PARADISE AND HELL? DO THEY EXIST?

 Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

Many people believe that after we die, somehow the righteous go to paradise and the wicked go to hell. In fact, in Turkish the appropriate response to a death notice is : mekani cennet olsun. Namely, “May his/her repose be in paradise.” Where does this belief come from? Is there really a physical place called “paradise” or “hell’? And, where is it?

In the Hebrew Bible, the dominant belief was that after death, you went down to a place called Sheol, and stayed there for eternity. The concept of resurrection after death appears late in the Bible. It is referred to for the first time in the writings of the prophet Ezekiel (37:11-12), in the 6^th century BCE, after the destruction of the First Temple of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. But the Rabbis, who emerged in the 1^st cent. CE, after the Second Temple of Jerusalem was burned down by the Romans in 70 CE, and especially the Pharisaic teachers (but not the Sadducees), turned this into a cardinal belief not only for the people of Israel but also for every individual (See, for ex. Mishnah, San. 10:1). Early Christians, following rabbinic teachings, accepted this as part of their religious doctrine. Not only do they believe that Jesus was brought back to life on the third day after the Crucifixion (see for ex. Mark 16: 9), but according to the New Testament,  he also raised a few others from death, like the daughter of Jairus (Luke 8: 44) or Lazarus (John 11).  Islam too, following, the Hebrew Bible, affirms this assumption, and teaches that Allah will resurrect everyone from their graves on the Day of Judgment (Quran, 22:5-7).

In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Genesis states that Adam and Eve lived in Gan Eden (the “Garden of Eden”- Gen. 2-3). Later on, the Rabbis taught that this garden was set aside for the righteous in the world-to-come. Using their unbridled imagination, some Rabbis described “paradise” (an original Persian word that the Greeks modified into paradeisos, meaning, an “enclosed park,”) in colorful language as “a place of waterbrooks encompassed by 800 species of roses and myrtles” (Yalkut, Bereshit, #2; The Book of Legends, p, 570). It is also where  “each righteous person is given a canopy in accordance with the honor due him” (same). Other Rabbis pointed out that “in the world to come there is neither eating nor drinking; no procreation of children or business transaction, no envy or hatred or rivalry but the righteous sit enthroned, their crowns on their heads, and enjoy the luster of the Shehinah (that is, divine grace)” (Ber. 17a). Similarly, hell (gehinnom, “the Valley of Hinnom,” where originally the rite of child sacrifice was practiced in the 6 and 7^th cent. BCE) was described by some Rabbis as “rivers of pitch and Sulphur flowing in boiling suds” and where “men were suspended by their noses, hands, tongues and feet” (Masekhet Gehinnom, BhMi: 147-49; The Book of Legends, p. 570).

I suggest there is another way to look at life after death, if there is one. First, we need to ask, when is this resurrection (or reincarnation in Jewish mysticism-two different concepts) taking place? According to most Rabbis, this will happen at the end of time after the arrival of the Messiah. Second, in the meantime what happens when death arrives? Science tells us that the body begins a process of decomposition. Third, is there a place called “paradise” or “hell”? No one knows. It is a pure assumption created by human imagination, expressing our hopes for the righteous and wicked in the world beyond. Furthermore, some thinkers in the past, like Moses Mendelsohn (18^th cent.), taught that the belief in hell is incompatible with  Judaism’s view of  a merciful God. Early Reform Jews rejected the belief in the existence of both hell and paradise as early as 1869 at the Philadelphia Conference of the American Reform Rabbis.

Like many of my contemporaries, I too am comfortable with the belief that after I die, the only thing that will remain behind are the memories that I have created and the writings I have done during my lifetime. I also presume that we will live through our children.  For me, that is ecologically sound, rationally thought out and theologically comfortable.

SONSINO’S BLOG, rsonsino.blogspot.com

For more information, see:
Rifat Sonsino and Daniel Syme, What Happens After I Die? Behrman House.