Q&A: A Request from the Rabbi
A Request from the Rabbi
Question
Is there any chance the Rabbi could write an article about his view of the "World to Come"?
What is it?
The "world of ideas"? The "world of emanation"?
Religion is saturated with belief in a higher world, and I have no idea what that means.
I read a bit of Plato, and he also doesn’t really say anything (at least in the Phaedo).
Answer
I don’t think so. I have nothing intelligent to say about it. I don’t think it is connected to the Platonic world of ideas, which according to his view exists and has influence even today. I don’t understand what your fundamental difficulty is. We’re talking about a world in which souls exist and function without a body. What is unclear about that? You can’t picture it in sensory terms, but you also can’t picture an electron, or an electromagnetic field. The question of where this belief comes from and what it is based on, and what exactly happens there—those are questions about which I have nothing to say.
Discussion on Answer
I completely understand the difficulties at the beginning (what the source is and who said it), and I really don’t understand the difficulties at the end. What’s the problem? You won’t see with eyes, and not necessarily visual images. If you have contact with sensory objects, maybe you’ll perceive them without seeing them visually, just as today after the eyes see, the brain/intellect grasps the idea and meaning of the image. And other souls or angels you could perceive directly in other ways. Just as a blind person cannot imagine what sight is, maybe you cannot imagine what perception without senses is. So what?
I’m not saying that all this is true, only that I don’t understand the difficulties you’re raising. It’s not such a strong difficulty.
The World to Come means souls without a body?
That is Maimonides’ view. All the medieval authorities disagree and maintain that the World to Come is the world of the resurrection of the dead—that is, our world, only in a more spiritual form. (According to Maimonides, the resurrection of the dead is something devoid of meaning, and it has no understandable purpose or end).
I don’t agree, but that really isn’t important—neither for this discussion nor in general. The question concerned a world that is not material, and you can call it this world, the next world, or the one after that.
I was educated to believe that good people ("the righteous") have "Heaven," and bad people ("the wicked") have Hell.
Is there a basis for that? Where did they get it from?
"A soul without a body"—what does that even mean?
After all, at least as it seems to me, I am a soul that receives sensory impressions, so what exactly would I "see" if there are no light waves, and what would I "hear" if there are no sound waves?
Would there be some external object that I perceive?
In short, I’m confused.
What do you do about that?
Thanks