The Afterlife
Of all the basic beliefs of Judaism, belief in an afterlife or “world to come,” along with accompanying beliefs in the resurrection of the dead and the immortality of the soul, are among the most elusive.
Historically viewed, these beliefs are not fully articulated until the period of the Talmud. For most biblical writers, the death of the body entailed the passage of the soul into an underworld, where it would remain forever. Still, various biblical texts contain hints of a countertradition; for example, the second book of Kings depicts the prophet Elijah ascending directly into heaven on a fiery chariot (2 Kings 2:1-12). But such miraculous transitions from life to a mysterious afterlife are exceptional, and it is only in a very late biblical work, the book of Daniel, that we come upon an explicit reference to the dead rising again to life.By the rabbinic era, however, mainstream Judaism had already embraced the idea of a postmortem existence in the “world to come” (Hebrew, olam ha-bah), though just what this belief entailed remained uncertain. Thus, questions such as whether the departed enter the world-to-come automatically upon death or only after some ultimate judgment has been passed upon that soul by God, or whether a general resurrection of humankind would precede or follow the Messianic age, were left unanswered.
By the modem era, many reform-minded Jews concluded that any belief in an existence beyond this world was either an archaic folk belief or an insupportable, unscientific hypothesis. Yet despite such opposition, the classic conception of the afterlife, along with references to the resurrection of the dead, persists within most contemporary prayer books. In Orthodox communities, Jews continue to insist that these beliefs are an integral part of the Judaism they uphold.