From Mr. Max Men’s bizarre words it comes out that our one and only supreme purpose in life is continuity, for some reason known only to Max. A kind of miniature Nietzsche. According to this, anyone who cannot have children is consigned to hell because he has no future, and we should destroy, kill, and wipe out every old person and every sick person who contributes nothing to the future. Hitler beat him to it in practice.
By the way, the fellow never explained to us why only life after death is an illusion, but not life here with this whole continuity business. In the end, it’s just a physical property implanted in a person to make him want what is desirable in an arbitrary way, without any real reason behind it. After all, every experience is an illusion, and just as illusion here involves no contradiction to our very existence, so too even if we assume that life after death is an illusion, that would not diminish Mr. Max’s illusion.

What does “a better name than sons and daughters within My house and within My walls” actually mean there?
“And let not the eunuch say: Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, and choose what I desire, and hold fast to My covenant: I will give them in My house and within My walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give him an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.” (Isaiah 56:3)

I don’t know how strong the proofs he brings are,
but it seems to me that he’s talking there about the psyche.
I don’t understand why call it a soul.

What do you mean by the difference between psyche and soul?

Psyche is simply a term that describes factual things that exist in it of course the definitions are subjective, but the things themselves are factual. Things like joy, sadness, anger, love, hate, rage, calm, and in deeper terms it refers to personality structure, character traits, way of thinking, a certain temperament.

Soul is a term that usually means something heavenly, supernatural, and eternal that exists in a person.

To say that the soul is physical and does not continue to exist? Possible. But there’s no point in calling it a soul. You can just call it psyche. And psyche in the sense I described above exists in animals too, and even in gentiles 🙂
(It may be petty of me to get hung up on words, because both of these terms, psyche and soul, are terms described by subjective definitions.) Of course you can also always say that there really is within us a supernatural and heavenly soul, and that even so it is temporary and at our death it dies or ceases to exist as well. But that seems to me a not-so-reasonable claim.

If I understand correctly, you’re saying that the soul is the thing in itself, detached from all characteristics, and the psyche is all the phenomena through which the soul comes to expression? Or are they two completely separate parts? (I can’t identify different parts within myself. It all seems to me to be me — the whole package of drives and abilities and tendencies and traits.)
By the way, regarding survival of the soul, for me it really does seem more plausible that consciousness remains and whether the body decayed or not is really irrelevant. But on the other hand I don’t see any reason to distinguish between what was before birth and what is after death. Just as I remember nothing whatsoever from what was before birth, if there was anything, and therefore I can’t develop any concern for that essential thing that was there (if they tell me that that part greatly enjoyed the radiance of the Divine Presence before I was born — good for it in its old age), so too I don’t consciously expect anything different after death.

Are the psyche and the soul two parts separated from one another? Is there a higher, purer, finer, loftier soulful self than the pathetic psyche? Or does the soul itself have unique character traits of its own that are also revealed through the psyche? Or perhaps what we call psyche is really just a manifestation of the soul and nothing more? These are good and weighty questions, and I have no ability to answer them; dealing with them is several leagues above me. My whole claim was only that the term soul usually refers to a claim about something heavenly and eternal embedded in us, not to ordinary psychological traits and consciousness — which in fact also exist in animals. The moment someone claims that the soul is physical and ceases to exist upon death, he isn’t talking about soul but about psyche or consciousness. And in my opinion it’s just unnecessary to call it soul (just as it was completely unnecessary to call the laws of physics or nature “God”).

Your question at the end is an interesting speculation about survival after death. It seems quite possible to me that there is some kind of existence of the “I” after death. But consciousness itself will not continue to exist. And it may be that this “part” itself has no consciousness at all, and it only returns to being connected to the Holy One, blessed be He. And maybe that is actually the entire reward. I never thought about it that way.
And maybe not…
Until the day I die — and possibly even afterward — I won’t know anything about this matter.

Correction:
And consciousness itself will *not* continue to exist..

Rational, what do you gain by dodging and calling what he calls “soul” “psyche”? He asked a simple question: from the combination of cells it’s possible to produce several heads in one person, and each one has different consciousness. Will you say that their psyche is split but the soul is unified?! And if not, then according to his claim it follows that the division of souls is in human hands. And it doesn’t make sense to say that if the soul is something non-physical, it would depend on human beings.

Hello righteous people. First of all, kudos to the honored rabbi for the site. And I can testify before the rabbi that your site is very popular, thank God, from the fact that I can see where the traffic to my post in question is coming from here. That is, from the number of views that post of mine suddenly got, and I can see where everyone is coming from. That is enough proof that, thank God, the rabbi has reward for his labor. And by the way, that’s how I became aware of your wonderful site, and for that you deserve all blessings and thanks. And may it be God’s will that you truly succeed, that your students grow wise and become genuine Torah scholars, amen and amen, for that is the whole purpose of teaching Torah.

So, righteous people, I came here because I saw a need to clarify why I discuss this deep subject at all. It’s important to me that people know this, so with your permission I’m writing my words here.
Well then, there are people who deal with this field of life after death just as an intriguing and intellectual topic.
There are those who deal with it just because they like to argue and hurt others and feel smarter than them. And that is true of both sides, those in favor and those against.
There are those who deal with it for a narrow purpose — narrow in every sense — which is to steal souls that are not theirs away from their parents. Parents, in order to educate their children, use all kinds of strategies — in the spirit of “by wise guidance you shall wage war” — so that the child will get used to being a good and upright person as second nature, in the spirit of habit becoming nature. And so they tell their children all kinds of stories and homilies, along the lines of Ibn Ezra’s words in his introduction to the Torah: “There is also a homiletical interpretation that is good for others, and it will guide the youths on the path of understanding.” Then these vile wicked people come along, wanting to rob the parents of their efforts with this cheap demagoguery. Usually the ones engaged in this fraud are people of regimes and fanatics of all kinds of ideologies.

On the other hand, there are the thinkers in Judaism who dealt with this in every generation, especially those who were against it, for reasons of worldview. That is, their argument is always that, with all due respect, this may be needed for educating children on the path of understanding. Why is that “the path of understanding”? Because otherwise you need to invent real-life threats for him, like regime and police with a stick and punishment and prison and so on. And Judaism is against a ruler and authority, certainly in education, and so there is no choice but to invent imaginary threats for them until they learn on their own that this was only for their own good, so that we would not have to enslave them to some charlatan who speaks in the name of regime and ruler. But as for adolescents, and certainly as for servants of God who want to serve God מתוך דעת — out of understanding — and not out of slavishness and animal fear, they cannot continue to cling to life after death. All the more so because they completely lose the reasons for the commandments, as I explained in the post mentioned above.

But I — and this is what I want to clarify here — was also not interested in this. Meaning, I am not going to decide the matter for others (my personal opinion need not interest anyone). I came to do something entirely different: to make sure that, God forbid, we should not have a cut-and-dried Torah. In the spirit of: “Had the Torah been given cut and dried, the foot would have had no place to stand.”
And I will explain this properly, with your permission.
We’ll explain it with a question, as is customary among Jews. Why didn’t Moses our Teacher write a Shulchan Arukh and be done with all the problems?!
The answer is that in a dynamic universe, no such thing exists. A person would have to be a fool to take a dynamic, living, vibrant human being, who innovates and creates and so on, and turn him into a deterministic robot. And a cut-and-dried Torah turns a person into a deterministic robot. This is not only a moral question of how we turn a person into a silent deterministic slave. It is a question of practicality, because we would lose all the good that a dynamic human being can bring to mankind, to all of us, and to future generations. And not only that — even with respect to God: if His creation is deterministic, however sophisticated and advanced it may be, it is limited. And to me that is a failure. Is that all God, heaven forbid, can do? But if God’s and the parents’ creation is an intelligent dynamic creature, then the creation has no limitation; it is infinite, and that is the greatness of God and also of the parents.
Beyond all that, there is another critical problem with a cut-and-dried Torah. As we said, there is no such thing. But in every present moment there are people who think there is — that there is a cut-and-dried Torah — and then by coercion, and by nullifying all human morality, they do everything to impose their deterministic truth on everyone. After all, by their own free will, dynamic human beings will not be deterministic.
And from here comes all human evil in history. The future sees that the past failed, so it looks for a new deterministic ideal and imposes it on the free dynamic human being, and so it goes, over and over again.
Let us note that this always exists especially in regimes, because a regime is always a professional deterministic system and therefore it always fails. And that is the deep reason why the Torah and Judaism are against regimes and a ruler and governance and so on.
It is not only the lack of human freedom that follows from the very existence of a regime; it is chiefly the transformation of a person into a deterministic robot, and then the culture, the quality of the people of the nation, stands still. But there is no standing still in a dynamic universe, and therefore one either advances or goes backward. And that explains the decline in our morality from the day a regime was imposed on us — and in the name of Judaism, no less.

Therefore Moses our Teacher did not give us a cut-and-dried Torah. So what did he give us? He gave us life. Meaning: what life is, how life is eternal, and what the path is to merit that. It is not just a question of meriting eternal life. It is a matter of principle, because there is no development without memory, which is always filled by the forefathers in every generation, so that those who are born are born with vast experience beyond the experience an individual has from living his seventy years. And without experience you do not progress.
So the Torah, ostensibly, should have arranged life itself for us, so that first of all we would live properly. Then we would be free people, and then each person would define for himself the meaning of life and advance himself and his generations and all the generations together with him. And we — human beings — would advance God Himself. As overly simple as that may sound, that is the truth, for God’s greatness depends on the level of the human being. So the more the human being rises, God rises with him. (We won’t get into whether God actually needs this or not, because that is not relevant to His essence at all. What is relevant is recognition by human beings, and that recognition, and its level, depends on human development and elevation.)

From the Torah’s point of view, all the human problems that exist among the nations and among us should long ago have been solved. Because everyone, all human beings still — and this is a disgrace and a shame — are busy with what life is and how one should live correctly, instead of long since being free people and marching forward.

Now then — and here I come to the main point — the topic of life after death turns the Torah into a cut-and-dried Torah. Because once a person thinks about life after death, he basically comes to the conclusion that “the Merciful One wants the heart,” and then does nothing. He just gives the heart. And in order to give vapor, he does not need to activate his divine intellect; on the contrary, the intellect interferes with his ability to activate the heart.

And beyond all that, he comes to impose things on others, and does so out of lack of understanding (he has only heart), and thinks he is doing a good deed, when in fact this is the source of all human evil. At a deeper level, this is the type of false altruism. And as is known, all human evil comes from false altruism. (I have written a lot in this area, for example here [post no. 146 in the table of contents: “Love your neighbor as yourself” — if you do not love yourself, how will you know how to love your neighbor?] and here [post no. 262 in the table of contents: Guardianship over the Jews? “Do not speak in my name” — Hannah Arendt].)

But again, despite all the reasons to oppose it, I do not come to decide the matter, but to leave it as a discussion, so that we should not have a cut-and-dried Torah.
Just as in every other field in Judaism, the Jewish literature never leaves anything cut and dried. The Torah, and on top of it the Mishnah, and the Mishnah itself gives many opinions, and on top of it the Talmud, and the Talmud itself gives many opinions. And on top of the Talmud came the Geonim and the Tosafists, and on Maimonides came the Raavad, and on the Shulchan Arukh came the commentaries and the Rema, and down to our own day there is no field in which something is cut and dried. And if such a thing did happen in some marginal area like life after death, then one really must worry about making sure it not be cut and dried. And that is what I am doing here at a deeper level. I am trying to awaken readers to understand that this is not cut and dried as it seems to fools. It is not cut and dried from the standpoint of Judaism, and it never was cut and dried in Judaism, and it is not cut and dried from the standpoint of modern thought and philosophy, and not cut and dried scientifically.

In conclusion: it was important to me that people understand that I have one primary interest in all my engagement in this field, namely that we should not have a cut-and-dried Torah in any field. And I hope I have not burdened you too much with my many words.
With blessings,
max maxmen

A lot of nonsense showing a basic lack of understanding of concepts was written in the article you brought.
For example:
“It follows that the ‘I,’ consciousness/the soul, is a physical result and not something outside us = metaphysical.”

It seems that the writer does not understand what consciousness is, what physical means, what metaphysical means, what is outside us and what is not. Everything is all mixed up, and when the concepts are confused, you can say whatever you want and infer whatever you want. And the rest of the confused people will think they heard correct things.

In short: nonsense, not serious.