The following was originally published in a “Dear Rabbi” column in The SHPiEL, a bi-weekly student-run Jewish student newspaper at the University of Florida.
To Hell and Back
Q. Do Jews believe in Hell?
A. We?re all going to Hell so don?t worry about it. Well, sort of. It depends on what you mean by Hell. Rebbi Nachman (b. 1772) was fond of saying that what we go through in this world is much worse than going through Hell (Gehenim). Strange, I thought that Judaism was all about life: valuing life, respecting life, getting the most out of life.
True and true. We walk around with an inherent tension. See, we are of two worlds. There is something called the ?Soul? (Neshama), every person has one. It is that place in us where we keep it real. It is from this place that our love emanates, our passions burn and our inner peace chills. The Torah teaches us that our Souls were ?blown? into our bodies. This is where the marriage of ?body and soul? took place. Souls like to keep company with the soulful stuff. On the other hand, our bodies like tangible, tactile and stuff-I-can-get-my-hands-around type stuff.
Judaism has a novel approach that looks to quell the opposing drives of the body and soul. In order to avoid an all-out war, and a fall into not-speaking terms, the Jewish perspective seeks to fully integrate the two worlds. That?s right; Judaism has this radical idea that scarfing down a meal or tossing a football can actually be a holy experience. It depends on our head-space. The Jewish outlook aims to elevate the physical world in order to reveal the inherent spiritual nature within all things. Our spiritual evolution is determined by the type of lens with which we see the world.
Gehenim (Hell for Jews) is an accelerated time slot where we do clean-up on what we didn?t finish in this world.
Please shelve the images of red devils, pitchforks and uncomfortably humid weather, and we can begin to talk about Jewish Hell. Hell really doesn?t discriminate, Hell no, Hell is for everyone! The good news is that it is only temporary, for the overwhelming majority.
Aside from the few who have reached a satisfying level of self-perfection or, on the contrary, those who are exceptionally evil, Gehenim is a spiritual stop-over, a purification pit stop. Many of our sages describe this transition period as a time in which we learn how to let go of our investments in the physical world and adjust to our newfound disembodied (spiritual) orientation. The Talmud likens the departure of an unsavory type from this world to pulling cotton from a thorn bush. The cotton tears and pulls as its connection to the thorn bush is almost inextricable. In contrast, the righteous individual?s experience of leaving the world is described as being as seamless as removing a single hair from a bowl of cream – a smooth transition due to an already worked-out perspective on how to live the good life, kosher-style.
So, in a nutshell, Jews don?t believe in Hell, we believe in Gehenim. The concept of Gehenim tells us to make sure that the soul?s in the saddle, pulling the reins. The marriage of body and soul is a happy one only when there is good communication and when the soul, your better half or higher self, is calling the shots.
Peace
Rabbi Yonah