Is There Life After Death?

"Life after death" is one of the most intriguing and mysterious of phrases, and it is often shrouded in mysticism. Is there any truth to it? Is death the end of everything? And what happens after death according to Judaism?

This is one of the most fascinating questions in the world: does life cease when the body stops functioning, or is there a continuation after death? What happens after we die? It would seem hard to know what goes on in a place from which no one has returned, but in fact we can know quite a lot, thanks to the testimonies that keep arriving from the world beyond, and to what has been handed down to us in Jewish tradition since the creation of the world.

There are countless testimonies from people who have gone through near-death experiences ("clinical death") and who provide a fairly detailed description of what they experienced "on the other side." Moreover, they report details they saw and heard during that experience which no rational argument can account for – how could they possibly have known them? For example, events that took place on other floors of the hospital or in other distant locations, or incidents that occurred around them while they were in a state of clinical death.

True, some scientists deny the possibility of life after death, explaining it away by various biological phenomena that deceive the person. From their point of view they are right, but pure science is capable of perceiving only tangible things and cannot deal with what lies beyond consciousness. It is religions and mystical teachings that are not afraid to engage with this realm, and so they can often offer more successful explanations for anomalous phenomena, such as toddlers speaking foreign languages as if they were their mother tongue, communication with spiritual entities, and the phenomena of clinical death.

"Near-death experiences" open a path to understanding what happens after death, but first we need to pause on another question: what happens before life?

Before a soul (neshamah) descends into this world, it dwells in a place called the "Chamber of Souls." When its time comes to descend into this world, it is shown all the spiritual worlds that exist in another dimension, the entire sweep of history, and it is told its purpose and its mission in descending into this world within a body.

Then that very miracle of miracles of creation takes place, when a lump of flesh suddenly turns into a living being. A few cells join together, grow and swell, and suddenly arms, legs, a pancreas, a brain take shape. And then, in a single instant, this motionless lump receives a soul and becomes a being possessed of consciousness and personality.

According to the Jewish conception, a human being is made up of a union of two opposites: a physical part, the body – "for dust you are, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19), and a spiritual part, the soul – "and He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (Genesis 2:7). In their original state these two parts are separate from one another, and when they miraculously join, life arises. What happens at the creation of life is the reverse of the process that takes place at its end, when each part returns to its place: the body becomes matter once more, and the soul returns to its source. The body decays in the earth, while the soul continues its eternal life, exactly as it did before it entered the physical body.

The Tanach does not contain many descriptions or details of Olam Haba (the World to Come), the world of souls, and one reason for this is our inability to grasp concepts unknown to us within the frame of our earthly life. The reason we cannot understand what actually happens in the other world is that we lack the capacity to comprehend such spiritual notions as long as we see, hear, breathe and live in a world of boundaries, physical dimensions and matter.

What happens to a person after leaving this world is like an embryo in its mother's womb, which is incapable of understanding that there is "life after birth." Even if we could theoretically communicate with the embryo, it would be impossible to describe the outside world to it, since it lacks the necessary faculty of perception. Concepts such as color, technology, society are incomprehensible to it.

All of us are in a similar "embryonic" reality and cannot know precisely what one feels when the soul departs, or what the world beyond this world looks like, but that does not mean they do not exist – they are simply on a higher spiritual level.

Various books of the hidden teachings (Torat HaSod) describe what happens to the soul when it reaches the world of souls. Astonishingly, quite similar descriptions have been given by people who went through clinical death and came back to life – even though they had never studied those books!

It is important to note that we have no complete understanding of what the events unfolding in the soul's dimension, once it leaves the body, actually are. Terms such as Paradise (Gan Eden), Hell (Gehinnom), the Heavenly Court (Beit Din) and even punishment are not identical to the concepts we picture now. It is important to understand that they do not carry their direct, literal meaning; but in the absence of any way to describe the phenomenon precisely, concepts familiar to us from our own world are used.

After a person's passing, the soul still lingers near the body, and so the person is aware of what is happening around them. Thus the Talmud says: "Everything that is said in the presence of the dead, he knows" (Tractate Shabbat 152b). This knowledge accords with numerous accounts of clinical death in which people describe what was happening around them despite having no pulse, no breathing and no brain activity.

Then the soul is granted lofty visions and revelations, as it says in the Holy Books: "When a person's days run out and he is to leave the world, he is given permission to see what he was not permitted to see before" (Zohar HaKadosh, Bereishit 218). And also: "Behold, He says: for no man shall see Me and live. In their lifetime they do not see, but they see at the time of their death" (Bamidbar Rabbah, end of Naso).

The Zohar HaKadosh also says that at the time of a person's passing, departed relatives come out to meet him and accompany him: "His father and his relatives are there with him, and he sees them and recognizes them, and they go and accompany his soul to the place where it will dwell" (Zohar HaKadosh, Bereishit 218b).

Once the soul reaches the higher spiritual world, it stands before a Court made up of judges. In this Court the soul is judged for all its deeds during its lifetime: commandments (mitzvot) and good deeds on one side, and sins and negative acts on the other.

The soul is shown all its deeds in this world, from the moment of birth to the moment of passing, as the Jewish sages wrote: "When a person leaves this world, all his deeds come and are laid out before him in detail" (Sifrei, Ha'azinu). Then a scale is set before it; on one pan are placed all the positive deeds it performed during its life, and on the other, the negative ones.

People who have survived clinical death, or who received messages in dreams from their departed relatives, tell that every deed, even the smallest, is recorded and taken into account at this judgment. A small sum of money borrowed from a friend and never returned, a small favor done for another person without even noticing, an insult and a hurt, or a word of encouragement and support for someone – everything is written in the book, and as the Mishnah in Tractate Avot says: "And all your deeds are written in a book." Nothing is forgotten.

Naturally, these are not easy moments for the soul. Its fate is about to be decided, and a decision will be made about its further path – and every decision carries eternal, fateful weight.

Nevertheless, in every court there is a prosecutor, but there is also a defense. Every commandment and good deed a person performed during their lifetime serves as an advocate (sanegor) who stands beside them in the Court, while on the other hand every transgression and negative act creates an accuser (kategor) who brings charges against them at this judgment.

At the end of the judgment, the fate of the soul is determined. Has its path of rectification been completed, and does it deserve to enter Paradise (Gan Eden), or has it not yet reached its perfection? In the event that the soul has not yet managed to fulfill its purpose, it will have to pass through several more paths before reaching the longed-for goal – Paradise.

What does one feel in Paradise? Much is not given to us to know, but the sages taught us and said: "The righteous sit with crowns on their heads and delight in the radiance of the Shechinah (the Divine Presence)" (Tractate Berachot 17a). The meaning of this is supreme delight, immense joy and boundless happiness that we cannot comprehend while we are in the body.

The World to Come (Olam Haba) in this World

Paradise is not the final stop for souls, as many might think. Paradise is merely a temporary way station for them. The final stage of Creation will take place after the coming of the Mashiach and the Resurrection of the Dead. What will happen then? It will be Paradise on earth, a perfected physical reality in which the rectified souls will return to live in a body an eternal life. The spiritual delight of those who merit such a life will be so great and so infinite that we have not the faintest notion of this kind of delight, whose source is absolute connection with the Creator of the world.