ken somerset
asked
Ellie Midwood:
No disrespect but can you tell me more about the Jewish belief on heaven and hell you referenced in the girl from Berlin and the Austrian? I ask out of respect and a desire to learn more about other religions. When you die is that all there is? I ask from a christian background and belief. Thank you so much for the series.
Ellie Midwood
Hi Ken!
Thank you so much for your question! There are different approaches to the question of life after death in different religious movements of Judaism, so I'll just explain it the way I was taught when I was a little girl. First of all, in my family it was taught that you should concentrate on how you live your life first, and not on some afterlife to come, so to be honest I very rarely think about what is going to happen to me once I die:) I was taught to mostly live good and do good, to create "good karma" if you will, and that's what I firmly believe in: if you do wrong by someone, it'll come back to you, and vice versa. Second, I firmly believe in multiple reincarnation (however, this belief also alters from one religious movement of Judaism to another to a certain degree), and that a soul is reborn multiple times to "serve the world," but again only if it has "good karma" it is permitted to come back to Earth to do more good deeds. Third, we do believe in some sort of Heaven, but it's not really Christian Heaven, so I'm not sure how to better explain it. It's called The World to Come and basically it's an idea of a perfect world that will be created after Messiah comes and resurrects all the righteous souls. However, most Jews (and myself) mostly concentrate on living a good life instead of thinking of afterlife, but again, I guess, just like in different movements in Christianity, it may differ.
I also found this article which probably describes the afterlife and other questions better than I do, so you can look it up if you like, it's very well written and explains everything in pretty simple terms:)
Thank you again for reading the series and for writing such wonderful reviews, I really appreciate it!:))) and feel free to ask more questions if you like - I'm always more than happy to answer them.
Ellie
http://www.jewfaq.org/m/olamhaba.htm
Thank you so much for your question! There are different approaches to the question of life after death in different religious movements of Judaism, so I'll just explain it the way I was taught when I was a little girl. First of all, in my family it was taught that you should concentrate on how you live your life first, and not on some afterlife to come, so to be honest I very rarely think about what is going to happen to me once I die:) I was taught to mostly live good and do good, to create "good karma" if you will, and that's what I firmly believe in: if you do wrong by someone, it'll come back to you, and vice versa. Second, I firmly believe in multiple reincarnation (however, this belief also alters from one religious movement of Judaism to another to a certain degree), and that a soul is reborn multiple times to "serve the world," but again only if it has "good karma" it is permitted to come back to Earth to do more good deeds. Third, we do believe in some sort of Heaven, but it's not really Christian Heaven, so I'm not sure how to better explain it. It's called The World to Come and basically it's an idea of a perfect world that will be created after Messiah comes and resurrects all the righteous souls. However, most Jews (and myself) mostly concentrate on living a good life instead of thinking of afterlife, but again, I guess, just like in different movements in Christianity, it may differ.
I also found this article which probably describes the afterlife and other questions better than I do, so you can look it up if you like, it's very well written and explains everything in pretty simple terms:)
Thank you again for reading the series and for writing such wonderful reviews, I really appreciate it!:))) and feel free to ask more questions if you like - I'm always more than happy to answer them.
Ellie
http://www.jewfaq.org/m/olamhaba.htm
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