Beyond Heaven and Earth

by Steven H. Propp

  Jobran nodded, and said, “I don’t think I’m a very convinced anything, at this point. But if I were asked for a public opinion survey to state ‘What religion are you?,’ I’m sure that I would indicate ‘Christian’—that is, ‘Christian’ rather than ‘Hindu’ or ‘Muslim.’ But if they asked me to specify it further than that—into Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, etc.—I’m not sure how I would respond. I’m from a liberal Protestant background, and I would have converted to Catholicism if…things had been different.”

  Abraham said in a soft voice, “Incidentally, I’d just like to tell you how sorry I am about your loss. I’ve never experienced anything even remotely as shattering as you have, but I know it must be terrible. If there’s anything at all I can do, Mr. Winter…”

  “Jobran,” he said, interrupting. “Or Jobe.”

  “Jobe,” Abraham said, smiling. “Abe ‘n’ Jobe; sounds like a standup comedy duo.” They both grinned broadly, beginning to feel comfortable in each other’s presence. “Better than doing a solo act, I guess.”

  Jobran noticed that Abraham wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “You’re not married?”

  “No, I’m not,” he answered slowly. With a touch of sadness in his voice, he said, “I was engaged to a beautiful and brilliant young woman. Then, two months before we were to be married, I was offered the position here.” He looked off to the side, and said, “A newlywed off to join his new congregation; I thought I was all set in life.” Then he shrugged his shoulders, and added, “Then one day, she abruptly left me. I found a terse note telling me goodbye, and that was it. Haven’t heard from her since.” He was silent for a moment, then brightened and added, “Fortunately, the congregation here is pretty liberal-thinking, and didn’t mind having a Rabbi who was single.” He smiled slightly, and added, “They probably thought this would give them a good chance to play matchmaker—lots of Jewish mothers would like their daughters to marry a nice young Rabbi.”

  “That’s awful,” Jobran said, with genuine feeling. “About your fiancee leaving you, I mean; I can’t imagine what that might feel like. In my case, at least I have my memories of life with Sophia to look back on. If I didn’t even have those…”

  “Anyway, we’d better get down to business,” Abraham said, cutting off further discussion on the subject. “First of all, I want to make sure that you understand that I am from the Reform tradition in Judaism. So my own opinions may not speak for all Jews, although I will try to give you a ‘balanced’ picture.”

  “I’m aware of your affiliation,” Jobran said, “And that the Reformed tradition is the most ‘liberal’—or perhaps ‘progressive’—branch of Judaism. There are also the Conservative and Orthodox branches, correct?”

  “That’s correct,” Abraham said, nodding. “There is also a smaller ‘Reconstructionist’ branch, begun by Mordecai Kaplan, and also a few congregations that call themselves ‘Humanistic’; Sherwin Wine is probably the best-known Humanist Rabbi. These last two groups tend to be strongly anti-supernatural: for them, Jewishness is more a form of cultural identity, rather than a religion, or a manner of dealing with the ultimate nature of things.” He put his fingertips together, then said, “Personally, and in my own tradition as a Reform Jew, Judaism is a religion; I believe in a personal God, who hears prayer, and who can intervene in human affairs. I regard the mod-ern-day establishment of the State of Israel as evidence that something more than the merely human is involved in earthly affairs, for example.” Fingering his beard, he added, “Orthodox Jews—the traditionalist group—are more likely to think that the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, were literally written by Moses, whereas…”

  Jobran interrupted, saying, “Whereas modern Biblical criticism—which was begun by Spinoza, a philosopher who was Jewish—points to internal evidence, such as the death of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy, to suggest that Moses did-n’t write the Pentateuch.”

  Abraham looked pleased, and said, “I see that you have done your homework. Anyway, the Conservative movement started most recently, and likes to think that they are the ideal ‘compromise’ between the Reform and Orthodox positions.”

  “What about the Jewish notion of life after death? What do you believe about that?” Jobran asked.

  Abraham was silent.

  “I hope this isn’t a bad time to ask you about such matters?” Jobran asked apologetically.

  “No, not at all,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just that I find it hard to express just what it is that I do believe about it.” The phone on his desk rang, and he said to Jobran, “Excuse me,” and picked up the phone. “Yes, Kathy?…Ten o’clock should be fine; that will give me enough time to meet privately with the immediate family after that…No, nothing special…I’ll send the text to you tonight, so if you can finish the formatting and send it to Rubin’s, he’ll have plenty of time to get it printed before the service…You, too. Thanks again.” He hung up the phone, and said, “Sorry to keep you waiting. We were finishing up arrangements for the death of a member of our congregation who died a few hours ago. The service is tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jobran said, getting out of his seat as if to leave. “You’ve got other things to do; I’d better not take up any more of your time. You’ve probably got to go to be with the family…”

  Abraham motioned him to sit down. “No, stay. I’ve got time. We’ve already called the funeral director and made arrangements, and the family is serving as the shomer or ‘watcher’ over the body until the time of burial. The deceased was a long-time member of our congregation, and he was in his 80s; his death was expected.”

  “Why is the funeral being held so soon?” wondered Jobran.

  “It’s Jewish tradition to try and complete the burial within 24 hours of death,” Abraham said. “We don’t believe in either embalming, or cremation, so we have to deal with the matter fairly quickly.”

  “I hadn’t heard that. Why don’t you believe in embalming or creation?”

  “We try and draw the line between showing the appropriate degree of reverence for man—as one created in the image of God and worthy of proper dignity and respect—rather than the elevation or near-worship of the dead that is indicated by expensive embalming procedures, viewing the body at religious services, and such.”

  “Are funerals unimportant in the Jewish tradition, then?”

  “Actually, although I’ve only been to a few non-Jewish funerals, I almost think that they hold a more important position for us, than for many other religions,” Abraham replied. “In the Jewish tradition, we have a very strong concept of time as cyclical: of seasonal variations, and life cycles. That is why we have kept the Jewish calendar faithfully for so long, with its unique days of the New Year, times for fasting and repentance, times for looking forward, times for merriment, and so on.”

  “Now that we’re back on the subject, what is the Jewish teaching with regard to the possibility of life after death?” Jobran asked.

  With a smile, Abraham responded, “Well, rather than try and sort out what my own position is—which might take years—I can at least give you a picture of what Judaism in general believes,” he said. Laughing, he added, “Although even that is not as easy to sort out as you might think. In fact, unlike Christians, surveys show that the majority of Jews either don’t believe in immortality, or else don’t have an opinion on the subject.”

  “Really?” Jobran asked, genuinely surprised.

  Abraham nodded his head, and said, “A 1952 Gallup poll showed that only 35% of Jews believed that their souls would live on after death, and by 1965, it was down to 17%.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Unfortunately, in Gallup’s similar polls in 1981, he no longer had a separate category for Jews, but I seriously doubt the numbers have increased since then. In fact, in the last hundred years or so, Judaism has come increasingly to be seen as a ‘here an
d now’ religion, with no teaching about the afterlife, one way or the other.”

  Jobran looked confused, and said, “I thought that belief in the Resurrection of the Dead—and thus, in an eventual life after death—was one of the most important beliefs that Jews had. It was one of the 13 Principles of Judaism articulated by the Medieval thinker Moses Maimonides, wasn’t it?”

  Abrlaham stood up from behind his desk, and wandered over to a reproduction of a scroll on the wall, which appeared to be of some ancient writing in Hebrew and pointed to it, saying, “That’s true, his last Principle is, ‘I believe with perfect faith that the dead will be brought back to life when God wills it to happen.’”

  “But that’s not the current belief of Jews?”

  “Actually, it was even a controversial belief in Maimonides’ own time. Some people cited Maimonides’ own writings in support of their belief that there wasn’t a resurrection of the dead, and others thought that he endorsed the idea, but not strongly enough.” Abraham turned toward Jobran, and said, “You have to realize that Maimonides was quite a young man—in his early twenties—when he started writing the commentary that contained the 13 Principles. He later became a rationalistic philosopher, who was concerned to make Judaism appear more intellectually respectable. By the time of his major philosophical work, the Guide for the Perplexed, he doesn’t even mention the resurrection of the dead, and hardly treats of an afterlife at all. The few comments he makes about it simply indicate that it is beyond human comprehension. In fact, he was attacked bitterly by other Jews, who thought that his later viewpoint was a denial of the doctrine of the res

  urrection of the dead.”

  “Was it? Or at least, was it a de-emphasizing of the doctrine?” Jobran asked.

  “Later in his life, Maimonides tended to say that ‘The reward of the good life is the good life.’ He discouraged any speculation to look toward future rewards for our earthly deeds. And I think it’s true today that for most traditions of Judaism, our behavior and conduct in this life is more of a concern than our possible rewards in a next life; the focus of the Jew is on life, not on death and its aftermath. For example, Abraham Joshua Heschel said, ‘The cry for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous if it is not accompanied by a cry for eternal life prior to death.’ Where Jews consider the topic of eternal life, we tend to be more focused on ‘eternal life’ as a quality of life that we can experience during this life.”

  “That’s also a conception that a lot of Christians—not to mention other religions—have as well; they don’t want to get completely caught up in the idea of ‘Pie in the Sky when you Die,’” replied Jobran. “But they do nevertheless believe in Heaven and Hell, as places or conditions to which the eternal soul goes to after death.”

  “Jews definitely don’t believe in Heaven and Hell as the Christians teach it,” Abraham said, with conviction. “We also don’t agree with the amount of emphasis that Christians put on such doctrines. Although many practitioners of the Jewish religion believe in some form of personal survival after death, it is possible to be a Jew in good standing and not believe in personal immortality at all. In fact, most Jews in Israel are secular, rather than religious, in their orientation; don’t let the fact that the strongly religious parties in Israel have enough political power to mandate enforcement of Sabbath laws fool you. So you see, we Jews allow a great deal more doctrinal latitude on this issue than other religions do. A Christian, on the other hand, who didn’t believe in life after death would, I think, be viewed as…well, strange, if not heterodox.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Jobran said. “I thought that it was only the ancient group called the Sadducees that didn’t believe in life after death; whereas the majority group called the Pharisees—who were the predecessors of the current rabbinical tradition—did believe in it.”

  “Well, that’s how the ancient Jewish historian Josephus portrayed it in his book, the Antiquities of the Jews,” Abraham replied. “But I think that the Torah itself supports the modern position. Take the Ten Commandments, for example: In Exodus 20:12, the reason for obeying the 5th Commandment is so ‘that you may long endure on the land that the LORD your God is assigning to you’; it’s not because you’ll go to Heaven for obeying the commandment. You are also not to bow down before images because you’ll do to Hell if you do, but because God visits ‘the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments.’ (Ex 20: 5-6) The earlier books of the Bible know nothing about personal immortality; our rewards are earthly ones. There is no conception comparable to the Christian one that, ‘If you’re good, you go to Heaven, and if you’re bad, you go to Hell.’”

  Jobran looked doubtful. “But wasn’t there a belief in Sheol, which was a kind of abode for the dead?”

  “Sure,” Abraham nodded. “Sheol was the place where all the dead went to. But you’ll notice that when the Bible (1 Samuel 28) portrays the prophet Samuel as brought back in a vision by the spiritualist woman of En-dor, he spoke as if he had been awakened from sleep; he wasn’t in either a place of torment, or of reward—he was in a place of rest. It wasn’t until the later writings of the Bible such as Job and the book of Daniel—which were influenced by the religious traditions of the Greeks—that the notion of resurrection as a prelude to judgment about one’s eternal destiny came into existence.” Abraham then returned to his desk, and sat down. “Then, by the time of extrabiblical literature, such as the three books of Enoch, and the fourth book of Ezra, the doctrine was becoming established. Thus, by the time of later Jewish traditions, there was a tendency to believe in the Resurrection of the Dead, for all except perhaps the very wicked. This resurrected life would bring a final justice to right the wrongs of earthly life, and would reward those who had lived righteously. There was a fair amount of speculation along these lines in Medieval Bible commentaries, for example.” Abraham leaned back in his chair, and said, “Today, although certainly not a majority, quite a few Jews believe in a kind of general salvation. One of our prayer books, for example, says, ‘The righteous of all nations are worthy of immortality,’”

  “But it’s left kind of undefined as to exactly what this ’immortality’ entails, is that it?” Jobran asked.

  Abraham nodded. “That’s correct; no one in the Jewish tradition would have written, say, Dante’s Inferno or Purgatorio, with its lurid images of Hell and Purgatory. Similarly, Jews don’t write songs about ‘walking down the heavenly streets of gold.’”

  Jobran looked thoughtful, then said tentatively, “Earlier you said that it would be easier to present ‘the Jewish position’ rather than your personal opinions about these matters. Are your personal convictions…well, different from those of the traditional Jewish religion?”

  Abraham smiled, ruefully. “I knew you’d get back to that, sooner or later.” He sat up in his chair, and said, “My own beliefs are probably not that far afield from the mainstream. For me, I must admit that I think that funerals are clearly for the good of the living, not the dead. They give the living a dignified and respectful way of burying the deceased, and a formal way of putting an end to a chapter in their lives. It also forces them to come to grips with their relation to the deceased: What will ultimately be their relationship and attitude toward a father who constantly belittled them, or toward a mother who was never satisfied with their actions? A funeral gives them an opportunity to come to a point of decision about it.”

  “So funerals don’t have a ‘religious’ function?” Jobran asked, astonished.

  “They do in the sense that they can help to bind together members of our religious community, and to show the grieving that there are others who are part of the same community, who are there to support them,” he said. With a laugh, he added, “It doesn’t, however, knock any time off your sentence in Purgator
y, or anything like that.”

  “You’re familiar with the Christian doctrine of Purgatory?” Jobran asked.

  “Sure,” Abraham said, “I’m fairly cognizant of most Christian doctrines.” With a sly look on his face, he added, “I’ve even read the New Testament twice.”

  “Twice?” said Jobran, surprised. “That’s more than most Christians have done. When did you read it?”

  “The first time, it was when I was a teenager, as an act of rebellion against my more Orthodox parents. Then the second time, while I was in Seminary studying to become a Rabbi.”

  Jobran was very interested, and asked, “This is kind off the subject, but what is your opinion about Jesus? I mean, the historical Jesus of Nazareth?”

  “Well, first of all, his name wasn’t ‘Jesus,’ but ‘Yeshua,’ which is normally translated as ‘Joshua’ in the Bible,” Abraham said, adding with a smile, “But I’ll stick with the traditional name ‘Jesus’ out of consideration to you, my Christian friend.” Then he stood up again, and began to wander thoughtfully around the room. “Well, although I am not without some sympathy with Martin Buber’s position in his book Two Types of Faith—that Jesus is a Jew’s ‘great brother’—I’m not one of those people who feels that Jesus was some sort of extraordinary prophet or teacher.” Abraham paused, looking at Jobran for some signs of violent disapproval; seeing none, he continued, “Everything Jesus taught had been taught earlier in the Rabbinical traditions; even Christians such as John Lightfoot, and

  H.L. Strack and P. Billerbeck admit this.” “I think from what I’ve read, that seems to be generally agreed,” said Jobran. Abraham nodded and continued, “On the other hand, I don’t think I would