The Bible’s Sheol: An Underground Abyss

The subject of death is treated inconsistently in the Bible, though most often it suggests that physical death is the end of life. This is the case with such central figures as Abraham, Moses, and Miriam.

There are, however, several biblical references to a place called Sheol (cf. Numbers 30, 33). It is described as a region “dark and deep,” “the Pit,” and “the Land of Forgetfulness,” where human beings descend after death. The suggestion is that in the netherworld of Sheol, the deceased, although cut off from God and humankind, live on in some shadowy state of existence.

While this vision of Sheol is rather bleak (setting precedents for later Jewish and Christian ideas of an underground hell) there is generally no concept of judgment or reward and punishment attached to it. In fact, the more pessimistic books of the Bible, such as Ecclesiastes and Job, insist that all of the dead go down to Sheol, whether good or evil, rich or poor, slave or free man (Job 3:11-19).

The Temple’s Destruction and the World to Come

The development of the concept of life after death is related to the development of eschatology (speculation about the “end of days”) in Judaism. Beginning in the period following the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem (586 BCE), several of the classical Israelite prophets (Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah) began forecasting a better future for their people.

However, with repeated military defeats and episodes of exile and dislocation culminating in the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jewish thinkers began to lose hope in any immediate change, instead investing greater expectations in a messianic future and in life after death. This was coupled with the introduction into Judaism of Hellenistic notions of the division of the material, perishable body and the spiritual, eternal soul.

The catastrophe of 70 CE caused a theological crisis. How could it be that the God of Israel would simply allow His sanctuary to be destroyed and His people to be vanquished at the hands of the Roman Empire? While the rabbis often claimed that it was the Israelites’ sinfulness that led God to allow it to be defeated (mi–p’nei hataeinu, “because of our sins”), it was more difficult to explain why good and decent individual Jews were made to suffer.

This led to the development of another theological claim:

Rabbi Ya’akov taught: This world is compared to an ante-chamber that leads to Olam Ha–Ba, (the World-to-Come)” (Pirkei Avot 4:21). That is, while a righteous person might suffer in this lifetime, he or she will certainly be rewarded in the next world, and that reward will be much greater.

In fact, in some cases, the rabbis claim that the righteous are made to suffer in this world so that their reward will be that much greater in the next (Leviticus Rabbah 27:1).

The World to Come and the Garden of Eden

What the next world is, however, is far from clear. The rabbis use the term Olam Ha-Ba to refer to a heaven-like afterlife as well as to the messianic era or the age of resurrection, and it is often difficult to know which one is being referred to. When the Talmud does speak of Olam Ha-Ba in connection to the afterlife, it often uses it interchangeably with the term Gan Eden (“the Garden of Eden”), referring to a heavenly realm where souls reside after physical death.

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This is a common–yet too simplistic–presentation of Jewish eschatology (literally, the study or theory of the End). In Jewish tradition, there is little consensus on how, what, and when things happen in the Great Beyond.

Messianism

Broadly speaking, the Messiah will be a descendant of King David who, in the future, will reign over a peaceful and prosperous Israel.

According to some–most prominently, Maimonides–this is all he is. The Messiah is not a wonderworker, nor is the messianic era a miraculous age. In fact, according to Maimonides, the Messiah will die and be succeeded by his sons. This tradition of a political (and possibly military) redeemer dates to the age of the latter prophets, who living after the peak years of the Israelite monarchy, looked forward to a time when Jewish self-rule would be restored.

Other thinkers and texts stress the utopian–not the restorative–nature of the messianic era and suggest that the age of the Messiah will be a super-natural time. According to one talmudic source, for example, humans will have only good inclinations in the messianic era (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 52a).

For many–but by no means all–contemporary Jews, the messianic idea is as important now as it has been in the past. However, some moderns have rejected the idea that the messianic age will be defined by the arrival of an individual Messiah, and instead look to the messianic dream as a source of hope for a perfected and peaceful world.

Life After Death

The resurrection of the dead is briefly mentioned in the biblical books of Daniel and Isaiah. While the rabbis of the Talmud creatively interpreted references to resurrection in the Torah itself, these two are the only direct biblical references to life after death, and they date from late in the biblical period. Some scholars identify some notion of individual survival beyond death in the Bible, but the specific idea that the soul lives on after the death of the body entered Judaism later.

The World to Come, a concept often discussed in talmudic literature, can refer either to the world of the resurrected in the End of Days, or to the abode of the righteous souls following death, i.e. Gan Eden. (In response to the accusation that he denied physical resurrection, Maimonides uniquely depicted this heavenly abode as a spiritual world that will exist after the resurrected dead die for a second time.) More often than not, the precise referent of the World to Come is ambiguous

Judaism is often thought of as a this-worldly religion, one unconcerned with the afterlife, particularly heaven and hell. Though this would be an overstatement, it is noteworthy that despite the multitude of sources about the afterlife, remarkably few Jewish thinkers have been concerned with elaborating precise eschatological schemes.

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Judaism is famously ambiguous about this matter. The immortality of the soul, the World to Come, and the resurrection of the dead all feature prominently in Jewish tradition, but exactly what these things are and how they relate to each other has always been vague.

READ: More on Jewish Death and Mourning

Jewish conceptions of heaven and hell — gan eden (Garden of Eden) and gehinnom, respectively — are associated with the belief in immortality and/or the World to Come, and were also developed independent of these concepts.

Most Jewish ideas about the afterlife developed in post-biblical times.

What the Bible Says

The Bible itself has very few references to life after death. Sheol, the bowels of the earth, is portrayed as the place of the dead, but in most instances Sheol seems to be more a metaphor for oblivion than an actual place where the dead “live” and retain consciousness.

The notion of resurrection appears in two late biblical sources, Daniel 12 and Isaiah 25-26.

Daniel 12:2 — “Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence” — implies that resurrection will be followed by a day of judgment. Those judged favorably will live forever and those judged to be wicked will be punished.

Resurrection and the Messiah

Later Jewish tradition, however, is not clear about exactly who will be resurrected, when it will happen, and what will take place.

Some sources imply that the resurrection of the dead will occur during the messianic era. Others indicate that resurrection will follow the messianic era. Similarly, according to some, only the righteous will be resurrected, while according to others, everyone will be resurrected and — as implied in Daniel — a day of judgment will follow.

The Daniel text probably dates to the second century BCE, and at some point during the two centuries that followed, another afterlife idea entered Judaism: the immortality of the soul, the notion that the human soul lives on even after the death of the body. In the Middle Ages, Jewish mystics expanded this idea, developing theories about reincarnation — the transmigration of the soul.

The World to Come

The World to Come (olam haba) is the most ubiquitous Jewish idea related to the end of days. It appears in early rabbinic sources as the ultimate reward of the individual Jew (and possibly the righteous gentile). The Talmud contains scattered descriptions of the World to Come, sometimes comparing it to spiritual things such as studying Torah, other times comparing it to physical pleasures, such as sex.

However, not surprisingly, it is not obvious what exactly the “World to Come” is and when it will exist. According to Nahmanides, among others, the World to Come is the era that will be ushered in by the resurrection of the dead, the world that will be enjoyed by the righteous who have merited additional life. According to Maimonides, the World to Come refers to a time even beyond the world of the resurrected. He believed that the resurrected will eventually die a second death, at which point the souls of the righteous will enjoy a spiritual, bodiless existence in the presence of God.

Still, in other sources, the World to Come refers to the world inhabited by the righteous immediately following death–i.e. heaven, Gan Eden. In this view, the World to Come exists now, in some parallel universe.

Heaven and Hell

Indeed, the notion of heaven and hell may be the most ambiguous of all Jewish afterlife ideas. References to Gehinnom as a fiery place of judgment can be found in the apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple period. The Talmud embellished this idea, claiming that Gehinnom is 60 times hotter than earthly fire (Berakhot 57b).

The earliest reference to Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden) and Gehinnom as a pair is probably the rabbinic statement of the 1st century sage Yochanan ben Zakkai: “There are two paths before me, one leading to Gan Eden and the other to Gehinnom (Berakhot 28b).”

Many questions remain, however. If the sources that refer to the World to Come are referring to Gan Eden, then what is the world of the resurrected? And if judgment immediately follows death, then what need is there for the judgment that will follow the resurrection?

Though some Jewish scholars have tried to clarify these ideas, it would be impossible to reconcile all the Jewish texts and sources that discuss the afterlife.

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There are two general possibilities: One is that it refers to a heavenly abode where the souls of the righteous live on after death. The other is that it’s the perfected world that will follow the coming of the messiah, when the dead are resurrected and complete peace prevails.

There are no explicit references to the World to Come in the Torah, though some commentators saw hints to it in the text. Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, an 18th-century Moroccan kabbalist, suggested that the Torah begins with the Hebrew letter bet — which corresponds to the number two — to hint that God actually created two worlds in Genesis, the physical world and the World to Come. And several statements in the Bible imply that there is some continuance of life that follows death in this world, including this verse from Genesis 15:15 about Abraham: “As for you, You shall go to your fathers in peace; You shall be buried at a ripe old age.” Since Abraham was not buried with his fathers, some understand this verse to be referring to the afterlife.

The first explicit mention of the World to Come appears in the Talmud, which records a number of teachings on the subject, the most famous probably being this one, from the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 10:1:

כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל יֵשׁ לָהֶם חֵלֶק לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

All of the Jewish people have a share in the World to Come

The mishnah immediately proceeds to detail various exceptions to this seemingly categorical statement, including those who deny the truth of the doctrine of resurrection, one who reads “external literature” (books by heretics) and whispers invocations over a wound (per Rabbi Akiva), the residents of an idolatrous city, and various biblical characters, including the king Jeoroboam and the prophet Balaam. All these and more are excluded from the World to Come. 

Yet the rabbis of the Talmud don’t have a lot to say about just what the World to Come is. For that we turn to two medieval scholars who held distinct views on this question. 

Maimonides was adamant that the World to Come is the reward for the righteous after death. As he describes in the Mishneh Torah: 

The hidden good in store for the righteous is, life in the World to Come, which is a life connected with no death and a kind of good connected with no evil; such as is described in the Torah: “That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest prolong thy days” (Deut. 22.7), which was traditionally deducted to mean, “That it may be well with thee” in a world which is entirely good; “and that thou mayest prolong thy days”—in a world existing forever; and this is the World to Come.

Maimonides’ conception of the World to Come is akin to how many traditions imagine heaven, an eternal joyful existence of pure spirit. He goes on: 

The World to Come harbors neither body nor aught of a concrete form, save only the souls of the righteous divested of body as are the ministering angels. Inasmuch as it harbors no concrete forms there is no need there for eating, drinking, or other of the bodily necessities of the sons of man in this world; neither will any of the many things which happen to bodies in this world come to pass there, as, for instance, sitting down, standing up, sleep, death, sadness, mirth or the like.

An alternate view, and one that seems to have been held by the majority of early Jewish authorities, was articulated by Nahmanides, a medieval Catalonian kabbalist and talmudist, who insisted that the World to Come is what will come into being in the present world after the messiah comes and the dead are returned to life. Nachmanides distinguishes between the World to Come, in which the physical body is present and the ancient Temple rebuilt, and the World of Souls (olam haneshamot), where the soul goes after the death of the body. Unlike Maimonides, who believed that the resurrection of the dead would be followed by a second death and the eternal rest of souls in the World to Come, Nachmanides believed the resurrected would enjoy eternal physical life in the messianic age. 

Both these ideas draw support from the Talmud. In its discussion of the aforementioned mishnah about all Israel having a share in the World to Come, the Talmud explains that denial of a share in the World to Come to those who reject the resurrection is an appropriate punishment because it’s “measure for measure” — that is, commensurate with the crime. Since the denied person doubted the resurrection, they will not be resurrected themselves. Ergo, the World to Come refers to resurrection. 

But Maimonides’ view that the World to Come is a place of pure spirit also draws support from the Talmud, in particular a statement from Rav recorded in the Talmud in Berakhot 17a:

The World to Come is not like this world. In the World to Come there is no eating, no drinking, no procreation, no business negotiations, no jealousy, no hatred, and no competition. Rather, the righteous sit with their crowns upon their heads, enjoying the splendor of the Divine Presence.

Though the specifics are hardly clear, that didn’t stop the ancient rabbis from saying a lot about the World to Come. Here are two of their better-known teachings on the matter, both of them from the fourth chapter of Ethics of the Fathers:

Rabbi Yaakov says: This world is like a hallway before the world to come. Fix yourself in the hallway so you may enter the drawing room.

He would say: One hour of repentance and good deeds in this world is better than all the time in the World to Come. And one hour of pleasure in the World to Come is better than all the time in this world. Pirkei Avot 4:16-17

These statements encapsulate two distinct strands of Jewish thought with respect to the World to Come. The first suggests that the World to Come is where the action is and that this world is merely a prelude, the hallway before the drawing room. The distinction is even clearer in the second teaching, which suggests that this world has intrinsic value too, and in at least one sense is superior to the World to Come — it is the place where good deeds and repentance are possible, though this idea is at least partially tempered by the claim that comes next, that the pleasures available in the World to Come are simply unimaginable. The latter point is reflected in another famous dictum about the World to Come, from Tractate Berakhot 57b, which teaches that Shabbat is one-sixtieth of the World to Come — that is, the joy of Shabbat is but a hint of the vastly greater pleasures that await the righteous.

References to the World to Come show up with much greater frequency in Hasidic and mystical works. The medieval Spanish kabbalist Abraham Abulafia penned an entire volume entitled Chayei Olam Habah (“The Life of the World to Come”), though that work is primarily concerned with meditation techniques that enable a direct experience of God. Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, an 18th century kabbalist and the author of one of the core texts of Mussar, or Jewish character development, echoed the first teaching from Ethics of the Father noted above in claiming that the work of this world is merely to prepare for the next. In his major work, The Path of the Just, he writes:

It is the foundation of saintliness and the perfect worship of God for a man to realize what constitutes his duty in his world and to which aim he is required to direct all his endeavors throughout his life. Now our sages, of blessed memory, have taught us that man was created only to find delight in the Lord and to bask in the radiance of His Shekhinah [divine presence] for this is the true happiness and the greatest of all possible delights. The real place in which such delight can be attained is the World to Come, for this has been prepared to this very purpose. But the way to attain this desired goal is this world.

In contemporary times, Jewish thinkers tend not to focus too much on the World to Come. Among liberal Jews, the concept veers into theological beliefs that many do not accept. According to the Pew Research Center, Jews have among the lowest rates of belief in heaven and hell among all American religious groups. Among more traditionally observant Jews, the concept gets somewhat greater air time. A 2019 volume of teachings on the World to Come by Rabbi Avigdor Miller, a prominent American haredi rabbi who died in 2001, made the case that the concept is not given sufficient attention in the Orthodox community. 

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There are scant references to such a person in the Bible. The Hebrew word for messiah — moshiach (literally “the anointed one”) — does appear several times, though almost never in connection with a redeemer who will come at the End of Days. In the Bible, the word is used to describe a king or priest with a special divine purpose. Isaiah 45:1 refers to the Persian King Cyrus as God’s anointed, because God caused him to allow the Israelites to return from their exile in Babylonia. 

Several of the latter prophets do discuss a future age marked by peace and prosperity in detail — most especially Isaiah, with his famous prophecy of a day when “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb” — but none refer to the person who will bring this about as “messiah.” Only in the Book of Daniel 9:25 do we see an explicit linkage between the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the arrival of the messiah. 

This changes in the Talmud and the Midrash, where the redeemer is called messiah and described in a multitude of ways. Sometimes he is a military or political figure. At others, he has supernatural abilities. According to one talmudic teaching, in Sanhedrin 98a, the messiah is already on earth, dressed like a blighted beggar, sitting at the gates of Rome, awaiting Jewish repentance. According to several sources, the messiah will be born on Tish’a B’av, the fast day commemorating the destruction of the ancient Temples. 

When the Messiah Will Come

The Talmud records a teaching in Sanhedrin 97a, attributed to Rabbi Zeira, that it’s unwise to try and calculate the time of the messiah’s arrival. He derives that practice from this teaching: “There are three matters that come only by means of diversion of attention from those matters, and these are they: The Messiah, a lost item, and a scorpion.” Another talmudic teaching suggests that those that try to calculate the time of the messiah’s arrival will be cursed. Maimonides later endorsed this sentiment, saying the particulars of the messiah’s arrival are unknowable and that one should simply wait and believe. 

Nevertheless, the rabbis of the Talmud speculated on this matter considerably. According to one teaching, the world will only exist for 6,000 years, which is the source of the notion that the messiah will come no later than the Jewish year 6,000 (roughly the year 2240 in the Gregorian calendar). The rabbis also bring down a number of teachings about the disturbing qualities of the time before his arrival, describing it variously as a time where the number of Torah scholars decreases, heresy is widespread, Jews despair of redemption, and youths humiliate their elders. One particularly grim prognosis comes from a mishnah in Sotah 9:15:

In the times of the approach of the Messiah, impudence will increase and high costs will pile up. Although the vine shall bring forth its fruit, wine will nevertheless be expensive. And the monarchy shall turn to heresy, and there will be no one to give reproof about this. The meeting place of the Sages will become a place of promiscuity, and the Galilee shall be destroyed, and the Gavlan will be desolate, and the men of the border shall go round from city to city to seek charity, but they will find no mercy. And the wisdom of scribes will putrefy, and people who fear sin will be held in disgust, and the truth will be absent. The youth will shame the face of elders, elders will stand before minors. Normal family relations will be ruined: A son will disgrace a father; a daughter will rise up against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be the members of his household. The face of the generation will be like the face of a dog; a son will no longer be ashamed before his father. And upon what is there for us to rely? Only upon our Father in heaven. 

These teachings are part of the tradition that the messianic age will be preceded by hevlei moshiach — literally “the birth pangs of the messiah.” But all is not so bleak. According to several teachings, like this one from Shabbat 11b, human actions can hasten the coming of the messiah: 

Rabbi Yoḥanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai: If only the Jewish people would keep two Shabbatot in accordance with their halakhot, they would be immediately redeemed.

What Will Happen During the Messianic Age?

The core Jewish ideas about the messianic age derive from biblical passages, most explicitly several books of the prophets, and later elaborated in the Talmud. In the 11th chapter of Isaiah, the prophet says a “shoot shall grow out of the stump of Jesse” — the father of King David, and one of the sources for the idea that the messiah will be a descendant of the biblical king. The prophecy goes on to describe the ingathering of the Jewish people from “the four corners of the earth” and a vision of perfect peace in which the wolf and the lamb coexist.

In the medieval period, Maimonides made belief in a messiah part of Jewish doctrine, including it as the twelfth of his Thirteen Principles of Faith. Maimonides detailed his vision of the messianic age in the 11th and 12th chapters of the Laws of Kings and Wars the Mishneh Torah. There Maimonides lays out the basic description of the messianic age as a time in which the kingship of the Davidic dynasty will be restored, the Jewish people will be ingathered back to the Land of Israel from the far reaches of the earth, the Temple will be rebuilt and the practice of animal sacrifice restored. 

Ever the rationalist, Maimonides was clear that the messiah would not perform any miracles like reviving the dead, a belief he ascribed to “fools.” This view generated considerable controversy, prompting Maimonides to write an entire treatise on the matter professing belief in the doctrine of resurrection. To square the circle, Maimonides wound up adopting a novel view on the matter, suggesting that the dead revived during the messianic age (by God, not the messiah) would die a second time, at which point they would ascend to the World to Come, the purely spiritual realm in which their souls would reside for eternity. 

Nachmanides, the medieval Catalonian kabbalist who lived roughly a century after Maimoindes, disagreed. To Nachmanides, the messianic age and the World to Come were one and the same. After the resurrection, the formerly dead would live forever in physical form. The messianic era would be a time of ethical perfection, in which the impulse to do evil would be annulled. Nachmanides acknowledged Maimonides’ view, but made his dissent clear:“We, however, declare that the people of the resurrection will exist forever, from the time of the resurrection of the dead to the World to Come, which is an everlasting world.”

Contemporary Views

Messianism is still a prominent theme in modern Judaism, though many contemporary Jews have rejected belief in an individual messiah. Zionism has many messianic undertones in its focus on national redemption, a linkage made explicit in the best-known prayer for the State of Israel, which describes Israel’s establishment as marking “the dawn of our deliverance.” Among Chabad Hasidism, some claim that their late leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is in fact the messiah. 

But many modern Jews reject this notion. In its 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, the Reform movement, hostile to messianism’s supernatural overtones and its belief that the real Jewish home lay in Israel, rejected belief in a messianism that would result in a return to Israel and the restoration of sacrificial worship. The movement’s 1999 update to its platform spoke of being partners with God in bringing about a “messianic age.”

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This belief — distinct from, though connected to, the belief in the immortality of the soul — is mentioned explicitly only twice in the Hebrew Bible, in the books of Isaiah and Daniel, though hints of it are extrapolated from other biblical sources. The medieval philosopher Maimonides includes it as one of his 13 principles of the Jewish faith, and the Mishnah states that those who don’t believe in resurrection “have no share in the world to come.” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1) The Amidah prayer recited thrice daily by traditional Jews includes a blessing praising God as the resurrector of the dead.

The resurrection doctrine is fleshed out in a variety of rabbinic sources. Among the ideas associated with it is the belief that during the messianic age the dead will be brought back to life in Israel. According to the Talmud, all bodies not already in Israel will be rolled through underground tunnels to the holy land. Avoiding this process, which is said to be spiritually painful, is one reason some Jews choose to be buried in Israel.

At least two talmudic sources note that the righteous will be brought back from the dead wearing the clothing in which they were buried. .

According to the Jewish mystical tradition, souls can be reincarnated in different bodies if those souls have not completed their missions on earth. At the time of the resurrection, the individual soul will be split among the various bodies it once inhabited, and the portion of the soul whose mission was completed in a particular body will return to that body.

The doctrine of resurrection has proved controversial throughout Jewish history. Maimonides wrote in his Mishneh Torah that the idea that the Messiah will revive dead bodies is something that “fools” say. However, when critics charged that he denied resurrection, he penned a scathing essay in which he emphatically argued that he did in fact believe in resurrection.

Rabbi Neil Gillman, author of The Death of Death,  has suggested  it that the reason the Amidah includes a reference to resurrection — and mentions it multiple times just in that one blessing — may be in response to those who contested this belief in the first century BCE when the prayer was being formulated

Centuries later, the Reform movement, in its Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, rejected entirely the idea of resurrection, saying it was “not rooted in Judaism.” (The platform did assert a belief in the immortality of the soul.) The movement removed the Amidah resurrection blessing from their liturgy until 2007 when, with the release of its new prayer book Mishkan T’filah, it reinstated the blessing — a move some attributed to Reform’s larger turn toward traditionalism and a growing comfort with liturgical metaphor.

Among Orthodox Jews, belief in the resurrection is still generally understood as a literal prophecy that will come to fruition when the messiah comes.

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Though it is likely that Jewish ideas about transmigration are rooted far back in antiquity, the first explications of gilgul appear in medieval Kabbalah, in the Zohar and elsewhere. One of the earliest of these can be found in Sefer HaBahir (“The Book of Brightness”), an abstruse mystical tract of mysterious origin that began to circulate among kabbalists in 13th-century Europe. In a well known passage, the cycle of reincarnation is likened to a vinter who plants grapes that become sour. Disappointed, he clears his vineyard and plants a new crop, which also becomes sour. The Bahir asks: “How many times must he go through the process? He said, ‘Up to a thousand generations.’” Thus it is with the soul, which accrues merit (or not) over the course of countless lifetimes. 

In the kabbalistic imagination, this is the situation for the vast majority of souls. While it occasionally happens that new souls may be created, most of us have been here before and will be here again. This particular life comprises but one stage on our path towards a perfected state when the small divine spark of our own soul will become reintegrated into the fires of the divine. This perfected state — i.e. the culmination of gilgul — can be understood as a cognate to the Buddhist notion of nirvana. However, where nirvana means literally “to blow out” — that is, to extinguish the flames of desire and greed — the kabbalists describe ultimate goal of transmigration as a kind of compounded flame, in which the soul’s spark is subsumed by the boundless light of God. 

Present also in the Jewish mystical tradition is the belief that one’s actions in this life can affect one’s subsequent reincarnations, for good or ill. According to his students, among the wondrous qualities of Rabbi Isaac Luria, a towering figure 16th-century Kabbalah, was his ability to discern the history of a soul’s reincarnations by peering into the face of another human being. Through this process of discernment, Luria was able to advise his followers about specific spiritual aspects they should focus on in this life. 

One of Luria’s followers, Rabbi Hayyim Vital, in his book Sha’ar HaGilgulim (“The Gate of Reincarnations”), explicates in great detail how these dynamics can play out over the many generations. According to Vital, souls are reborn specifically to perfect certain aspects of themselves or to complete unfinished tasks. Ideally each subsequent gilgul marks an ascent to a higher rung of spiritual attainment, however progress is not a given. In fact, a sinful life can lead to a diminished form of reincarnation, including reincarnations as animals, plants, or even inanimate objects. 

One particularly colorful example is the possibility of being reborn as water, which is the consequence of committing murder. The idea is that the soul will always be flowing, forever deprived of a home, just as it caused the blood of another to flow in a past life. In a similar vein, though unrelated to punishment, some Hasidic traditions suggest that it is often the case that the sparks of a person’s soul are incarnated not only in a person’s body, but are also bound up with their personal belongings.

While the goal of life is ultimately to transcend the cycles of gilgul altogether, the Kabbalah likewise identifies certain great souls that reincarnate in each generation specifically to assist other souls on their journey or to rectify some past wrong. According to Lurianic tradition, for example, the soul of Abel was reborn as Moses while the soul of Cain was reborn as Jethro. The positive relationship between Moses and Jethro in the Exodus narrative thus rectifies their violent past, bringing about a repair, or tikkun, in their relationship and in the world at large. 

These helpful transmigrations can happen both when a great soul is reincarnated into a new body—for instance the soul of Moses, which is reborn in every generation according to some traditions. Or when a soul “impregnates” the body of a living person (a phenomenon known as ibbur) in order to help that person with a certain religious task with which they struggle. This, then, forms the basis of a positive conception of spirit possession. 

Among the salient attributes of Jewish thought writ large is a vague and somewhat non-committal attitude towards exactly what happens when this life ends. As with most areas of Jewish speculation, Jewish thinkers ancient and modern have explored a variety of sentiments on the subject of what, if anything, comes after bodily death. And while gilgul as a concept does not figure prominently in non-mystical Jewish sources, over the millennia it has nevertheless become a firmly established option on the menu of Jewish ideas about the afterlife — or rather, about the life to come. Like all the other menu offerings, it has neither been unanimously ratified nor excluded.

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After walking you through cacio e pepe, carbonara, and deep fried street foods, Parla and Gill introduce Jewish Roman cuisine, cucina ebraica—which is known for deep fried artichokes and Jewish-style pizza.

“Due in part to three centuries of isolation in a walled ghetto, Roman Jews crafted a distinct cuisine called the cucina ebraica romanesca, which coaxes intense flavor from paltry resources.”

The Roman Jewish community expanded, in 1967, to include thousands of Libyan Jewish refugees  fleeing anti-semetic violence. Parla and Gill next explore La Cucina Tripolina, the Libyan Jewish cuisine named after the capital of Tripoli. This North African cuisine is one that’s getting more and more attention–for good reason! Shakshuka you’ve heard of, but what about hraimi con couscous (spicy fish with couscous), taershi (garlic-rich pumpkin spread), and a number of phyllo pastries stuffed with fruits, nuts and sesame seeds?

Tasting Rome: Fresh Flavors and Forgotten Recipes From an Ancient City feels like a walking tour that takes you off the beaten path through narrow alleyways and ten-table restaurants.

Here is one of our favorite recipes from this book, a dish whose roots can be traced back to 1492, when Sephardic Jews fled Spain for Southern Italy. The technique of frying vegetables and marinating them in vinegar is most likely a Spanish one.

Concia: Fried and Marinated Zucchini

Reprinted from Tasting Rome: Fresh Flavors and Forgotten Recipes from an Ancient City. Copyright © 2016 by Katie Parla and Kristina Gill. Photographs copyright © 2016 by Kristina Gill. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers,  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

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A recent episode of Heritage Radio’s A Taste of the Past goes beyond buzzworthy deep-fried artichokes and walks us through the spicy, paprika-rich cuisine of Libyan Jews with one of the leading voices on Roman food, Katie Parla.

In 1967, more than 6,000 Jewish Libyans, facing anti-semitism and violence in Libya, were evacuated to Rome by the Italian Navy in 1967. Rome’s historic Jewish Quarter immediately welcomed them, and today, 4,000 of the 13,000 Jewish residents there are of Libyan descent. From one generation to the next, they’ve continued to maintain their own distinct culinary traditions.

What do they cook? The most iconic Libyan Jewish dish, explains Parla, is Haraimi: a spicy, paprika-rich tomato and fish stew served over couscous.

Caraway, cumin, paprika, and garlic provide the foundation for most dishes, but their proportions are hotly debated. Here, every family has a slightly different spice blend.

For Libyan Jews, Shabbat is the best way of preserving their trademark spices and stews; there are just two Libyan Jewish restaurants and most food is cooked at home. “The food, the discussions about food..the repetitions of recipes… is a way to remember the past, and to anchor one’s culture in a new place,” explains Parla. 

The Libyan flavors of Rome are hard to imagine without tasting it, and if you’re like us and can’t find haraimi or in your neighborhood, you can still enjoy it in true Libyan Jewish fashion: right at home.

Here are some recipes to try out as you listen to A Taste of The Past’s Libyan Jewish Food in Rome:

Cershi, garlicky pumpkin spread

Kifta bil Haut – Fish Balls in Basil Sauce

Haraimi (Libyan spicy fish in tomato sauce)

Debla (Purim roses)

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In 1848, the Jews of Germany were emancipated – that is, they were granted citizenship for the first time in the two thousand years they had lived in Europe. Emancipation presented Jews with the opportunity to participate in secular society – and the challenge of maintaining a meaningful Jewish identity while doing so. Many Jews met this challenge by adopting the recent innovation of Reform Judaism, which applied the era’s values of rationality, optimism, and universality to religious life. Among the changes Reform Judaism embraced was a radical redefinition of the Messiah and the Messianic Age.

Traditional Jewish views on the Messiah could not, Reformers believed, withstand the changes of Emancipation. Reform Jews prized an intellectual outlook on Judaism and valued religious tenets that could be upheld even in a rational, secular milieu. They did not, therefore, embrace traditional messianism – rooted in complicated Scriptural allusions and folklore, filled with images of apocalyptic battles, a superhuman deliverer, and even a physical resurrection of the dead. And with its emphasis on Jewish triumph over the enemies of Israel, messianism also sharply contradicted Emancipation tenets of equality and universalism. Finally, traditional Jewish messianism expressed a yearning to return to Zion, to rebuild the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, and to restore rule over Israel to the descendants of King David. Such hopes undermined the Jews’ new status as loyal citizens of Germany.

Perhaps the most powerful reason to jettison traditional messianic belief, the Reformers argued, was that it was simply not needed anymore. Human beings – guided not by a Messiah but by their own intellect – had already begun the work of redemption. Reformers believed that the principles of Emancipation would inspire every nation and bring liberation to the entire world. Spreading from Germany and taking especially strong hold in the United States, Reform Judaism abolished the concept of a divinely-sent Messiah and promised instead that humanity would accomplish its own redemption.

But when Nazism arose in Germany – supposedly the most enlightened of nations – and the Holocaust followed soon after, Reform Judaism was no longer convinced that humans could achieve their own salvation.

Seventy years later, as Jewish theologians continue to wrestle with questions of faith arising from the Holocaust, Reform Judaism has not yet clearly defined a messianic concept that responds to the evils of the 20th century. The Reform prayerbook Mishkan T’filah, for example, affirms that liberal Jews “hope to behold the perfection of our world, guided by a sacred Covenant drawn from human and divine meeting,” while Reform Judaism’s most recent Statement of Principles holds that “we continue to have faith that, in spite of the unspeakable evils committed against our people and the sufferings endured by others, the partnership of God and humanity will ultimately prevail.” These consoling and inspiring words, however, do not explain how a “sacred Covenant drawn from human and divine meeting” will reach those who deny the reality of God, or how – as humanity continues to perpetrate slaughter and war – one can truly be certain that “the partnership of God and humanity will ultimately prevail.”

Not only the declarations of Reform Judaism but the actions of Reform Jews reflect uncertainty. Many seem to have redefined the messianic enterprise in their participation in community service, and maintenance of the belief that every person can contribute to tikkun olam, the repair of the world. These labors, according to some, portend messianic rewards: “The actual work of redeeming the world is turned to us in history, and is done by all of us, day by day,” writes modern theologian Arthur Green. “Rather than messiah redeeming us, we redeem messiah.” But Reform Jews still struggle to explain how relatively isolated acts of goodness can overcome the tyranny and hatred plaguing the world.

As Reform Judaism continues to evolve in order to respond to the practical and philosophical demands of modernity, its messianic concept, too, may expand to offer a new vision and hope of redemption.

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He will not arrive on the Sabbath, since that would require people to violate the Sabbath in welcoming him [Babylonian Talmud Pesahim 13a]. [The prophet] Elijah [who is supposed to usher in the messianic age] will arrive no later in the week than Thursday, leaving room for the Messiah to arrive by Friday. Elijah will announce the arrival of the Messiah from Mount Carmel in the Land of Israel [Jerusalem Talmud Pesahim 3:6].

Many rabbis believed that the Messiah would arrive suddenly on the eve of Passover, the first redemption, which serves as a model of the final redemption [Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pischa 14].

Corruption and Degradation Will Precede Redemption

One statement from the time of the rabbis describes the era leading up to the Messiah in the darkest terms of societal corruption:

“In the footsteps of the Messiah, arrogance [chutzpah] will increase; prices will rise; grapes will be abundant but wine will be costly; the government will turn into heresy; and there will be no reproach. The meeting place [of scholars] will become a bordello; the Galilee will be destroyed; the highland will lie desolate; the border people will wander from city to city and none will show them compassion; the wisdom of authors will stink; sin‑fearing people will be detested; truth will be missing; young men will humiliate the elderly; the elderly will stand while the young sit; sons will revile their fathers; daughters will strike their mothers, brides will strike their mothers‑in‑law; and a man’s enemies will take over his house. The face of the generation is like the face of a dog! Sons have no shame in front of their fathers; and on whom can one depend? Only upon our father in heaven [Sotah 9:15].”

This era will be characterized by God’s war against Gog and Magog and other catastrophic events. Another statement, which may date from the time of the Hadrianic persecutions (132‑35 C.E.), offers the dark assessment that the Messiah will arrive in a period when Jews collaborate with their enemies, Torah learning disappears, poverty increases, and religious despair deepens:

“The son of David will not arrive until informers are everywhere. Another view: Until there are few students left. Another view: Until the last coin is gone from the pocket. Another view: Until peo­ple despair of redemption…as if there is no support or help for Israel [BT Sanhedrin 97a].”

Some sages predicted that the Messiah would not arrive until Israel observed the commandments more fully:

“Rabbi Judah said in the name of Rav: If all Israel had observed the very first Sabbath, no nation or tongue would have ever ruled over her…Rabbi Yohanan said, following Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai: Were Israel to observe two Sabbaths punctiliously, they would be redeemed immediately [BT Shabbat 118b].”

Some rabbis believed that the arrival of the Messiah had no relation either to political and societal events or to individual actions. They believed that there were a finite number of souls destined to enter the world and reside within human bodies. When the supply of fresh souls was exhausted, the Messiah would arrive [BT Yevamot 62a; BT Avodah Zarah 5a; BT Niddah 13b] […]

Converting to Judaism in the Messianic Age

A central question that preoccupied the rabbis was how the messianic age would differ from the present age.

One concern was that many Gentiles would convert to Judaism at the last moment just in order to participate in the new age. Some sages concluded, therefore, that “converts are not received in the days of the Messiah,” just as they were not welcome in the days of David and Solomon [BT Yevamot 24b].

A dispute arose among the rabbinic sages about the desirability of encouraging Gentiles to convert to Judaism. While most welcomed converts, others raised doubts about their sincerity. Rabbi Helbo, who mistrusted the sincerity of converts, stated that “converts are more difficult for Israel than a sore [BT Niddah 13b].” Others suspected that converts might not remain loyal during the messianic era. They decided that converts could be accepted, but with difficulty because they were likely to revert to their former ways in the heat of the messianic upheavals [BT Avodah Zarah 3b].

Specific Features of the Messianic Age

Foreign nations would not be obliterated in the messianic era. Nations such as Rome would come to the Messiah to pay tribute to him, but their appeals for favor would be rejected [BT Pesahim 118b].

Some rabbis faced the messianic age with anticipation, others with dread. One viewpoint suggested that knowledge of Torah would continue to decline in the messianic age: “A bad announcement was conveyed to Israel at that moment. In the future, the Torah will be forgotten [Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pischa 12].” Others forecast that in “the future era, the synagogues and academies of Babylonia will be transported to the Land of Israel [BT Megillah 29a].”

Still others held that humans would take on a new appearance: some thought that man would achieve a height of 160 feet, while another suggested he might double that. There is no suggestion that the Messiah himself is a wonder worker, but many sages believed that the messianic age would be a time of wonders. Women would give birth painlessly, hens lay eggs continuously, and food appear in abundance [BT Shabbat 30b].

There were controversies about the nature of the messianic era. Followers of the sage Samuel maintained that it would be similar to their own era, except that the Jewish people would be returned to Israel and the Davidic monarchy restored. Samuel saw “no difference between this world and the messianic age other than subjugation to dispersions [BT Shabbat 63a].”

Others, such as Rabbi Eliezer, believed that the next era would be unprecedented and qualitatively different. This debate represented the two poles of Jewish belief about the messianic era. One view sees it in terms of normal human existence under conditions of Jewish political independence; the other as something wholly new that defies prediction.

During the messianic era, the Messiah will reign victorious and rebuild the Temple. He will restore the priesthood to the Temple, and the traditional sacrifices will be reinstated. The return to the golden age of the Jewish people will be complete. Many popular Jewish prayers express this messianic longing for the rebuilding of the Temple and above all for the return to Zion. Perhaps even more than the coming of the Messiah, traditional Judaism has sought this dream of the return to Zion.

The Jewish people will be complete. Many popular Jewish prayers express this messianic longing for the rebuilding of the Temple and above all for the return to Zion. Perhaps even more than the coming of the Messiah, traditional Judaism has sought this dream of the return to Zion.

Excerpted and reprinted with the permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc., from What Do Jews Believe?

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The origins of this belief lie in the prophecy of Ezekiel, who identifies Gog as a prince and his land as Magog. (The only earlier biblical reference to Magog is in Genesis, which identifies Magog as one of the descendants of Japheth, a son of Noah.) According to the prophecy contained in the 38th and 39th chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, on a “distant day” when the Jewish people are living secure in Israel, Gog will invade Israel and God will furiously retaliate against them. The invaders will be destroyed and the Jews will spend months burying the dead. Repeatedly God declares that through the battle “the nations shall know that I the Lord am holy in Israel.” In its wake, Ezekiel promises the restoration of the descendants of Jacob, the Jewish exiles will be gathered back to their land, and never again will God’s face be hidden from the Jewish people. 

The wars of Gog and Magog, as the prophecy came to be referred to in later sources, are part of a larger belief that the messianic age will be preceded by a period of great suffering and upheaval — the so-called “birth pangs of the Messiah.” But in general, belief in the messianic age, while clearly part of Jewish belief and tradition, are not discussed in great detail in ancient rabbinic sources. 

Maimonides, who included belief in the coming of the Messiah as one of this 13 principles of the Jewish faith, nevertheless stated that the details of these future events are not fundamental to the religion and that one should not dwell on them, as their particulars were unknown even to the great sages. “Our sages have said that the spirit of those who calculate the Ends will expire,” Maimonides wrote in the Mishneh Torah. “Rather, one is to (simply) wait and believe in the principle of this matter, as we have explained.”

Despite this warning, at various points in Jewish history, Gog and Magog have been identified with different global powers whose conflicts were believed — or hoped — to usher in the messianic age. In the 19th century, some Hasidic leaders believed the Napoleonic wars against Russia were the war against Gog and Magog. Nevertheless, as with most issues relating to the Messiah and the End of Days, contemporary Jewish theology does not dwell much on the matter. 

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Our long-awaited messiah and redeemer arrived! Most Jews failed to recognize that he was the messiah, but we, his disciples, did. Tragically, he died before completing the redemptive process. But he will soon be resurrected and will continue and complete his messianic tasks.

Until just twelve years ago, this profession of faith was easily recognizable. It was the distinctive formulation of the Christian credo. In an amazing development, a significant number of pious, Sabbath-observant, religious Jews–ostensibly “Orthodox” Jews–have now adopted this worldview and attempted to declare it kosher.

Death of the Rebbe

The death of one of the greatest rabbis of the 20th century, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, (pictured) the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, left the Lubavitch movement without any central, recognized authority. Rabbi Schneersohn had been an inspired and inspiring leader, who made Lubavitch, which used to be a small hassidic group, into a major player in the Jewish world. In the last years of his life, and especially after he suffered a stroke, many of his followers insisted that he was the long-awaited messiah, and that all Jews were obligated to recognize him in that role.

The rebbe groomed no successor. After his death in 1993, Jews all over the world, both friendly to Lubavitch and otherwise, wondered how the movement would cope. The movement has not had one unified reaction. No one in Lubavitch is openly looking for a new rebbe. “The rebbe”–Rabbi Schneersohn–is still the rebbe.

Judaism has known of movements centered around a dead rebbe. The Bratslever hassidic movement found no replacement for Rabbi Nachman after his death in the 19th century. That movement still flourishes (and its adherents are often called the toyte [dead] hassidim). Messianic fervor about a living hassidic rebbe also has a few precedents in the last three centuries. But there is absolutely no precedent for Jews to continue to consider a person the messiah after his death. Before 1993, no Jew, other than a Jew for Jesus, affirmed that a specific individual who had initiated a messianic mission and then died in an unredeemed world was actually the messiah.

Lubavitch Leaders Respond

It is hard to know how many Lubavitchers actually believe that their dead rebbe is really the Messiah. But the number is significant. It includes a few of the more important rabbis in the Lubavitch movement in North America, and a higher percentage of Lubavitch leaders in Israel.

A few years after the rebbe’s death, a letter containing a psak halakhah [religious ruling] appeared as a paid advertisement in many Jewish newspapers. Signed by a large number of rabbis associated with the Lubavitch movement, the letter stated that according to halakhah [Jewish law], all Jews were required to profess the belief that the late Rabbi Schneersohn was actually the Messiah. The rebbe, it was claimed, was without doubt a prophet. The rebbe himself had confirmed (according to the letter) that he was the messiah. Since Halachah obligates Jews to believe the words of a prophet, every Jew was required to profess the belief that the rebbe was and still is the messiah.

Implications for the Rest of the Jewish World

Should the issue of the beliefs of a number of leaders (and an indeterminate number of followers) of the Lubavitch movement be of interest to those of us who are not Lubavitchers? According to David Berger, the answer is an unambiguous yes. Berger is an Orthodox rabbi who is a professor of Jewish history at Brooklyn College in New York. A few years ago he completed a term as president of the Association for Jewish Studies, one of the first Orthodox Jews ever to serve in that prestigious position. He is meticulously observant of halakhah, and is recognized around the world as a first-rate scholar. His area of specialization is the history of debates and polemics between Jews and Christians.

For the last few years, Berger has been on a tireless, and generally lonely, campaign against the legitimization of the Jewish belief in a dead messiah. He has been trying, with very limited success, to get leading Orthodox rabbis to speak out against this belief. He did have one impressive success in 1996 at the convention of the Rabbinical Council of America, the body to which virtually all modern Orthodox or centrist Orthodox rabbis belong. By an overwhelming majority, the rabbis at that convention passed a resolution reading: “In light of disturbing developments which have arisen in the Jewish community, the Rabbinical Council of America in convention assembled declares that there is not and has never been a place in Judaism for the belief that Mashiach ben David [the Messiah, son of David] will begin his messianic mission only to experience death, burial and resurrection before completing it.”

Berger’s Arguments

Berger did not expect to sway Lubavitch opinion. He knew that he would be the object of a vilification campaign; his only surprise was the ferocity of the rhetoric about him in Lubavitch circles and publications. But Berger did expect to have some success in isolating messianist Lubavitchers, or, at least, in convincing centrist Orthodox Jews that the messianist Lubavitch world view was a serious problem. This has not happened. Most Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews smile condescendingly about this new messianism and don’t get worked up about it. Berger feels that they should react more forcefully.

In September 2001, he published an article in Commentary magazine in which he outlined his concerns, as a rabbi and as a scholar, about Lubavitch messianism. An expanded version of that article later appeared as a book, entitled The Messiah, the Rebbe and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001). Three years later an expanded Hebrew version of the book was published.  The book has caused quite a stir. Sales have been surprisingly high.

In his book, Berger presents two different but related arguments as to why Lubavitch messianism is dangerous. First of all, he says, it undermines the traditional Jewish argument that the belief in a dead messiah is a Christian, not a Jewish, one. Jews have always deflected Christian claims by offering that distinction. Today, evangelical Christians trying to convert Jews have started arguing that if kosher Jews can believe that the dead Rabbi Schneersohn is still the Messiah, why don’t they give more credence to the claim that another Jew, who died around 2,000 years ago, is the real Messiah?

Berger’s second argument is more complex and controversial. He argues (to my mind, convincingly) that the belief in a messiah who is dead and is about to be resurrected to finish his job carries the potential of blurring the distinction between humans and God to such an extent that it can lead to avodah zarah, that is, “foreign or non-monotheistic worhip.” Berger cites some troubling statements in Lubavitch publications that lead us to believe that his concern is real, not, to be sure, about all Lubavitchers, and perhaps not about most. But, Berger argues, key Lubavitch educators in important positions have made statements that cannot be tolerated in a monotheistic religion. How are we to relate to the claim that because the Rebbe is actually “the essence and being [of God] placed [areingeshtelt] into a body,” he is without limits, capable of effecting anything, all-knowing and a proper object of worshipful prostration?

Berger has issued a challenge to all non-Lubavitch Jews to re-examine–indeed, to oppose–the exercise of broad communal authority by anyone who was a signatory on the psak. He even suggests that non-Lubavitch Jews withhold their suppport from the specific institutions where the signatories occupy positions of authority.

Berger’s arguments are sufficiently complex that a short essay cannot do them justice. But I think that they are worthy of careful reading by all Jews. I have admired Berger for 31 years, ever since I was a student in two of his undergraduate Jewish history courses, one on messianism and one on Jewish-Christian polemics. He is a pious and committed Jew and a great scholar. Before 1993, I never heard him take an anti-Lubavitch or anti-hassidic position. In fact, he has always shown tolerance for all and a great respect for rabbis who are Torah scholars, even for those whose worldviews are not his. But he is also eager to preserve Jewish monotheism and Jewish identity by fighting against any blurring of the boundary between Judaism and Christianity. Berger’s campaign is not a quixotic crusade. It is a serious attempt to ask Jews of all denominations to think seriously about Jewish theology. Berger would say that serious changes have taken place in Judaism in the last twelve years and he challenges us to think about how we will react. 

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Jewish tradition has not been very clear on this question.

The few ancient rabbinic texts that raise the issue take the position that animals have no expectation of eternal life. This premise forms the basis of a midrashic homily on Ecclesiastes 3:18-19: “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other.” From the biblical comparison, the midrash deduced that “just as beasts are fated for death and do not merit life in the world to come, so too the wicked are fated for death and will not merit life in the world to come.”

Justice for Animals

A very different position was taken by Saadiah Gaon, the tenth-century scholar whose Book of Doctrines and Beliefs was one of the pioneering works of systematic Jewish theology.

Saadiah deals with the fundamental question of why the Torah commands us to sacrifice innocent animals as an act of worship. After explaining that God has ordained matters in such a way that the time of an animal’s slaughter is metaphysically equivalent to the natural life-span of a human, Saadiah ponders whether death by the slaughterer’s knife really causes the beast more suffering than a natural demise. To this he replies that if that were the case, then the all-knowing and perfectly just God would certainly reward the beast for the suffering that was inflicted upon it.

This view was discussed by Maimonides in his Guide of the Perplexed, though he did not attribute it to Saadiah. Instead, he ascribed it to the Mu’tazila, one of the important theological schools of Islam, a school that did in fact exert a powerful influence upon Saadiah Gaon.

Maimonides Rejects the Idea

Initially, Maimonides characterized the Mu’tazila position as “disgraceful,” and poked fun at the notion of dead fleas, lice or mice enjoying their rewards in the next world. Later on, he conceded that the Mu’tazila were motivated by a legitimate concern, that no injustice or wrongdoing be ascribed to the Almighty.

Nevertheless, the prospect of Doggy Paradise was not a valid option for Maimonides. His concept of the afterlife was a profoundly intellectual one, in which eternal life was the exclusive privilege of those who were capable of contemplating eternal truths. He accepted Aristotle’s thesis that humans, by virtue of their intelligent minds, were subject to individual divine providence. Dumb animals, on the other hand, benefit only from a general providence that guides the survival of entire species.

Mystical Approaches

A very different perspective on the issue was introduced by the Kabbalah, and especially by the rise of the Hasidic movement in eastern Europe.

One of the most bitter struggles waged by the Hasidim against the Jewish establishment had to do with the mechanics and administration of ritual slaughter. Not only did they appoint their own shohetim [slaughterers], but they also insisted on the use of specially sharpened knives.

On one level, the Hasidic position was motivated by their suspicion that the communal authorities, who had come to rely on the taxes paid to the slaughterers as an important source of revenue, would not be stringent enough about disqualifying meat that was halakhically unfit.

There was, however, an additional dimension to the controversy, one that derived from their distinctive beliefs about the destiny of the soul.

Like many adherents of the Kabbalah, the Hasidim believed in the doctrine of gilgul, the transmigration of souls. According to this belief, those persons who are not quite ready to be admitted to Paradise are sent back into the world until they succeed in repairing their spiritual state. The souls of sinners have to rise through the stages of inanimate objects, plants and animals before being allowed to resume their human status. Kosher animals, such as cattle and sheep, are the penultimate stage in the scale of spiritual ascent, such that the slightest flaw in the slaughter can prevent the soul from achieving its final restoration.

By building on this theological premise, Hasidic ideology was able to offer a compelling new reason to be exceedingly scrupulous about the procedures for slaughtering. That poor cow whose neck is stretched out under the knife might well house the soul of a repentant sinner, whose last chance for eternal serenity depends on the performance of the slaughter according to the strictest standards of Jewish religious law.

This idea was promoted with especial vigor by students of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, such as the Maggid Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezritch. For this reason, manuals for the use of professional slaughterers would include calls to repentance and special prayers, in which the slaughterers expressed the hope that they were spiritually worthy of the awesome metaphysical responsibility that they bore.

Hasidic folklore told bloodcurdling tales about the dreadful punishments that awaited negligent slaughterers in the next world, such as the one who was doomed to spend the afterlife standing on a rooftop, slashing his own throat until he dropped to the earth, and then rising again and repeating the bloody pattern for all eternity.

Reprinted with permission of the author from the Jewish Free Press (June 6, 2002).

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In the strict meaning of the term–“no place”–the concept of utopia has no application in Judaism.

The characteristic feature of the customary utopia is its remoteness in time and space. It will be inaccessible or perhaps exist in no recognizable area of the world. It may even be located on the moon. It is also frequently set at some future date, or is perhaps a purely intellectual construction.

Ideal Society in an Ideal Land

In this sense no Jewish utopian schemes seem to exist. Even those that come closest to it‑-the Zionist utopias discussed below‑-are unambiguously located in the land of Israel. If, however, utopia is taken to signify the impulse toward some sort of ideal society, then of course it does have its Jewish counterpart, if not precise equivalent, in the concept of the messianic age.

What belongs to the utopian genre in the gentile world belongs to the messianic in the Jewish. There is certainly no identity [between them], but a considerable overlap.

It is this that helps to account for the Jewish contribution, in the form of a secularized messianism, to radical and liberal movements of varied outlook. But the dominant strain within the Jewish context is to emphasize the indispensability of the physical, territorial dimension, although there are occasional tendencies in later kabbalism and Hasidism to spiritualize the messianic ideal and even to spiritualize the land. The ideal society can exist only within the land of Israel (although this, of course, may well be variously defined) and would itself have universal applicability.

Ambiguous Perfection, Catastrophic Initiation

A second distinctive characteristic of the Jewish utopia is the absence of precise description. It seems that the utopian future is to be visualized in terms of a society that embodies a broad framework of values, with their precise implementation in the mechanism of daily life being left an open question.

A third feature is the catastrophic nature of the redemption that eschews evolution in favor of upheaval. Thus the prototype of the salvation process is the first Exodus (Jeremiah 16:14‑15). The values to be realized in this indeterminate way are, however, comprehensive in that the Jewish state will be theocratic and subject to the direct rule of the divine. In the terrestrial era it is the priests who bless Israel; in the future era, “God himself will bless Israel” (Psalms 29:11).

Humanity Will Flourish

Located in Zion, having its capital in a restored Jerusalem, and ruled by the scions of the ideal house of David, the state will be the incorporation of righteousness. Men themselves will possess only good inclinations (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 52a). They will be infused with the spirit of the Lord and the spirit of learning, in contrast to the ignorance and partiality of the present.

In social terms, the messianic era will be one of abundance and fertility (Joel 4:18), marked also by health, human longevity, and the absence of disease.

Man will enjoy the fruit of his own labor: “They shall not plant and another eat” (Isaiah 65:22). “In that day‑-declares the Lord of Hosts‑-you will be inviting each other to the shade of vines and fig trees” (Zechariah 3:10). Toward this desirable state of affairs, Israel will lead the way, through its cleaving to the Torah. Indeed, the messianic‑utopian age can be regarded as the fulfillment of the very aim of the Torah. “All the prophets only prophesied for the days of the Messiah” (BT Sanhedrin 99a).

Indeed, the last days will be incomparably richer than the first, so as to represent a different and altogether unprecedentedly higher order of reality in that “the land shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord as water covers the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

But this is not relevant to Israel alone, for the restored and rebuilt holy land will serve as a focus, model, and source of inspiration for the improved life of mankind in general, so that all nations shall share in the blessings of peace, the rule of righteousness, and the overthrow of the wicked and perverted.

“Rabban Shimeon ben Gamliel said: in the [messianic] future all the nations and all the kingdoms will be gathered in the midst of Jerusalem. For it is said [Jeremiah 3:17] ‘all the nations will be collected thither for the name of God’; elsewhere [Gen. 1:9] it is said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be collected’; as ‘collection’ in the latter verse means that all the waters of creation should be collected in one place, so ‘collection’ in the former verse means that all the nations and kingdoms will be assembled in one place, Jerusalem” (Avot d’Rabbi Natan, ch. 35).

Redemption in History

In the same way as the utopian state has a place, it also has a time–historical time. It does not seem that there is unanimous expectation of an entirely new order of reality.

[According to some, including Maimonides, the] Messiah, being mortal, will die, and so, too, will his sons (Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah, Sanhedrin 10). The messianic era leaves history as open‑ended as ever. The historical and the utopian lie along the same continuum. This sobriety is a particular characteristic of Maimonidean thinking, which is careful to caution against the illusion that the world in the days of the Messiah will depart from its accustomed course “or that there will be a change in the order of creation” (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Melakhim 12:1).

If there are prophetic utterances that do suggest such a change, for example, that the wolf will lie down with the lamb and the leopard graze with the goat, then their purport is [according to Maimonides] not literal but figurative and symbolic: to signify, in this particular case, that “Israel will dwell in peace with the wicked men of idolatry who are likened to wolves and leopards” (MT, Hilkhot Melakhim 12:1).

In accordance with his consistent attempt to introduce a cautionary and sobering note into the world of utopian and messianic hope, Maimonides quotes the third‑century Amora of Babylon, Samuel, to the effect that “the only difference between this world and the days of the Messiah is the subjection of Israel to the nations” (BT Sanhedrin 91b).

Cautious Messianism

Similarly, Maimonides warned against any attempt to divine the messianic process by astrology or any other means (cf. Maimonides, Epistle to Yemen). In fact, when it would happen, how it would happen, and what would happen were all concealed; the sages had no clear traditions and, in any case, no article of faith was involved. The whole subject was to be avoided as a fruitless exercise (MT, Hilkhot Melakhim 12:1). On the other hand, Maimonides, in the Epistle to Yemen, did reveal a tradition in his family to the effect that the Messiah would come in 4976, or 1216 C.E.

The attempt to combat messianic hopes and discredit their exponents was perennial, all the more so when messianism was coupled with antinomianism [i.e. movements that eschewed obedience to Jewish law, halakha].

It began perhaps with Rabbi Torta’s attack on Rabbi Akiva for his support of Bar Kokhba in 132 C.E. and the anathema pronounced on all “who calculate the end”; it is represented in the Gaonic period by Natronai Gaon [9th century], continues with Rabbi Azariah dei Rossi’s attack in 1573 on the predictions and astrological calculations of Rabbi Abraham bar Hiyya in the twelfth century and Don Isaac Abrabanel in the late fifteenth century, and reaches its climax in the onslaught directed by Rabbi Jacob Sasportas on Shabbetai Zevi, Nathan of Gaza, and the [messianic] Sabbatean movement in general, which flourished from 1666 to 1676.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the same tradition is maintained in the attacks made on the Zionist movement by Rabbi Joseph Rozin, the Rogachover Rebbe. It is indeed symptomatic of the new movement’s secular and antinomian tendencies that it should produce the closest Jewish counterparts to the conventional utopian fancies of the gentile world‑‑Herzl’s Altneuland (Old‑New Land) (1902) and Elhanan Leib Lewinski’s Hebrew tract Journey to the Land of Israel in the Year 5800 [C.E. 2040] (1892).

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The new state of [Theodor] Herzl’s Altneuland is located in Palestine, lying east and west of the Jordan with indeterminate boundaries to the south and north that do, however, stretch into Syria. It is based on a form of anarcho‑syndicalist ideals [i.e. ideals based on revolutionary, socialist unionism] and lacks means of coercion.

Land is publicly owned. A form of public ownership governs the operations of banks, industries, newspapers, and retail stores. Agriculture flourishes, fertilized by vast irrigation works, which also bring life to the desert areas. The swamps have been drained. Transport is electrified, the energy being drawn from water power, particularly from a canal created by the excavation of a vast tunnel joining the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea.

The latter’s chemical resources in bromium and potassium have made the country a world production center. The towns are spacious and well-planned, enjoying the benefits of a noiseless mass transit system. Men work a seven‑hour day; women have the vote. Cooperation is the keynote of political, agricultural, and social life, eliminating the exploitation of man by man. Criminals are not punished but reeducated. Education up to university level is free. The old city of Jerusalem is surrounded by modern suburbs, parks, institutes of learning, markets, and architectural triumphs.

In cultural respects, Altneuland is marked by tolerance for all faiths, religion being relegated to the status of a private concern, although the Sabbath remains the general Jewish festival. The reestablished Temple takes the form of a modern synagogue. But society does not concern itself with whether men worship the Eternal "in synagogue, church, mosque, in the art gallery or the philharmonic concert." There is no official language, although German predominates.

Among the favored pursuits of the population of Altneuland are attendance at German opera and French drama and participation in English outdoor sports. There are institutes for the study of culture and philosophy and a Jewish academy of forty members modeled on the Academie Française [the French Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666]. Moreover, the establishment of Altneuland has eliminated anti‑Semitism through reducing the impact of Jewish competition elsewhere.

In a similar vein, though with a more marked Jewish emphasis and less attention to detail, Elhanan Leib Lewinski [in his Journey to the Land of Israel in the Year 5800] imagined a society in which health‑-individual, social, and communal‑-is the norm. Physical well-being is fostered by the climate, form of diet (kashrut), agricultural way of life, purity of family life, and the ready availability of medical services. There is no longer a profusion of little shopkeepers‑-"once almost our second nature because of our history," they have returned to the land to lead a natural life.

The social health of the community is manifest in its prevailing equality. There is no labor question and no capitalist question, "for there are no workers and all are masters." Drunkenness and crime are absent, there is no hardship and therefore no crime. "There is nothing but peace and nothing but tranquility in the house of Israel."

Intellectual health is shown in the profusion of learned lectures, to which no entrance fee is demanded, as in Europe, and in the multitude of serious publications. The countryside blossoms as never before. The Dead Sea has been transformed into a thriving community.

"How great are thy deeds, O man!"’ exclaims Lewinski.

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The Jewish doctrine of the soul, in its passage from its biblical beginnings to the later versions wrought by philosophy, the kabbalah, and Hasidic thought, has undergone a far‑reaching transformation.

In the Bible, body and soul are viewed as one, and existence and meaning are attributed to the soul on the physical, human, and historical plane. With the passing of time, however, the soul came to be viewed as a metaphysical entity that belonged to, affected, and was affected by the realm of the divine, transcending the confines of history and nature.

No Existence Separate from the Body

The biblical conception, as noted, views the soul as part of the psychophysical unity of man, who, by his very nature, is composed of a body and a soul. As such, the Bible is dominated by a monistic view that ascribes no metaphysical significance to human existence, for it sees in man only his tangible body and views the soul simply as that element that imparts to the body its vitality.

The soul is, indeed, considered the site of the emotions, but not of a spiritual life separate from that of the body, or of a mental or emotional life in conflict with that of the body, it is, rather, the seat of all of man’s feelings and desires, physical as well as spiritual.

Such a conception views the entire entity of man as a “living soul,” or, to put it in our terms, a psychophysical organism created in the image of God, whose existence has religious significance within the reality of time and place alone. Nevertheless, the fact that man is defined as having been created in the image of God allowed for the expansive development of post-biblical thought.

The talmudic conception of man has its roots in the biblical worldview, but it was also influenced by developments in religious thought and by ideas current in the post-biblical world, especially within Hellenism, which embraces the possibility of the soul’s simultaneous existence on both a physical and a spiritual level. Although in rabbinic texts we find the heritage of the biblical conception regarding the psychophysical unity of the soul, under Greek influence there begins to develop alongside it a moderately dualistic anthropology suggesting a different status for body and soul.

Dualism: The Body and Soul As Separate Entities

Once belief in the immortality of the soul, the revival of the dead, and the World to Come had become part of post-biblical Judaism, its religious view of man in relation to the world underwent a change. The religious significance of the world was no longer limited by concrete reality or by its psychophysical expression in a human entity, which consisted of a united body and soul existing within historical time.

Alongside that reality was another, different one, which looked beyond the historical present and future. Thus, Judaism began to adopt a transcendental view of history and the meaning of human existence, and at the same time to view the soul as existing on a spiritual plane. It began, too, to speak of the soul remaining beyond the demise of the body, and of a spiritual life beginning prior to material existence.

The rabbinic view of the soul as an entity having a spiritual character and as a fixed, defined metaphysical element almost certainly developed under the influence of Orphic and Platonic Greek thought. We may assume, too, that the Greek view of the soul as belonging to the realm of the divine, infinite, and eternal, and the body to the realm of the material, finite, and mortal, also left its mark upon Jewish thought.

Plato’s idea of the preexistence and eternity of the soul, derived from his dualistic outlook, which set matter and spirit at odds with one another, was also influential. We must bear in mind, however, that for all that the dualistic anthropology expressed in the rabbinic texts had in common with the Platonic and Stoic attitudes current in the Hellenistic world, the rabbinic sages’ conception of this dualism and of the conflict between flesh and spirit was far less radical than that of the Greeks, who viewed body and soul as an absolute dichotomy.

Disembodied Spirituality

The dualistic conception of man, in which body and soul are diametrically opposed, bears within it, in addition to its metaphysical significance, the first stirrings of a religious striving toward the ideal of liberating the soul from the bonds of the physical, thereby enhancing its spiritual purity. This kind of outlook was entirely foreign to biblical Judaism, but became highly developed in medieval thought and especially in the kabbalah.

Having accepted the idea of the divine essence of the soul, Judaism now had to elaborate the non-divine, more vital and functional aspects of the human soul. This need to elaborate, as well as the influence of Greek thought, led to the development of the distinctions between the soul’s material and spiritual elements, between its intellectual, vital, and vegetable natures, and between the divine soul and the animal soul. These divisions gradually yielded symbols of spirit and matter, of nonbeing (ayin) and being (yesh).

In later stages of development, the Jewish conception of the soul was influenced by Greek philosophical views, as these were reformulated and interpreted by the Moslem and Christian theologians of the Middle Ages. For the first time, Judaism viewed the doctrine of the soul as belonging to the realm of philosophy, and medieval Jewish thought made a unique attempt to adapt these philosophical views to the Torah and to make them a means for interpreting concepts relating to ethics, religious piety, prophecy, and the knowledge of God.

The Soul as the Instrument of Perfection

Medieval Jewish thought focused its attention on the one hand on the immortality of the soul and the relationship between body and soul, or between matter and spirit, and on the other on the hierarchy of the upper worlds and the theory of knowledge. The answers that were proposed for these problems were clearly influenced by the medieval interpretations of Stoicism, Neo‑Platonism, and Aristotelianism.

In consonance with these influences, the medieval Jewish doctrine of the soul was often associated with the idea of perfection. Personal perfection could be achieved by means of the soul’s communion with or, as the Hebrew had it, cleaving to (devekut) the spiritual element surrounding it, that is, the “universal soul,” the “active intelligence,” or God himself. Looked at from a different perspective, the emphasis on communion meant that man’s relationship to God was established through intellectual effort, philosophical contemplation, or mystical devotion.

The Jewish doctrine of the soul, however, did not remain within the confines of the Greek schools of thought and their view of the soul as being essentially a philosophical problem. The philosophical concepts it had acquired regarding the spiritual hierarchy of the universe and questions bound up with the conception of the soul underwent a mythical‑Gnostic transformation in the twelfth century, when they encountered the early kabbalah and the Sefer ha‑Bahir.

The Divine Origin of the Soul

In the Sefer ha‑Bahir, the creation and the molding and sustenance of souls is bound up with an erotic myth that speaks of sexual union between cosmic entities in the world of the sefirot (divine emanations) and of the process of creation in general. The text alludes, in highly symbolic language, to a system that was further developed in the Zohar and other kabbalistic literature.

Three stages of development are discerned in the formation of souls: the ideal, the ontological, and the actual. These stages parallel both the processes of intercourse, pregnancy, and birth, by which the physical body comes into being, and the relationships between the sefirot in the supernal [i.e. divine] world.

The erotic symbolism by which the dynamic relationship between the various aspects of the divine is described in the kabbalistic system relates to the idea that the creation of souls takes place in connection with an act of cosmic union. In addition, it reflects deep religious implications regarding the exalted nature of the soul that were attached to human sexual union on account of its archetypal parallel in the supernal worlds.

The kabbalistic doctrine of the soul is based upon three fundamental assumptions regarding the nature of man: (1) the divine origin of the human soul; (2) the idea that man is structured in the image of the sefirot, and that his soul reflects the hierarchy of the supernatural worlds, and (3) the idea that man can influence the world of the divine.

The kabbalah borrowed the philosophical division of the soul into parts and superimposed a mystical quality upon it, holding that each part was expressive of different sefirot.

Reprinted with permission of The Gale Group from Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought, edited by Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr, Twayne Publishers.

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My grandfather bought the forest in Paluzh and ordered the peasants to cut down some trees. One day a group of children went to the forest to gather mushrooms. When they finished they ran off, having forgotten about one little girl so that they left her behind.

The girl sat down to rest on the stump of a tree and at that moment she began to cough, because a gilgul had entered into her.

At last she got home, and her family noticed that she coughed with the sound of a dog barking. When she was silent, the gilgul spoke; and when the gilgul spoke, she developed a goiter. The gilgul used to call the girl’s mother “Mother,” and they had to give him whatever he wanted. One day when he wanted milk, he said, “Mother, unless you give me milk, I’ll strangle your daughter. So bring me milk.” Another time when the girl’s mother was baking challah, the braided Sabbath bread, he said, “Mother, make challah for me, too. I want to eat some. ”

One of my uncles told him one day, “You’ve got an awfully big mouth. You want everything.” This made the gilgul cry. Whenever they ordered him to leave the girl, he would say, “If you want me to leave, you’ll have to bring ten rabbis. But if you bring the Rabbi of Oshmen, one will be enough.”

My grandfather disguised himself and said, “I’m the Oshmen Rabbi, and I order you to leave this girl.”

The gilgul replied, “Some rabbi you are! You’re the one who bought the forest and sent a couple of huge peasants with axes into it to chop down trees. And they cut down the one I lived in so that I had to enter the girl.”

The gilgul told them that he had once transmigrated into a dog, a very quiet yellow dog that my father himself had seen. Then Gentile boys killed the dog, so the gilgul entered into a horse, but the horse died, so he entered into a tree. Then Shmuel-Yoysef of Paluzh bought the forest and had the tree cut down, after which the gilgul entered into the girl.

He tormented the girl so severely that finally they went to the Rabbi of Oshmen. And the rabbi quarreled with the gilgul, because the gilgul wanted to leave by the girl’s throat and the rabbi wanted him to leave through one of her little fingers. At last he did leave, and a great shot was heard.

The story is told that before he went, he asked that candles be distributed for the sake of his soul. After that, the rabbi advised the family to sell the house and leave the town.

They followed the rabbi’s advice and emigrated to America.

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