Journey to Heaven: Exploring Jewish Views of the Afterlife

209 Pages·2015·0.93 MB·English

by  Leila Leah Bronner

Journey to He aven
Other Books by Leila Leah Bronner
From Eve to Esther: Rabbinic Reconstructions of Biblical Women
Stories of Biblical Mothers: Maternal Power in the Hebrew Bible
Biblical Personalities and Archaeology
The Stories of Elijah and Elisha
Sects and Separation During the Second Jewish Commonwealth
Leila Leah Bronner
Journey to Heaven
Exploring Jewish Views
of the Afterlife
Urim Publications
Jerusalem · New York
Journey to Heaven: Exploring Jewish Views of the
Afterlife

by Leila Leah Bronner

Copyright © 2015, 2011 by Leila Leah Bronner

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the copyright owner, except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in reviews and articles.

ePub ISBN 978-965-524-100-6
Mobi ISBN 978-965-524-101-3
PDF ISBN 978-965-524-078-8
(Hardcover ISBN 978-965-524-047-4)

Cover design by S. Schmell
ePub creation by Ariel Walden

Urim Publications, P.O. Box 52287, Jerusalem 91521 Israel

www.UrimPublications.com
For my father
• Rabbi Yitzchok (Isaac) Amsel ל״ז
A great Talmudic and Kabbalistic scholar who
devoted his life to making Torah great and
glorious (Isaiah 42:21)

Contents
Preface 9
Introduction 11
1. The Hebrew Bible: Glimpses of Immortality 17
2. Early Post-Biblical Literature: Gateways to
Heaven and Hell 38
3. The Mishnah: Who Will Merit the
World to Come? 59
4. The Talmud: What Happens in the Next World? 79
5. Medieval Jewish Philosophy: Faith and Reason 102
6. Mysticism: Reincarnation in Kabbalah 127
7. Modernity: What Do We Believe? 153
8. The Messiah: The Eternal Thread of Hope 164
Afterword 182
Notes 185
Index 201
About the Author 207

Preface
My interest in the next world awakened during
my career as a scholar in Bible and Jewish studies.
Often, when preparing for lectures, I would note
that many scriptural commentators insisted that the Bible contained no
references to the afterlife until the book of Daniel. This gave me pause on
the spiritual level. I couldn’t understand how Israel could be described as
“the people of God” and at the same time believe that everything came to
a halt with one’s death. It also caused my intellectual antennae to quiver
and piqued me to take a closer look at the subject as a textual matter.
Couldn’t there be other biblical passages that alluded, however obliquely,
to the question of what happens after death?
When I began to explore this matter, I discovered a number of allu-
sions to a life hereafter in the Hebrew Bible. That led me to pursue the
question of the afterlife throughout Jewish textual history: in the writings
of the Second Temple period; in the rabbinic texts of the Mishnah and
Talmud; in medieval and mystical works; and in the commentaries and
writings of the modern era. I found that Judaism has a great deal to say
about what happens after we die. Eventually it became important to me
to set down those ideas in a systematic way, and it is from that impulse
that this book arises.
Some of the ideas in this book are based on lectures I delivered at
the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature and in
various study circles, and one chapter is based on a paper published in
Dor L’Dor (now called the Jewish Bible Quarterly). My ideas have evolved
as I have worked on this book; consequently, those parts of the text based
on earlier presentations have been thoroughly reworked from any earlier
format.