Somewhere between what we want and what we inherit, what we invent and what we are bequeathed, is what we need. And what spiritually enlightened Jews need now is to believe in life after death.
Many of us have forgotten that the afterlife is a fundamental tenet in Judaism. No major Jewish movement has ever denied belief in life after death. Reform Judaism did reject the notion of tehiyat hameitim, the resurrection of the dead, but each of our platforms has affirmed belief in the immortality of our souls. Nevertheless, we have chosen to abandon the most hopeful belief in Jewish tradition in nearly every Reform pulpit, and thus in nearly every Jewish heart. And because of our forgetting, I have seen Jews die with less serenity, grace, and hope, and with more agony, than Christians who believe in heaven.
Jewish texts affirm Judaism's conviction in the hereafter. In Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Yakov teaches, "This world is just a waiting room for the world to come...One hour of bliss in the world to come is better than all the bliss in the world that is." (Avot 4, 17, 21-22) In the tractate Moed Katan we are taught, "This world is only like a hotel. The world to come is like a home." And the rabbis tell us, "There is no good thing in this world which is not better in the world to come."
How unfortunate that we have rejected the awesome, uplifting belief that our souls live on after the death of our bodies. When was the last sermon you heard about life after death? When was the last funeral where the rabbi said "the deceased person's soul has entered the world to come"? Six eulogies were delivered at the funeral of former CCAR executive vice president Rabbi Joe Glaser, and the only speaker who pronounced that "Joe's soul is now in the world to come" was a Methodist minister.
Why have Reform Jews abandoned the most assuring of all Jewish beliefs? Because most of us have absorbed the bias of the secular culture against anything transcendent. And what does this accomplish? We are stripped naked before the fear of mortality, our own and that of the people we love. We are deprived of a belief in an ultimate judgment of the wicked, thereby wilting our faith in God. And, in the end, we transform our great faith into a politicized ethnic group with a few holidays thrown in for decoration. In the face of our finitude, only religion can offer hope -- hope that the good in us will win, and hope that we will not be separated forever from those we love. If a religion cannot offer hope, it is, simply, no longer a religion.
After 25 years in the rabbinate I have learned that some things are true at the edge of the grave that do not seem true anywhere else. When Harry, my congregant and friend, recently cried out at the tombstone of his wife, Thelma, "Honey, I am coming, I will be with you soon!" he was not lying, and he was not weak. He was speaking the truth. However, Harry's truth can only be understood if you have faith in God's promise of olam habah -- a promise that we will not be sundered forever from those we love.
We affirm the Jewish authenticity of Harry's personal truth each time we recite the closing Torah blessing: "You are blessed, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has given us a Torah of truth, and who has implanted within us eternal life." We affirm Harry's truth each time we recite El Moleh Rachamim, "May his or her rest be in the Garden of Eden." We affirm Harry's truth each time we recite kaddish, which, our sages teach us, is the only good deed we can perform on behalf of our loved ones during the time their souls are being judged.
Remarkably, supposition of life after death is the only belief shared by all the religions of the world. It is not belief in God but in olam habah that unites all human faiths. Hinduism trusts in numerous gods; Buddhism does not rely on any. Yet Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, all religions profess that our journey to love, enlightenment, wisdom, and peace is not completed in the brief span of time allotted to us on Earth. Are the liberal Jews of the late twentieth century willing to become the only religious people in the history of the world to abandon the belief in life after death? I hope not. There is a fear today, in the Reform movement particularly, that the revival of Jewish spirituality will signal the death knell for Jewish social activism.
Actually, there is no conflict between olam habah and tikun olam. Fixing the world demands fixing our souls, and fixing our souls demands fixing the world. Indeed, the belief in a world to come is essential to the maintenance of our moral vigor and hope in the world that is. The hereafter is not, after all, merely a place of private repose; it is also a place of judgment. The rabbis spoke of it as the location of the beit din shel malah, the heavenly court that will dispense justice up there for all those who have been denied justice here. We are taught that, upon entering the world to come, the first question a person will be asked is: "Were you honest in your business dealings?" Study of Torah and good deeds are the spiritual leaven of our immortal souls. Whereas for secular philosophers like Plato the soul becomes immortal through the acquisition of knowledge, in Judaism the soul becomes immortal through the acquisition of virtue.
The olam habah is also a central, essential part of what we mean by God. In the face of evil, belief in the world to come enables us to sustain our trust in an omnipotent, benevolent, and just God. Archibald MacLeish set this dilemma eloquently in his brilliant midrash on the Book of Job, J.B. There, Nickles, the popcorn-selling Satan, taunts Mr. Zuss, the balloon-selling God, with these famous words, "If God is great he is not good, if God is good he is not God, take the even take the odd." Now, the only way to take the even, the only way to affirm a good and all powerful God, given the evidence of evil in this world, is to believe that this world is not the only world. On the High Holy Days we pray to be inscribed in the Book of Life. If the world to come is real, the Book is real, and our own personal moral accountability for every one of our sins is eternally real. And this judgment will occur before a Judge who never makes an incorrect ruling, never takes a bribe, and never has to run for office.
What if the doubters are right, and there is nothing awaiting us beyond the grave? Franz Kafka wrote: "The meaning of life is that it ends." Richard Rubenstein said: "I am convinced that I have arisen out of nothingness and am destined to return to nothingness. All human beings are locked in the same fatality....Nothing in the bleak, cold, unfeeling universe is remotely concerned with human aspiration and longing....We have nothing to hope for beyond what we are capable of creating in the time allotted to us." I do not ask you if you think Kafka and Rubenstein are right, but whether you can live your life believing that they are right. Can the cold shadow of nihilism sustain you in the dark night of your soul? Can you face your death or the death of someone you love armed with this as your only source of hope? Can you believe that the God who so loves us would reveal the fullness of that love by consigning us to "omnipotent nothingness"?
The meaning of life as given to us by Judaism is holy life in this world, followed by eternal life in the world to come. I choose to accept this meaning. That means I choose the closing Torah blessing. I choose El Moleh Rachamim. And I choose Harry at the edge of Thelma's grave.
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