Eric shared his thoughts on Jewish view of heaven and hell…
Obviously, there are a lot of different views, but I think the basic view of the afterlife in Judaism is that heaven and hell are fluid. I’ll try to explain.
One phrase used in Hebrew to describe heaven is “Gan Eden,†which literally means “The Garden of Eden.†It’s even become slang, as in “This cake is Gan Eden.†The idea is that heaven is a return to perfection on earth, not some otherworldly place.
Another phrase is “Olam Haba,†meaning “the world to come.†As in, this is the world we have here, but there is another world that mirrors this one, but created spiritually instead of physically.
I remember in high school one of my Rabbis said heaven and hell looked exactly the same. In both, people sit around a pot of delicious stew and have spoons with long handles; they can reach the pot, but they can’t bring the spoon back to their mouths. He said that in hell, everyone simply starves, but in heaven they realize they can eat if they feed each other. Again, the idea is that heaven is created in the interaction among people.
My Rabbis often described “hell†— called gehenom — as more of a dry-cleaner than a place of eternal punishment. After life on the physical earth, all souls — except those belonging to the holiest people — need to go through a period of cleansing before they are appropriate for heaven.
Hope that helps.
