A question for Jewish people: do you believe in an afterlife?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't know if this is an appropriate question, but gonna ask anyway. Have heard little from Jewish community about Kushners, well specifically what do they now think of the Kushners re. Jared and how increasingly racist and divisive Trump has become? What is the community saying, are they disgusted, not, don't care, disconnected? What is the word on the street, or in the synagogue?

Jews have three subsections if you will reform, conservative and orthodox.

Reform most liberal hate Kushner, or seriously dislike him.

Conservative would be about 90% hate Kushner, 10% are thinking he will help with Israel and that corner of the world.

Orthodox like Kushner as they are traditionally Republican and are misguided in the Israel aspect like the conservatives. They support Israel over the US. or being Americans.

Kusher is not a help to jews period. He only cares about money.

For a Jew to be supporting Kushner or Trump is short sided at best. Anti semitism is at an all time high. Trump supporters are not fans, this will not end well for Jews if Trump is re elected. I say all of this as a Jew.

Some of us Orthodox think that Kushner is a hypocrite. He doesn't get a free pass on morality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought Jewish belief was that with the coming of the messiah, all dead people will rise up to heaven. I thought that's why it's not okay to get cremated or get an autopsy.

I posted this upthread. So this is incorrect? There is not a part of Judaism that says when the messiah comes, the dead will rise up again? And that you shouldn't be cremated for that reason?

Of course there is. Every orthodox Jew like me holds by Maimonides 13 principles. The last 2 are the coming of the messiah and reward and punishment.

Reward and punishment necessitate ressurection of the dead, since it is not possible to do in this world, as clear reward and punishment in this world would remove free choice.

Maimonides views on resurrection are sort of a mess. He does say you get a second life but not that you spend eternity as a resurrected person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Orthodox Jews believe in the biblical dogma which includes the returning of the Moshiach..Messiah. Mainstream Jews celebrate the ethnicity and culture, and give nod to the dogma without believing the literal biblical aspects, and there is a large spectrum of practice, or no practice and belief, or no belief.So, your question involves a lot of cultural contextual schema.


An Orthodox woman once explained to me that she was looking forward to the Moshiach coming because she would then have her dream kitchen.

What I learned from this? Heaven and the afterlife is dependent upon one's perception of their actual life.

What I learned from this? You have no sense of humor.

And yet, she wasn't joking. I wouldn't have printed this if she were. I know her quite well, and no, zero sense of humor . When I laughed, she was perplexed.

[Anonymous]

The number of no’s is astounding. How does Judaism even continue to exist when the majority of Jews aren’t even religious?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The number of no’s is astounding. How does Judaism even continue to exist when the majority of Jews aren’t even religious?

It's a culture and a history. I don't think it's possible to truly understand if you didn't grow up Jewish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The number of no’s is astounding. How does Judaism even continue to exist when the majority of Jews aren’t even religious?

You can be religious without believing in an afterlife.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The number of no’s is astounding. How does Judaism even continue to exist when the majority of Jews aren’t even religious?

You can be religious without believing in an afterlife.

If you don't believe in reward and punishment, you may be technically keeping the commandments, but not religious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Orthodox Jews believe in the biblical dogma which includes the returning of the Moshiach..Messiah. Mainstream Jews celebrate the ethnicity and culture, and give nod to the dogma without believing the literal biblical aspects, and there is a large spectrum of practice, or no practice and belief, or no belief.So, your question involves a lot of cultural contextual schema.


An Orthodox woman once explained to me that she was looking forward to the Moshiach coming because she would then have her dream kitchen.

What I learned from this? Heaven and the afterlife is dependent upon one's perception of their actual life.

What I learned from this? You have no sense of humor.

And yet, she wasn't joking. I wouldn't have printed this if she were. I know her quite well, and no, zero sense of humor . When I laughed, she was perplexed.

I mean maybe she's dumb but it doesn't speak well for your intelligence if you think that is normative thought.

My kids want the Messiah because they want every day to be Shabbat (the only time my husband isn't working) but obviously that is an immature theology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The number of no’s is astounding. How does Judaism even continue to exist when the majority of Jews aren’t even religious?

There's a significant proportion that are religious. Very religious

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe Rabbi Akiva pretty squarely held that there was an afterlife.

Ok and ...?

And if he was right, one day perhaps we can attend a lecture on it by him in the afterlife.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't know if this is an appropriate question, but gonna ask anyway. Have heard little from Jewish community about Kushners, well specifically what do they now think of the Kushners re. Jared and how increasingly racist and divisive Trump has become? What is the community saying, are they disgusted, not, don't care, disconnected? What is the word on the street, or in the synagogue?

It's not an appropriate question: One particular Jew isn't the responsibility of all the rest of us, no matter how much you like or dislike Trump. And not all Jews feel the same way about... anything, including, as this thread shows, the nature of the afterlife.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The number of no’s is astounding. How does Judaism even continue to exist when the majority of Jews aren’t even religious?

You can be religious without believing in an afterlife.

If you don't believe in reward and punishment, you may be technically keeping the commandments, but not religious.

Huh?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't know if this is an appropriate question, but gonna ask anyway. Have heard little from Jewish community about Kushners, well specifically what do they now think of the Kushners re. Jared and how increasingly racist and divisive Trump has become? What is the community saying, are they disgusted, not, don't care, disconnected? What is the word on the street, or in the synagogue?

It's not an appropriate question: One particular Jew isn't the responsibility of all the rest of us, no matter how much you like or dislike Trump. And not all Jews feel the same way about... anything, including, as this thread shows, the nature of the afterlife.

Exactly. There's a huge variety in what we believe, despite the efforts by someone on this thread to demand that there's only one way of thinking about the afterlife.

Expecting us to answer for Kushner, or the Israeli government, is like asking black people to answer for whatever an individual black person might do. It's ridiculous. We don't have some sort of telepathic connection with one another, such that we all know what one another is thinking about something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The number of no’s is astounding. How does Judaism even continue to exist when the majority of Jews aren’t even religious?

You can be religious without believing in an afterlife.

If you don't believe in reward and punishment, you may be technically keeping the commandments, but not religious.

Christian here. I have studied both the new and old Testaments (the first five books are, essentially, the Torah). My understanding (and this may well be wrong) of the Jewish concept of reward and punishment is that a Jew (by following the 600+ rules of Judaism) can earn a place in heaven. Is that untrue? FWIW, Christians believe that no one, on their own, can earn a place in heaven; we have to rely on the Grace of God for that (and follow two rules: Love God, Love Your Neighbor as Yourself).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The number of no’s is astounding. How does Judaism even continue to exist when the majority of Jews aren’t even religious?

You can be religious without believing in an afterlife.

If you don't believe in reward and punishment, you may be technically keeping the commandments, but not religious.

Christian here. I have studied both the new and old Testaments (the first five books are, essentially, the Torah). My understanding (and this may well be wrong) of the Jewish concept of reward and punishment is that a Jew (by following the 600+ rules of Judaism) can earn a place in heaven. Is that untrue? FWIW, Christians believe that no one, on their own, can earn a place in heaven; we have to rely on the Grace of God for that (and follow two rules: Love God, Love Your Neighbor as Yourself).

Not really. Again, like this thread has suggested, there’s huge variety in how we think about the afterlife.

Centering the afterlife and saying you have to believe in it somehow in order to be religious is a Christianity-centered thing and betrays a narrow-mindedness about religions that don’t center the afterlife (which is Judaism, for most Jews).

Judaism is *very* different than Christianity in many ways, and one of the biggest is that there is little discussion of the afterlife in most synagogues.