What is the afterlife belief of Judaism?

Dollar Bill: What is the afterlife belief of Judaism?
I know there is an “afterlife” because King David himself says so in Psalm 23 “…I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”. So can someone explain to me what is the jewish view of life after here on Earth, according to Judaism?
How come there is no solid view in Judaism? Surely afterlife must be important, I mean its eternity.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Aravah
answer: there are many views because the afterlife isn’t described in Judaism. Most Jews don’t focus on the afterlife, we let G-d worry about that. Jews focus on the here-and-now: keeping G-d’s commandments, studying Torah, caring for others and helping to repair the world.

Some Jews believe that when someone dies and they are righteous, we go to join G-d immediately. If we aren’t righteous they spend a short time away from G-d.

Some Jews believe that we enter a sleep-like state until the Messiah/Messianic age and then join in the new world to come.

Some Jews believe in reincarnation until the Messiah/Messianic age or until one becomes righteous enough to join G-d.

Jews do NOT believe in an eternal torment/hell. That would not be part of the righteous plan of a loving G-d. There is NO discussion or description of “hell” in the Jewish Tanakh.

Answer by James O
diverse range
from Orthodox belief in soul consciousness after death and bodily resurrection on the last Day ( shared with Christians and Muslims) to reincarnation( Lurianic Kabbalah) to you live on through your descendants to no life after death

Answer by Shawn
money money money

Answer by Na Nach
For Jews: A phrase we often recite is “All Israel have a portion to [attain or keep] Olam Haba/The World to Come” (Pirkei Avot/Ethics of the Fathers). Yet Torah literature often refers to those who lose their portion in the afterlife; see Rambam Hilkhot Teshuvah Ch. 3 for example (link below). Ch. 8 there also describes the Olam Haba, and the punishment that is obliteration.

For Gentiles: Basically those who accept the Noahide laws as renewed by Moses at Sinai, or who otherwise come to an accurate knowledge of God, merit afterlife. Others just return to the grave and cease to exist, as it says (Psalms, 9:18), “Return ye wicked to the grave, all peoples (who) forget G-d.”

Answer by kaganate
>> How come there is no solid view in Judaism? Surely afterlife must be important, I mean its eternity.

One of the baseline beliefs is that there is a life beyond this one but anything we would come up with about it would likely aproximate only roughly what that realy was — and may distract us from living a righteous life.

If you look at Ecclesiastes for example,
The ideal of Judaism is not to focus on simplistic ideas of reward and punishment or get bogged down in dreams about things which have no relevance to reality.
The aim is to do good because it is good. To live according to the covenants because it is the covenant we made with God when he liberated us from slavery in Egypt.

God created this world and put us to live here and gave us a structure that describes the good life here. Dreaming about another world can distract us from doing so.

There is a custom for those who wear their Tzizit out (the fringes commanded in the Bible) to hide them at the cemetary. The symbolism is that the dead do not have the opportunity to practice the mizvot (the Jewish laws of day-to-day living) and we don’t want to tease them about this missing facet of the afterlife.

That said — the religious view is that it is certainly there and important and we certainly have many stories and teachings about it.

Answer by Gillian
There’s nothing about it in the Hebrew Bible… and no one has ever returned to tell us about it. What can we tell you?
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