Q&A: The World to Come
The World to Come
Question
Rabbi, is it true that you hold that there is no life after death, that there is no reward and punishment?
I would be glad to get an answer on this topic (don’t worry, I’m not going to kill myself if I hear that).
I’m a 40-year-old Haredi kollel fellow, a certified city rabbi and ritual slaughterer, but I’m an inquisitive person. I was also involved in Kabbalah until about half a year ago; I left that too because I am a man of Jewish law, and I discovered many mistakes in the Ari, and from that I understood that the Ari’s mystical explanations were just imagined, as seems apparent from his character in his book Sefer HaChizyonot and even more from his book Sefer HaPeulot.
And I also understood that indeed the Zohar is not from Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, just as the Golem is not from the Maharal. Never mind what I took from my friends in the kollel over this.
I was exposed to the book by Israel Netanel Rubin, The Heresies of Maimonides.
It traumatized me. Did Maimonides really grasp what gnaws at every Haredi person whose mind opens up, and of course the most traumatic part is: is it really true that there is no life after death (which of course follows from there being no judgment and no Judge)? It’s completely crazy—this whole world is a blessing said in vain. At that point it’s no longer a God who can’t do everything, but simply one who can only do evil (according to that view).
Who needs all this suffering and garbage? How do you manage to live with something like that?
Are you certain that there is no life after death?
And what about all the stories of near-death experiences and dybbuks and séances and miracles by various rabbis in the previous generation? (I never believed that stuff anyway, but now that you’ve pulled the ground out from under life after death for me, I’m trying to hold on to it after all.)
Answer
I never wrote or said that I do not believe in life after death. What I said is that the factual principles of faith—the World to Come, providence, the coming of the Messiah—are not binding, because it is not clear to what extent they really originate at Sinai and are not later inventions. And it is also hard to bring proof from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), because it is open to interpretation (like “an eye for an eye” meaning monetary compensation), and therefore it is difficult to learn anything clear from it.
However, from reason alone it actually seems to me that there is life after death, since I am a dualist who thinks that there is something in us beyond the body. So when the body dies, that something will likely remain in some form. But even that itself is just a reasoning, and I do not think that reasonings have binding status for others who do not arrive at those conclusions. Each person according to his own reasoning, and reasonings can be mistaken. I do not cast someone into a pit or lift someone out of one on the basis of my own reasoning, however strong it may be. Especially since there is a law of compulsion regarding beliefs/opinions (I just posted a column about that).
Beyond that, even if there is life after death, I have no idea what happens there. The descriptions are the responsibility of the one describing them, and in my opinion no one really knows. Still, I will again say that in my opinion reason suggests that there is judgment and a Judge, as you wrote, and therefore it makes sense to say that there is reward and punishment in that world (even if not in this world). But again, this is a reasoning. As I said, I think it is correct, but I do not cast someone into a pit or lift him out of one because of my reasonings,
Discussion on Answer
As for contradictions in the words of the holy Ari—does the honorable questioner act this way with everything in which he sees a contradiction he does not understand, and say that there is nothing to it all? Certainly not. The world is full of contradictions for one who does not understand its depth—and there are resolutions that are not always understood by lesser minds.
There are contradictions in the laws of physics too; that does not mean that none of it is true, only that our minds do not grasp them.
And of course in the Torah itself and in the Talmud there are contradictions—and there are resolutions that do not always resolve things well, because of the limits of the one trying to understand.
About the Ari’s teaching, a great and trustworthy Torah scholar, Rabbi Chaim Vital, of blessed memory, testified that he saw all that he saw [as written in the introduction to Etz Chaim], and after him very wise people followed this path. Besides that, when they saw the Ari’s teaching they were amazed by its power and invested in it, such as the Vilna Gaon and others.
Seemingly, belief in reward and punishment follows from that same reasoning: if we concluded that there is a Creator, then it is very plausible that He would provide an instruction book for the purpose of the world and laws—and if so, a law has no value if there are no sanctions attached to it, and rewards for positive commandments.
And from there also comes belief in the World to Come, since here in this world there is no real reward and punishment visible to the eye, and “the righteous suffers,” etc.