Lilienblum suggests that rabbinic homiletic interpretations were a kind of intellectual challenge in the study hall, like a super-creative Bible quiz, or like the ad hoc verbal acrobatics of poets. So a question would come up from the rabbi: from where do we know resurrection of the dead from the Torah? And the sages listening to him would start bringing creative supports from their knowledge of the Hebrew Bible. And just as predator cubs wrestle with one another in play meant to sharpen their hunting abilities for when they grow up, so too, in a different sense, the sages of Israel would debate with one another to keep their memories sharp and improve their associative abilities.

*bring (not: prophet-bring)
*debate (not: apologize)

When I read Maimonides and Abarbanel on this subject, the impression I got was that they were not especially impressed by these proofs, and that’s why they focused the main basis for resurrection of the dead from Scripture on Daniel chapter 12 (though in my opinion there are also psalms in which the outlook of some kind of life after death is reflected fairly clearly).

More generally, it seems that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) had much less of a problem disagreeing with aggadic midrashim, and they didn’t try to base their theological systems on them, whereas today in the public mind these things have acquired an almost sacred status, something like the Written Torah. If someone dares to say that this or that midrash is not a sufficiently convincing reason to accept some worldview, he is immediately labeled a heretic at best or a Karaite at worst. But there is a catch: this ends up making the Torah look ridiculous in the eyes of the public, who otherwise might have been interested in the question of its truth.

For example, the midrash on which fans of the cult around Rashbi’s grave on Lag BaOmer like to rely: “Rava said: This teaches that Caleb separated himself from the counsel of the spies and went and prostrated himself on the graves of the fathers. He said to them: My fathers, ask for mercy on my behalf that I be saved from the counsel of the spies.”

And as for the actual factual intellectual question whether there will be resurrection of the dead, the answer depends on how much trust we place in the antiquity of Daniel. In my opinion, one can show that it is sufficiently early, that is, before the Hasmoneans at the very least, and therefore the prophecies in chapter 11, which descend to the resolution of detail upon detail and were fulfilled precisely, justify trusting that what is said about the future later in the vision in chapter 12 is true as well.

Copenhagen,
Factual questions are not a matter of belief but of reality in practice (there either will be resurrection of the dead or there won’t). A question of belief is whether the Master of the Universe can resurrect the dead, and it seems to me that even the Rabbi agrees that He can. We pray “who revives the dead” because we believe that the Creator’s mercy will bring about resurrection of the dead (“who revives the dead with abundant mercy” — a moral reason). To make the question of resurrection depend on the question of Daniel’s antiquity sounds strange to me (what difference does it make to me whether it is early or late?).

As for the homiletic interpretations, one could say that the bigger the question, the more answers there are (unless they convince me that these are different laws).

With God’s help, 16 Shevat 5779

Resurrection of the dead is explained not only in Daniel 12 (mentioned by our friend “Copenhagen”) but also in Psalms 104: “You take away their breath, they perish and return to their dust. You send forth Your spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the earth.” And in Isaiah 26: “Your dead shall live, my corpses shall arise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust, for your dew is a dew of lights, and the earth shall cast out the dead.”

The revival of a dead person already occurred through Elisha, who revived the son of the Shunammite woman, and as for Elijah the prophet, he went up to heaven in a storm, and Malachi prophesies that he will return “before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of fathers to children and the heart of children to their fathers.”

And reason also points this way: death is only a decree decreed upon humanity because of the sin of the first man, and when that sin is repaired, the decree will be annulled and “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe tears from every face” will be fulfilled.

This hope is also hinted at in the Torah, specifically in the seemingly pessimistic verse speaking of Moses’ death, which would bring in its wake the people’s spiritual decline. Here the Torah hinted, through the principle that “Scripture is interpreted by what comes before it and after it,” that the word “and arise” is interpreted both backward — “You will lie with your fathers and arise” — and forward: “and this people will arise…”

At the height of the fall, the opening for hope is already hinted at. And so they expounded the terrible verse: “Fallen, she shall no more rise, virgin Israel,” by also reading “rise” as going with what follows: “She has fallen, she shall no more. Rise, virgin Israel.” Here too the homiletic reading turns harsh calamity into hope!

Best regards,
S.Z. Levinger

On interpretations of this type, see the article by Prof. Simcha Kogut, “Scripture Is Interpreted by What Comes Before and After It” — a linguistic analysis of midrashim based on double reading, and their relation to cantillation punctuation, in the Jubilee Volume for Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, vol. 2, pp. 697–706)

I didn’t fully understand your distinction between questions about the Creator of the world and questions about what will happen in the future. Both, after all, deal with facts about reality. In both cases you are asking: is reality this way, or is it otherwise?

Agreed that the moral reason may give some a priori weight to the *possibility* that there will be resurrection of the dead, but it is not sufficient in itself to *prove* that such a fantastic thing will happen. Maybe there is a different kind of afterlife, maybe a world of souls, maybe union with Buddha, or maybe, as pagans believe, reincarnation, or maybe all reward and punishment are given in this world, although we lack sufficient information to explain “why the way of the wicked prospers,” as Jeremiah asks. In order to determine what is true in hazy matters like these, you need revelation. And that is what happened in the book of Daniel.

I already pointed out the practical difference made by the question of whether Daniel is early or late for the intellectual proof of resurrection of the dead. Is it really that unclear? I’ll quote:

“In my opinion, one can show that it is sufficiently early, that is, before the Hasmoneans at the very least, and therefore the prophecies in chapter 11, which descend to the resolution of detail upon detail and were fulfilled precisely, justify trusting that what is said about the future later in the vision in chapter 12 is true as well.”

On fast days they would go out after the prayer service into the city square to pray in the cemetery, and the Talmud (Taanit 16a) brings two opinions as to the reason: “And why do they go out to the cemetery? Rabbi Levi bar Hama and Rabbi Hanina disagreed about it. One said: ‘We are considered before You as though dead,’ and one said: ‘So that the dead may ask mercy for us.’ What practical difference is there between them? The difference is graves of gentiles” [to which only the first reason applies].

Rava adopted the second reason (Sotah 34b): “This teaches that Caleb separated himself from the counsel of the spies and went and prostrated himself on the graves of the fathers. He said to them: My fathers, ask for mercy on my behalf that I be saved from the counsel of the spies.” And Tosafot explained (there, s.v. “My fathers”) that there is no direct speaking here to the dead, but rather that “through the prayer that this person prays, they inform them that he prayed in this way.”

Best regards, S.Z. Levinger

In my comment “Scripture Is Interpreted by What Comes Before and After It — Hope Growing out of Catastrophe”

Paragraph 3, line 2:
… the decree will be annulled, and the following will be fulfilled: “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe tears from every face” (Isaiah 25:8)

With God’s help, 17 Shevat 5779

To Copenhagen — greetings,

I don’t understand why you are so upset about reincarnation of souls. After all, in resurrection of the dead (mentioned explicitly in Psalms 104: “You take away their breath, they perish and return to their dust; You send forth Your spirit, they are created,” in Isaiah 26: “Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust,” and in Daniel 12: “And many of those who sleep in the dusty earth shall awake”), the soul essentially returns to a new body, since the first body has already decayed and dispersed. So what, then, is the difference between “resurrection” and “reincarnation”?

A state similar to reincarnation into an animal is described in Daniel chapter 4, where it is told that Nebuchadnezzar turned into a beast for seven years as punishment for his pride.

Something akin to partial reincarnation as well (what I think is called a “spark”) — that the spirit of a person who has departed from the world rests upon someone else and influences him — is described in I Kings chapter 22, regarding a spirit that went out to entice the false prophets so that they would incite Ahab to go out to war and fall there (and according to rabbinic midrash this was the spirit of Naboth the Jezreelite). Also Elisha asks Elijah…

And perhaps Elisha’s request to Elijah as well, “Let there be, please, a double portion of your spirit upon me” (II Kings chapter 2), may be interpreted as a request that Elijah’s spirit continue to accompany him “more than during his lifetime.”

A comprehensive survey of the various opinions in Jewish sources on the question of reincarnation of souls may be found in the article by Dr. Doron Danino, “The Belief in Reincarnation in Judaism,” linked from the Wikipedia entry “Reincarnation.” A full book by Dr. Danino on the controversy over reincarnation in Venice, Amsterdam, and Hamburg in the 17th century is also mentioned there. And “give to a wise man and he will become wiser still.”

Best regards, S.Z. Levinger

Levinger,

You inserted into the Talmud, on your own, the words “to pray in the cemetery” — which do not appear there. That is certainly an anachronistic reading, since the Talmud gives a reason for the matter: internalizing that we are considered as dead, and some say so that the dead will ask mercy for us.

“Rabbi Levi bar Hama and Rabbi Hanina disagreed about it: one said, ‘We are considered before You as though dead,’ and one said, ‘So that the dead may ask mercy for us.’ What practical difference is there between them? The difference is graves of gentiles.”

The Talmud concludes that according to the first view one may even go to gentile graves, and Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh ruled accordingly for that same reason. Meaning, according to what you wrote, it would come out as though the Talmud encourages prayer at gentile graves, since that is the whole practical difference between the two views.

The problem is not specifically with belief in reincarnation as such, but with the very illness that this belief points to as a symptom: all kinds of strange inventions are accepted with dread and devotion as though they were Torah from Sinai, without criticism. That was not the way of the Torah given at Sinai.

This is not the place to discuss the question of the logical and metaphysical possibility of reincarnation. The matter would require discussion of how the identity of the “I” is preserved over time, and whether resurrection of the dead means that some specific causal continuity must exist between the previous body and the renewed one. These problems may indeed undermine even the metaphysical possibility of reincarnation itself. But even if not, there are, after all, countless strange possibilities one can imagine as to what might be — and merely because something is possible, that in itself is no proof of its truth (except for the possibility of God in accordance with the ontological proof). The question is not what is possible, but only: what is true.

Nebuchadnezzar did not become a beast; rather, he went mad, was humiliated, and behaved like an animal.

The spirit that enticed was, in the plain sense, part of the host of heaven:

“And he said, Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left. And the Lord said, Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said in this manner, and another said in that manner. And the spirit came forth and stood before the Lord and said, I will entice him. And the Lord said to him, By what means? And he said, I will go forth and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And He said, You shall entice him, and you shall also prevail; go forth and do so.”

That same host of heaven to whom God turned at the time of creation in the phrase, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”

I would not take a nice creative aggadic tale about personal revenge and settling a score — which even according to that reading has nothing to do with reincarnation, but only with creating an illusion in the consciousness of the false prophets (since it speaks of a lying spirit in many prophets, not of a personal embodiment in some body) — and use it to ground a worldview.