I meant according to morality.

Rabbi, I seem to remember that once you said this is completely unnecessary, precisely because once someone has died, it’s just revenge.

Indeed, I meant reward and not punishment. As for punishment, there is room to discuss it, since if it is given in the World to Come, then it does not achieve its purpose (deterrence in this world). So it is more reasonable to threaten and not carry it out. But then either way there is no room for your question, since you assume there is a reason to punish, otherwise his wrongs are not being recompensed. That is, you assume that the justification for punishment is not deterrence but revenge.

What is the meaning of the distinction between reward and punishment? If we do not assume a purpose of desert or recompense for reward and punishment, but only deterrence / encouragement, then God would also have to pamper with a huge jacuzzi in the afterlife someone who behaved badly in this world, since by then it’s no longer known.

With reward, there is a stronger intuition that it is not given only in order to encourage, but because it is owed to me. A kind of fulfillment of a contract. By contrast, with punishment there is no meaning to fulfilling the contract, because I certainly would not want it fulfilled, and the Holy One, blessed be He, also has no interest in that. Therefore there it makes more sense to see it as a deterrent tool.

I once wrote a similar distinction regarding the difference between a penitent and someone who leaves religion. It is possible to forgive, beyond the letter of the law, for offenses I committed, because that is a negative balance. But in the case of someone who leaves religion, the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot erase his positive balance beyond the letter of the law. That can only be done with his consent.

With reward too there is no meaning to fulfilling the contract. I wouldn’t want it fulfilled (I’d want a much bigger reward than what I deserve), and God also has no interest in it (why should He care about pampering me more?!)

By the way, there is a kind of paradox here. God is not capable of punishing in the afterlife, otherwise that would contradict His being moral. Maybe this is an inability of the type of creating a square triangle, and therefore it is not really a limitation on Him.

In both messages here we’ve already entered the realm of hair-splitting. There is nothing immoral about this. It’s just not necessary. And regarding reward: I want it, but I don’t deserve it.