Thank you very much for the answer. The specific source I chose (because it was the one that convinced me the most) is the expression “lying with your fathers” and “he was gathered to his people” regarding death, which according to the plain meaning does not seem to describe a physical state, since the burial was not near the graves of the fathers or took place long after death, and seemingly without a World to Come (or some other solution) it is impossible.

Abraham, you could add from a different angle, like Samuel said to Saul when he came up through necromancy (which already shows a world of souls):

19. “The Lord will deliver Israel along with you into the hands of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me; the Lord will also deliver the camp of Israel into the hands of the Philistines.”

And already in the first chapter of Psalms the World to Come is spoken of in a hidden way, and you don’t need to go searching far for chapters that hint at it—certainly quite explicitly.
“4. Not so the wicked; rather they are like chaff that the wind drives away.
5. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
6. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish.”

I didn’t understand the source from Psalms.

That’s the best you found? Then the question really is weak.
“Lying with your fathers” means in the ground. Everyone is buried there. A cemetery is called “the house appointed for all the living.” Are all the dead in the world buried in the cemetery in your city? In the language of the Sages: “the workshop of the earth is one”—that is, the earth is one common place for all.
“Gathered to his people” means added to the collection of people who have passed from the world and/or to the historical memory of the nation.
These are not necessary interpretations, but they are entirely possible. That is enough to show you what I have written more than once: you can’t learn anything from the Hebrew Bible.
And all this is speaking only about the very basic principle of the survival of the soul (about which I’ve written more than once that it sounds very plausible to me in itself, but there is still no necessity to accept it on the basis of the sources). From your point of view, is the Torah’s “doctrine of reward and punishment” just the survival of the soul? When I speak about the doctrine of reward and punishment, I mean much more specific details, like Gan Eden and Gehenna, the sling-shot punishment, and the rest of the details of the doctrine of reward and punishment.

All the heretics ignore very clear sources showing that there is no World to Come.

“By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread until you return to the ground, for from it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust shall you return.”

And in general, if there were a World to Come, it would be far too important, and the matter would have been stated explicitly, as befits such an important fact. But there is nothing.

In short, if you look for explicit statements on the subject in the Torah, you find them: that there is no World to Come.

Indeed, it’s a strong claim that the World to Come and resurrection of the dead (as distinct from survival of the soul in Sheol, which was widespread in the ancient world)—if they existed then, they would have been explained at length over and over again. The only benefit one can derive from the forced excuses for why the deep secret was hidden (which nowadays every sniffling schoolchild knows) is that you can try writing them down on paper to see whether there’s still ink left in the pen.

With God’s help, 19 Kislev 5781

To the honorable K.N. — greetings,

The survival of the soul after death was, in the biblical period, one of the foundations of world culture. Every sniffling child in the ancient world knew and heard detailed stories about what happens “outside the box,” and was even familiar with experts who had the ability to communicate with those who are “outside the box.”

The Torah had to “work hard” to detach its believers from any attempt to maintain ritual or communication with the dead. The Torah demands that one’s connection with God be maintained here, “inside the box”: through a life of holiness by keeping the Creator’s commandments, through Torah study and listening to the words of the prophets, and through calling on the name of the Lord in prayer—“For what great nation is there that has God so near to it as the Lord our God whenever we call upon Him?”

One who experiences closeness to God in his life “inside the box” does not need intermediaries “outside the box”—not the heavenly bodies, not the angels, and not even the souls of the dead: neither the good ones who were gathered to their fathers in peace, nor the sinners who went down in sorrow to Sheol.

However, every child who studied the book of Genesis knew of the Garden of Eden, in which man and his wife were meant to live eternal life, the Garden of Eden from which man and his wife were expelled because of their sin. Every Jewish child therefore knew that death is not a “law of nature” but a “historical accident” that came because of sin.

And every child who memorized Genesis knew God’s promise to Abraham: “And you shall come to your fathers in peace.” Of the righteous the Torah says, “he was gathered to his people,” while the sinners go down in sorrow to Sheol. That is why Jacob feared, when bereaved of his son, that perhaps he was among those whose souls God does not wish to redeem from descending to Sheol.

Every Jewish child heard of Moses our rabbi who ascended to heaven and returned, and every child heard of Elijah and Elisha who revived the dead. Even with his mother’s milk the Jewish child imbibed that the souls of the righteous are “bound in the bundle of life with the Lord,” while the souls of the wicked are flung away “in the hollow of the sling,” in Abigail’s words; and that “the Lord kills and gives life, brings down to Sheol and raises up,” in Hannah’s prayer.

And every Jewish child read Isaiah’s prophecy: “Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust,” and “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from every face, and the reproach of His people He will remove.” The death that came upon humanity is a disgrace, an open wound that needed healing and will in the future be healed. Isaiah stands in a period when the people are on the brink of despair and fear the loss of their freedom and exile at the hands of a world empire. Against the despair that is beginning to seep in, the prophet must sharpen hope as well—both hope for the redemption of the people and the world, and hope for the abolition of death and the resurrection of those who dwell in the dust.

To a people leaving Egypt and about to enter the land of the living, it was necessary to emphasize the ability to find God “inside the box.” But to a people that already feels itself “thrown outside the box,” it is more necessary to emphasize that even “from the belly of Sheol” hope has not ceased, for “the Lord kills and gives life, brings down to Sheol and raises up.”

With blessings,
Ilan Spiegel-Workheimer

Forgive me, Rabbi, but if, as you say, “you can’t learn anything from the Hebrew Bible,” then I don’t understand on the basis of what source you keep the commandments, since everything in the Torah can be interpreted differently from the accepted way.

Abraham, this has already been discussed to exhaustion many times here on the site, in columns and in the talkbacks following them. There’s no point getting into it again here.
I’ll just say that the attitude toward the Hebrew Bible is derived from faith, not the other way around. Similar to what Leibowitz wrote, that the Oral Torah determined what the Written Torah is (see Talmudic discussions about Ecclesiastes and Esther, for example).
Beyond that, there are a few foundational things that can be taken from the Hebrew Bible, such as that God created the world and took us out of Egypt and gave us the Torah. And that there was our forefather Abraham, whose descendants we are. My comments are aimed at other details and values. There are also some moral values, but those too are not really to be derived from the Hebrew Bible, because we know them even without it (and if we didn’t agree with them, we would interpret the Hebrew Bible differently).
That’s it.

Thank you very much for the answer, but if the Written Torah was determined by the Oral Torah, that only strengthens the claim that there is a doctrine of reward and punishment. After all, in the Oral Torah the subject appears in greater detail, and concepts like Gehenna and Gan Eden are already mentioned there in the sense commonly accepted today. (See, for example, Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 8b, Yoma 87a, Nedarim 40a, and many other sources.) Unless, of course, you hold that the Oral Torah was intended to interpret only matters of Jewish law.

The Oral Torah has normative authority. When the sages of the Oral Torah determine that Ecclesiastes is part of the Hebrew Bible, they have authority to determine that. But with regard to facts, there is no authority. They cannot determine reality (whether there is or is not a World to Come). If this is a tradition from Sinai, I would accept it, because the Holy One, blessed be He, presumably knows. But if it is their own view, then there is no reason I should accept it on the basis of authority. In matters of fact there is no authority. I’ve dealt with this here more than once, and also in my trilogy.

Yes, but the factual claim of the Sages is not that there is or is not a World to Come, but that in the Written Torah there is a World to Come, and that is already a completely different claim (and in that too they really do have authority). Sources: Rabbah bar Sheila said in the name of Rav Hisda: Whoever speaks obscenely, they deepen Gehenna for him, as it is said: “The mouth of strange women is a deep pit.” (Sabbath 33a) And Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: At the שעה that that wicked man descended to Gehenna, all those who descended to Gehenna trembled. They said: Perhaps he has come to rule over them, or to become weak as they are, as it is said: “You too have become weak as we…” (Sabbath 149b)

There is no issue of authority here. The question is whether there is or is not. The fact that the Sages think that the Torah says there is does not mean that it really says that. On the halakhic plane, they say that the Torah says “an eye for an eye” means monetary compensation, and even if the Torah does not really say that, that is still the binding Jewish law. But regarding facts, it makes no sense to say that.
(By the way, independently of what I said above, it is hard to derive such a conclusion from the aggadic statements of the Sages. It may be metaphorical speech. They also speak about Rabbah slaughtering Rabbi Zeira, and apparently they are not describing a real event.)

It’s true that the fact that the Sages say something doesn’t make it true, but still it seems to me that you agree with me that if the choice is either to guess and speculate by ourselves or to listen to the speculations of the Sages, there is a higher probability that the Sages were right. (Because they relied on traditions that were closer to the truth in the broken-telephone game of the Mishnah.)

With God’s help, Sabbath eve of “And Jacob came whole,” 5781

In questions of metaphysics, a person has no way to determine either what lies behind nature, or what will happen after life, or what will happen at the end of days. In this, a person needs the testimony of the prophets, who received messages “from beyond the curtain,” from the Creator of nature and Master of history. And in their words it is explicit that there is “a future” also “outside the box” of the “here and now,” and the Tannaim and Amoraim, the disciples of their disciples, are the faithful interpreters of the words of the Torah and the prophets.

The attempt to separate the authority of the Torah in Jewish law from its authority in matters of faith leads to absurd situations. So-and-so will reach the empirical conclusion that some idol influences the world, for he saw that someone who entered the idol’s temple and prayed to it was healed of his suffering. But, being faithful to Jewish law, he will carry out on him “they are lowered and not raised,” since in Jewish law he has been defined as a heretic or apostate 🙂

With blessings,
Ilan Spiegel-Riketi

Abraham,
We weren’t discussing how plausible the Sages’ speculations are. That’s a different discussion. The question is whether they have authority and whether I need to accept their words in such matters. If you think they understand more than you do—accept what they say. That is perfectly fine.
It seems to me we’ve exhausted it.

Thank you very much. It was an honor and a pleasure for me to correspond with a wise and educated person like you.

All the best.

“And he was gathered to his people” describes the burial method in the ancient Near East. Anyone who knows a bit of biblical archaeology knows how to understand quite a few verses that can seem vague or obscure. The expression gradually entered the language and changed its original meaning, so that it came to describe death.
It seems from the Hebrew Bible that everyone is “gathered to his people,” and it has nothing to do with those who get to Gan Eden.

With God’s help, Sabbath eve of “And Jacob came whole,” 81

To David — greetings,

But regarding Jacob it says, “And Jacob expired and was gathered to his people,” while his burial took place only more than seventy days later. And similarly he commands his sons: “I am being gathered to my people; bury me with my fathers,” so the gathering to his fathers is adjacent to death.

And to Abraham God promises: “And you shall come to your fathers in peace,” whereas Abraham was not buried with his fathers. His coming to his fathers is his coming to them in the world of souls. (And from here the Sages learned that Terah repented.)

May the Sabbath be “a foretaste of the World to Come,” delight of spirits and bliss of souls!

With blessings,
Ilan Spiegel-Werkaheimer, may he live long and well

There’s something else too that, if you make an effort, you can manage to extract from the Torah.
And that is that the troubles of the Jewish people stem from the fact that they have leaders who think they are wiser than Moses our rabbi.

Hello Rabbi,
If the Rabbi doesn’t know whether there is a World to Come, reward and punishment, and also there is no providence, and the Holy One, blessed be He, does not intervene in the world and therefore you also do not pray to Him (not three fixed prayers), then that is a different situation from that of a classic believing person. It’s almost like being secular. True, commandments must be kept because that is the truth—for its own sake—that is what you do. That I know, but sometimes it brings laxity in commandment observance.
How does one reach such a level?
What motivates you / gives you strength to continue keeping the commandments? How do you live with it? In other words, how do you reach such fear of Heaven in your view? What do you work on or emphasize? Which books do you use or recommend?
Because just like that it’s hard, since you have nothing to hold on to and no motivating factor like reward, for example.
Thanks in advance

Adiel, it seems to me the Rabbi already left these talkbacks on Friday. Maybe it would be better if you wrote this to him as a question in the responsa section. (The question interests me too.)

I answered this yesterday too (for some reason it didn’t go up). I didn’t write that one should not pray. Prayer is like any other commandment. One should do what is true because it is true (see Maimonides, beginning of chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance). If there is laxity, that is natural and one must overcome it. To invent that there are positive consequences when there really aren’t does not solve anything. A person can fool himself, but that is not a solution.

With God’s help, 20 Kislev 5781

Aside from the testimony of the sacred writings and of the Sages, reason itself suggests it: after science discovered the law of conservation of matter and energy, according to which even in the material world nothing is lost but only passes from state to state—is it conceivable that that “breath of life” which the Creator breathed into the human body would be lost?

Just as the body’s matter does not perish, but returns to the earth from which it was taken—so the spirit “returns to God who gave it,” in the words of Ecclesiastes.

And Maimonides already explained (in chapter 9 of the Laws of Repentance) that the main reward of a person for his good deeds is the refinement of the soul for eternal life in the world of spirit. In this world, the doer of good merits “improved service conditions” that make it easier for him to acquire perfection of soul (ibid.), and also “its fruit” in this world for the good the person brought to others (commentary to Mishnah Peah).

And correspondingly, the suffering of the sinner in this world makes it harder for him to attain perfection of soul (Laws of Repentance), but it also serves as a wake-up call for a person to correct his way, as explained in the Laws of Fasts.

The fruit of prayer too is first and foremost the perfection of the soul, the strengthening of feeling and desire for closeness to God. The inner transformation a person undergoes in his prayer may also bring about greater divine assistance, whether on the spiritual plane or on the physical one.

With blessings,
Yaron Dov Spiegel-Yishpeh

Y

The law of conservation of spirit was already mentioned by Socrates, as is known.

But the Torah tells believers: for from dust you came—not from spirit. And no man has power over the spirit. Meaning, if there is something in the spirit that remains, it is not connected to the person. It is not part of the person. It is like the body that decays. The atoms remain, but that has nothing to do with the person.

I looked at the questions I asked about the doctrine of reward and punishment and saw that they can be sharpened.
My question is this: in your opinion, is there a greater chance that the doctrine of reward and punishment exists than that it does not exist?
If yes/no—why?
If we have no way of knowing the answer, why are the sources of the Sages not enough to determine that it is more likely, and to take their tradition into account as being closer to the truth?
Thanks in advance.

I simply don’t know. Especially if you are talking about the details of the doctrine of reward and punishment and not about the mere survival of the soul, regarding which I wrote that there is reason to think so.
The sources of the Sages are not enough because it does not seem that they had a tradition about these details. Thinkers throughout the generations said things according to their own reasoning. In that, they have no basis beyond reasoning, and everyone has reasoning.

Thank you very much for the answer.
1. I’d be glad to hear where the reasoning for survival of the soul comes from.
2. There is a claim that the World to Come exists because most of humanity has an intuition about it, and therefore we can be sure of its existence just as we are sure of every other thing that is based on our intuitions (in fact everything, since we have an intuition to believe what we experience through the senses). What do you think of that?

1. The reasoning is that if we have a soul, and at death the body separates from it, then apparently it remains.
2. Very weak. The intuition that most of the world has comes from traditional sources and has no independent standing. Even in Jewish law we do not count students together with the rabbi to make a quorum in a religious court, and where there are conflicting versions in a Torah scroll we do not count manuscripts copied from one another. I’m also not at all sure that most of the world really thinks this.

But we do have an intuition that there is reward and punishment (not necessarily in the rabbinic terms, but some kind of it), because if this was invented by many cultures (including Judaism), then apparently it’s something we have an intuition about.
Which basically creates a loop—if the Sages invented reward and punishment in the World to Come, that’s a sign that we have an intuition about it and it exists (you can see that they believed in it very strongly also from the story in Berakhot 28b about Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, who cried before his death because he could end up in Gehenna); and if they didn’t invent it—then obviously it exists.

We’ve exhausted it.

Yes, but you also have to write what your conclusion from the discussion is, if we’ve exhausted it.

Rabbi, what about punishment in the World to Come, since according to your approach the World to Come probably exists?
For example, do you think Hitler’s status is the same as Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s…?
If not, then is Hitler “punished” somewhere up above? Or does he simply not receive “reward”?
If yes, then would there also be distinctions among people who are not the most wicked, as opposed to completely righteous people?
If yes, would that include punishment for their transgressions?
If up to this point you agree with everything, then we can start continuing the discussion 🙂

I have no idea about any of this. I assume nobody else does either.

Actually, it seems to me that the Sages have some idea… (at least that’s how they behave).

The fact that Jacob was buried after a long time does not contradict what David wrote. There is a strong similarity between the verse and the burial method called “me’assefah” that was practiced in the ancient Near East and is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible.
One should remember that words sometimes change their meaning and drift somewhat away from their original context (for example, the word “summer,” which originally described the ripening of figs and today describes a season of the year).
Especially in a text written in metaphorical and allegorical form.

It should be remembered that the Bible was written for the generation to which it was addressed and according to the conceptual world they understood. In my opinion, trying to derive new, modern meanings from verses is mistaken.

It is also possible that there is another hidden intention—that the dead who are buried together are united in the World to Come / Sheol. In the Hebrew Bible there is great importance to burial location, and this can be seen in quite a few places. In later periods, the importance of location in the World to Come or in Gehenna was abolished and redefined according to deeds.

Certainly according to that approach Aaron too was buried with his fathers, and Moses as well…
Or perhaps they want to say that in general this expression was later translated into “death.” But that sounds more like an ad hoc interpretation for someone who already holds that theory so strongly that he has to describe two processes, and of course it also depends on the chronological order of the writing…
Also, as far as I remember, the expression “he was gathered to his people” is not very common and refers only to Ishmael, the Patriarchs, Moses, and Aaron.

On the other hand, one could distinguish between the expression “to his fathers” and “to his people,” because in Judges it says: “And also all that generation were gathered to their fathers, and another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel.” So if so, one can say that this expression describes death, but again it apparently cannot describe burial.
And the verse about Josiah:
“Therefore behold, I will gather you to your fathers, and you shall be gathered to your graves in peace, and your eyes shall not see all the evil that I am bringing upon this place.” And they brought back word to the king.
Here too one can understand a double meaning: “I will gather you to your fathers,” which is different from “to your graves,” so from here it is not speaking about burial. Or to read it as “I will gather you to your fathers” meaning “and you shall be gathered to your graves.” But if so, that is a great wonder—why the doubled language for one expression? And perhaps from here there is explicit proof that the expression has no connection to burial.

With God’s help, 24 Kislev 81

To Yoav and K —

Since we’re already talking about the ancient Near East—well, in the ancient Near East it was accepted among all the nations that the souls of the dead continue to exist after death, and this view is explained more than once in the Bible: both in the expression “and he was gathered to his people / to his fathers,” which is always mentioned before burial and also regarding people who were not buried with their fathers.

Abigail blesses David that “his soul be bound in the bundle of life,” while the souls of his enemies are tossed “in the hollow of the sling.” And already in Genesis the soul is described as a breath of life that God breathed into man, and about that spirit Ecclesiastes concludes that it will return to God who gave it.

So why distort the verses in order to force into them an intention that was not common in the biblical period?

With blessings,
Ilan-Hai Spiegel-Werkaheimer

Above there is an interesting exchange between me and Rabbi Michael Abraham exactly on this topic of “he was gathered to his people.” I’d be glad if you could address more in the form of argument versus counterargument the things we discussed, and not repeat my points, so that we can clarify the truth better.

Sorry, I just got confused between the comments (they really aren’t arranged according to argumentative order, it seems to me there are even around three or four separate sets of questions, answers, and arguments that are unrelated to each other and appear all mixed together in one big jumble).

Nefesh and neshamah in biblical language mean life. There are quite a few similar expressions. For example, “you shall not let any soul live.” If anything, the word “spirit” can perhaps be interpreted as some kind of individual self. Though even there it is not unequivocal.
“The hollow of the sling” — David was a slinger. It seems the intention was that his enemies would be struck down by him.

Indeed, that was believed in the ancient Near East, but the Torah came out against quite a few other beliefs. The Bible does not contain statements in both directions, but rather ambiguous expressions that can be interpreted in several ways.
I am of the opinion that according to the Bible what matters is resurrection of the dead, not some kind of world of souls. According to the plain meaning of the verses, everyone goes down to Sheol regardless of how righteous they are, and the descent there is not mentioned in a positive way.

To K: indeed one has to examine why there is a distinction between “his fathers” and “his people.” In the end, none of us is familiar with the biblical mode of expression and culture, and the Hebrew language has undergone many changes since then. In my opinion, the reference is to the me’assefah burial method, because the similarity between the descriptions is very strong.

In the Hebrew Bible there are quite a few times where you can see an expression changing its meaning.
I gave as an example the word “summer,” which already in the Bible has two meanings.
Another example: the term “profit” originally comes from the fact that in ancient times they would break off a loaf of gold and pay with it. In the Hebrew Bible the term changed a lot from its original meaning.
So in my opinion, my inference did not come after I shot the arrow. But again, it may be that I am mistaken, and it may be that the expression is double-meaning, or even not connected to burial at all.

Rabbi Michi also brought problematic examples here that are hard to understand literally.

There was an exchange here by Copenhagen a few weeks ago in which he brought quite a few verses showing that according to the Hebrew Bible there is no survival of the soul. Others interpreted those same sources differently, and there too there were quite a few interpretations that seemed ad hoc.
So even if the more reasonable interpretation points to a World to Come, there are quite a few verses that point the other way.

With God’s help, 25 Kislev 81

To Yoav — greetings,

The contrast in the Bible between the righteous, who are gathered to their people and come to their fathers in peace, and the sinners who go down to Sheol, is clear and unequivocal.

Thus the psalmist of the sons of Korah (Psalms 49) contrasts the wicked, who are “like sheep appointed for Sheol… Sheol shall consume their form from its dwelling,” with the righteous man who trusts in his God: “But God will redeem my soul from the hand of Sheol, for He will take me, Selah.”

And so too Abigail’s description that the soul of the righteous is bound in the bundle of life with the Lord his God, and Ecclesiastes’ description: “and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

The only righteous man who even entertains the thought “I shall go down mourning to my son, to Sheol” is Jacob, bereaved of his son, and he sees in that a sign that he is not wanted by his God.

With blessings,
Yaron Fishel Corinaldi

I have another question for the Rabbi: I heard there is also a line of reasoning for the existence of a World to Come that includes reward and punishment, based on the fact that we have an intuition that if we do something bad we should be punished, and if we do the opposite then we should receive reward. It sounds very simplistic, but that is how the legal and human system has worked for many years, and if God implanted in us the understanding that bad = punishment, good = reward, it seems to me that this is sufficient reasoning. I’d be glad if the Rabbi would share his opinion on the claim.

That is certainly plausible. It seems to me that this is the main source for the development of these theses.

Thank you very much. Have a pleasant day.