because children were being killed by the Egyptians. So the atonement is filling in this gap. And that is that a person who, who repents in this world, a person who turns back to God, none of his or her sins are remembered against her, as it says in, in Ezekiel chapter 18, that God will forgive, and his sins will not be remembered. And God will judge you only in your presence. So that's why people get sick, you know, one of the reasons people get ill, God forbid, before they die. People, I mean, it's tragic if someone got, usually there's some sort of, so gives a person an opportunity to repent. It also, when we see the frailty of life, we also realize that a person doesn't know his last day, and we too might repent. A person suffers in this world, and that too atones for sin. A person has sins that they have not atoned for. So again, I'm going to just describe, give you information that is brought to us in terms of Isaiah. Just says that some sins can be atoned for after death, but that's it. You know, this is the typical style of Tanakh, very scarce information. The reason why, now, why like Isaiah couldn't you like give us a few more? Because it's not relevant to how we behave here. That's why Tanakh is interested in providing information. It is an instruction booklet for mankind, on how to live your life, how to conduct your life. That's it, period. So there is no vestigial information, and therefore it is not relevant. Um, how long, what exactly is, again, the Talmud does fill in a little bit more information. I mean, Isaiah, with a prophetic career of 80 years, preached more than 66 chapters. So we're going to get the fill on. So a person who is wicked, who has sinned, has did not repent during his life, those sins can be atoned for after that person dies. The length of that period in Jewish tradition is up to 11 months.
The person who is now, what is it like there? It is described often as someone seeing their lives and what they could have done with that, with their lives, sort of seeing a film of their life and what their potential was, and that juxtaposed against what they actually did. The pain, the intense pain and anguish of realizing what you could have done and did not do, that itself, um, that itself purges a person's neshama of their sin, so they can be in Olam Ha-Ba, so they can be in the world to come. It is described as a fire also, okay? Um, in fact, but again, this is like teaching Mozart to a fetus. It does, there's not a, so when the Talmud describes fire, it does not mean fire like you have a fire like you're lighting a stove top, okay? It means something else, and I don't know what it means. But the Talmud does say that fire in this world is echoed, is only one-sixtieth of the fire of hell. I don't know what that means. It does not mean fire, but it obviously isn't a great thing. A person should surely repent now. The wicked could go, very, very wicked can go to Gehenna for as long as 12 months. It is for this reason that the children and the relatives of the departed say Kaddish, the mourner's prayer, for 11 months. The presumption is always that someone is not a great sinner, and therefore they want. There are some people who are so evil, who are so wicked, that they have no place in the world to come, and they go to Gehenna L'dor Vador, which means for all generations, and never resurrecting them. That's, I would imagine that Hitler and Bin Laden are there. We generally speaking, Jews do not, um, we don't talk about that because it's just, it's just arrogant for us to say like, who's going where. Christians sometimes seem to know who's going everywhere. We don't talk that way. It's not our business. That's God's department. But yes, there is a heaven, as hell, but the hell could be two parts. It could either be for punishment, which would be for most people. Again, one other point I have to make, this point here, God takes into account, we see this in the Jewish scriptures repeatedly, what you knew, what you were expected to do. Different generations, it's very clear, there's a broad disparity, there's a wide cleavage, there's an enormous delta between generations and how they were punished for the exact same sin. Generations that had enormous revelation were punished very severely, but a generation like ours, which is a Dor Ha'shemi, which means an orphaned generation, a generation when people, there's a lack of knowledge. God doesn't, God doesn't punish people severely for that. Have you been hurt in your life? Have someone robbed you of your innocence as a child, and did that affect your ability to serve God? God takes everything into account. There are people who we think are righteous who aren't. There are people who are wicked, but in fact, they've been hurt. But that's why when someone, we hear of someone's death, the Jew says, "Blessed be the True Judge." That means God takes every hurt, every pain, every anguish into account. We can't begin to do that. So that's why we, we never engage in that kind of speculation.
So in Daniel chapter 12, verse 2, we read about two groups. Both groups are raised to life, uh, yet the first is raised to life, while the second is raised to shame and everlasting contempt. So the first idea of hell being everlasting seems to be found here. However, some people might say, but what about God's love? Or can this really be His plan? And these questions have led people to, uh, alternative theories. One is, uh, annihilationism, and the other is universalism. Uh, concerning the view of universalism, there's a similar view that's found in rabbinic literature. However, the rabbinic view doesn't say that all will eventually be saved, but indicates that many who do not make the world to come at first will do so after spending some time in hell. However, there is one view, uh, that did indicate, uh, one rabbi, by the end, indicated a belief in eternal punishment. Um, with that being said, my question is this, um, will it be that after some time, God will redeem all, even the most, even the most wicked? And could hell be temporary for most or all people? Um, you know, but, but again, terms like everlasting punishment and an eternal destruction in the scriptures would seem to argue against universalism. Um, thank you for your question.
Um, in, in our, in the world that we encounter, I'm going to go in this case. We find people who are, who are certainly some people who are very wicked, truly evil. Um, there are people who have devoted their lives to destroying that which is good. And we're, I'm, I mean, I guess I was going to say we're living in a unique time, but I just realized that I was born 15 years after the Holocaust. There are people who are very evil. And Daniel is, is has in view here, uh, two groups. One who are faithful, who will resurrect from the dead. Another will be raised forever less than contempt in their nation. But there's other, other groups as well, that's described in Isaiah, and that's, I think, many people we encounter. And those are people who have sinned and may have not repented in their lives. I, I want to be frank with you. I, this Tanakh has such scant information on this that it would, it would be an error. There's so lit, such a dearth of written material. Internet for very good reason. We are, we are what is coming into view is something that cannot be seen. When a person dies, their body decays, except for their bones, waiting for the resurrection. Eyes, ears, all these things, all. So there's no hearing and seeing. So, you know, Tanakh's just saying, look, it's there. The, all the extremes are there, as Daniel has just described to us, the, the wicked nations that sought to subjugate the Jewish people and their utter destruction, and those of the faithful. So we've just, you know, when you come to chapter 12, and Daniel, Daniel presupposes that you've already read 11 chapters, and very importantly, chapter 7, all the way through 12. What we encounter in these chapters are very different than one through six. One through six, incidentally, is also written very differently. It's written in the third person, whereas Daniel from chapter seven all the way through twelve, Daniel is writing in the first person. According to Jewish tradition, the ancestor at the same time as Daniel, actually also the first six chapters and the last six chapters are authored by Daniel. That's why it's in the first person. But Daniel has just introduced us to the most wicked, vile nations who would subordinate the children of Israel, and Daniel has seen an ecstatic vision of those who are faithful, who would turn to the God of Israel, who would trust in the clouds of heaven, who would, who would be those who welcome the Messiah in Daniel, um, seven, verse, um, uh, 13 and 14, and verse 24. So to look at Daniel 12 in a vacuum is exactly how to get yourself an enormous amount of trouble. Daniel chapter 12 is not a, it should never be looked at as, okay, we're going to talk about what happens after you die. That would be what you've done then is you have then ignored everything, um, that introduced it. Rather, Daniel has spent a whole series of chapters where the angel has put before Daniel a vision of the most wicked and the most faithful. We're not in, we're not introduced in the chapters that precede Daniel 12 to your next-door neighbor. We're not introduced to the Chinese. I don't, you know, these are people who have not, who may have not heard God's message, and they certainly never just subjugated the Jewish people. And the people of the Philippines saved Jews during the Holocaust, and the Japanese did as well, although the Japanese were allies of the Nazis during World War II. They remember the Axis, Axis. So here's the point. If somebody takes Daniel 12 and says, forget the chapters that that introduce it, how much trouble do you think you're going to get in? A huge amount. So after Daniel has seen and encountered and apprehended the most extreme elements of those who are faithful and those who are terribly wicked, he then is the imagery then comes through that there will be a resurrection of dead for those who are, who devoted their lives to God, and others for everlasting contempt and damnation. There is a general consensus on the contempt of damnation that they generally don't resurrect, but it doesn't really mean resurrect. But the, the language, the natural reading is they both resurrect. But the, the consensus tradition is that except for certain individual wicked prophets that we encounter in Zechariah chapter 13, particularly verses one through six, it doesn't mean that the wicked will actually resurrect, but rather they will be removed and their shame will become well known and seen. But again, Daniel 12 is not about your, your next-door neighbor. It's not about your geometry teacher. It's not about the average person. It's about those who are an extreme, the faithful who ignite the coming of the Messiah, and the nations who oppose the God of Israel, who oppose the, the promises of God. So don't look at Daniel 12:2 as an instruction manual, and this is a chapter or passage about everybody. It's very specific about what Daniel had discussed prior to this passage.
Oh, wow. That's pretty, it's so deep of a topic. There's just, you could just spend like days and days on it. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, when Isaiah says, by the way, just the word, uh, I want to just go back to Isaiah, um, Isaiah chapter 30, verse 33. So the words, incidentally, so the word there for hell is a very strange word there. It's the word which is, it doesn't really mean hell. It really is, it, it's called from the word "mafata." It's like someone who has been seduced, so it allows themselves to be, to be drawn in by the seduction and and choose not to worship the God of Israel. Incidentally, that's the word heresy means. Comes from the Greek word to choose, and it means to choose not to serve the God of Israel. That's why the word heresy is the most extreme word to describe the unfaithful, who is not heterodox, which would mean another opinion, but heresy means to be fully aware of what the truth is and to turn your back on it and to turn the other way. Uh, "Arukh" is the word like on prepare. It's like the same word from Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd." It's the same word. Okay.