AboutEli Hadar Expertise If you are a Jewish person who has been approached by missionaries and who is considering leaving the Jewish faith, please let me know and I will help you see how beautiful and moreover how right the Jewish religion is. Don't leave the truth of your fathers before you resolve the facts for yourself, and I can help you on that journey.
Experience I have been involved in counter-missionary activity for several years, counseling many Jews who have left or have considered leaving Judaism having been attracted by other religions. I have been able to show the truth to these people through the correct reading of the texts (vs. deliberately wrong translations used by missionaries), through showing how missionaries manipulate the Jewish scriptures to achieve their goals, and through helping you rediscover the beauty and truth of authentic Judaism.
Organizations Chabad synagogue in Atlanta
Education/Credentials Largely self-taught, I still am and will be learning for a long, long time. I have educated myself through a wealth of resources, including Nachmanides' Disputation, Hyam Maccoby's writings on Christianity and Judaism, as well as such vast resources as Outreach Judaism, Torah Atlanta, and a great number of others.
Question Please explain the afterlife from the Orthodox Jewish perspective. I am not sure what is the difference between Olam HaBa and the 7 Heavens. Also, after many years of going to Chabad to learn, I finally was told, from a Kollel class, that Jews do not believe in the concept of Hell. All Jews need to know this, because if we have never advanced a belief in Hell akin to the Christian's, then such knowledge nullifies the basic fear message of Christians. We could stop them from the get-go by stating that there is no Hell, so what does a Jew need saving from?
Answer Hi Cathy,
that's right. The "hell" that Christians believe in is, of course, pure fiction. After one's earthly life is over, it's not at all the end, however. Judaism believes in, and Jewish traditional sources extensively discuss, punishment and reward in the afterlife (indeed, it is one of the "Thirteen Principles" of Judaism enumerated by Maimonides).
After death, the soul returns to its Divine Source, together with all the G-dliness it has "extracted" from the physical world by using it for meaningful purposes. The soul now relives its experiences on another plane, and experiences the good it accomplished during its physical lifetime as incredible happiness and pleasure, and the negative as incredibly painful. Not sure how this relates to "7 heavens" - but the following happens.
The soul, after leaving the body, is now not bound by the physical world, and can see the truth for what it is - it can then perceive HaShem and fully comprehend how there's nothing but He that fills the world. Then, all things suddenly come in perspective. The good one has done while in this world can be seen with all its consequences - a seed one planted has become a mighty tree and is feeding the world with oxygen; a visit one paid to a sick person gave that sick person enough hope to get better, to come home from the hospital, and to have a child who had another child, and so on. A kind word one said to his neighbor made him reconsider killing himself, maybe. The reality of this joy is immense when one can see the results of his good deeds with complete clarity.
On the other hand, we typically miss a great number of opportunities to make this world better. When that happens - our souls will see the darkness that we didn't prevent from entering this world. The problem is that when we miss a chance to do a good deed, we allow that darkness to come in - but it enters our soul also. As a result, by the time our physical life is over, our soul has absorbed this darkness, this "shell" that's foreign to its crystal clear quality, and must be cleansed of it. The soul must enter the cleansing process - what is commonly referred to as purgatory (Gehennom), because until the darkness has been removed, the soul isn't free to see G-dliness.
This is radically different of torture promised by Christians. The soul's cleansing process is simply necessary for it to be able to approach HaShem. And, this process of cleansing is nothing but a healthy helping of getting the soul to understand the consequences of the darkness it created. A healthy helping of truth, if you will, in a real, true mirror of unobstructed view. The real pain the soul experiences in this process is caused by its own realization of this darkness, and of shame it feels. Have you ever felt shame? There's no pain worse than the pain of shame, the real pain of shame, when you think of a bad thing you did - even if nobody saw you do it - but you know it's bad - and there's nothing you can do to fix it.
The truth hurts. The truth also cleanses and heals. The spiritual pain of gehinom--the soul's pain in facing the truth of its life--cleanses and heals the soul of the spiritual stains and blemishes that its failings and misdeeds have attached to it. Freed of this husk of negativity, the soul is now able to fully enjoy the immeasurable good that its life engendered and "bask in the Divine radiance" emitted by the G-dliness it brought into the world.
For a G-dly soul spawns far more good in its lifetime than evil. The core of the soul is unadulterated goodness; the good we accomplish is infinite, the evil but shallow and superficial. So even the most wicked of souls, say our sages, experiences, at most, twelve months of gehinom, followed by an eternity of heaven. Furthermore, a soul's experience of gehinom can be mitigated by the action of his or her children and loved ones, here on earth. Reciting Kaddish and engaging in other good deeds "in merit of" and "for the elevation of" the departed soul means that the soul, in effect, is continuing to act positively upon the physical world, thereby adding to the goodness of its physical lifetime.
One more point, quickly (I hope I didn't bore you yet). The basic fear message of Christians is nothing but a hoax. You're right - we don't need saving, because there's nothing to be saved from. We know for a fact - because the Torah told us - that our deeds are what will bring us closer to our Creator. The Christian message is predicated on the fact that everyone is born in sin because of the original sin of Adam and Eve, and the only way out is through their man-god. The whole doctrine of the original sin is something Judaism rejects - children are born pure, and everyone is responsible for their own choices. The Jews certainly don't need to be saved from anything but the silly message of Christianity itself.
