What do jewish people believe happens to them in the afterlife? And if a jewish person commits suicide, what then?
Judaism doesn't have a dogmatic belief about the afterlife. There are some guesses, some of which are widely accepted or considered to be somewhat informed by some groups, but there isn't a lot of focus on life after death. So here are the guesses: There's a place called gan eden which is a paradisical place of some sort, and not really a place as we know it to be but just some state that is paradisical, we can't really know what it's like because we're not dead. There is also a place called gehenna which is a temporary place to purify a person, temper them, from the dross that is left in them from their life on earth. When a person dies they are judges, mitzvot vs sins, with the scales tipped in favor of mitzvot, and this determines where the person goes. Everybody ends up in gan eden eventually. The longest time in gehenna is I think a year. Another possibility is reincarnation, called gilgul. If a person commits suicide, I'm not sure. Dauer
thankyou my personal belief is that our will manifests whatever it was that we believed in when we were alive. i just lost someone who was jewish, so, it's nice to have some kind of idea of where she might be headed. gehenna sounds like such a healing place. and i think that gilgul would have appealed to her too.
I don't mean to mislead you, if my words have, gehenna is a place of temporary suffering, perhaps where a person would relive all the pain they had caused in their life, in some way, and this tempering merits them to be in gan eden. But it is indeed a place of suffering. Dauer
Gan Eden means garden of eden. It's not the garden of eden, but given the same name because it is some sort of paradise. Although that is not to say that it is a place at all. From a traditional Jewish perspective, it's still only informed speculation. You'll have to forgive me. I'm not familiar with the reference to Abraham's bosom. Dauer
Abrahams Bosom is in the Christian Bible. I thought it might be only found there, by that name i am sure. Its where the poor man, of the rich man/poor man story in the old testemant went. And its where the Christians claim that Jesus went, to take souls with him. Thats about all i know of it, i'm neither Jewish nor Christian so im limited.
Jews believe in a place called paradise, which is the spiritual Garden of Eden. Then there's this other place called sheol ( Hell ), which isn't so nice...:/
Ah! So that's where the Catholics/Orthodox have their so-called 'purgatory' from, eh? Now I know! thanks! ^^
Yes, Paradise ( Gan Eden) is the same as Abraham's Bosom. ( I think that's in the OT too, probably in Psalms or similar books )
ryu, I did a search for Abraham's bosom and found a number of articles with only New Testament references. Dauer
I think it depends on which Jew you're talking to. What seems to be the most common belife is that there's a place much like heaven and a place much like purgatory- where most people end up before going to "heaven". If you were really awful, like Charlie Manson awful or worse, your soul is basically erased when you die, and you are not given any afterlife at all.
feminist, While erasure is a possibility, there's no way of determining if it would happen even for Charles Manson. That's still all on God. Dauer
I was using him as an example, I wasn't damning him to it. I know we don't know for sure- but I'd say there's a pretty darn good chance.
Charles Manson seems pretty sick to me, ill. I'm not sure, if such a situation exists, that God would get rid of severely mentally ill people that He created as mentally ill. I don't know how that would serve God or the individual. Wouldn't a further gilgul or time in gehenna better serve the individual and God? Even Charles Manson has a pure soul. Elohai neshama shenatata be tehora he. My God the soul you have given to me, she is pure. Doesn't that also stand for Charles Manson? Dauer
