Page 29 - Perceptions papers

who have led the many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever.” That verse is

the beginning of the Jewish idea of personal immortality. In the Rabbinic period the sages taught

that people would go on to Olam Haba (The World To Come), also known as Gan Eden (The

Garden of Eden). At the end of history, the dead would be resurrected. If that sounds quite

Christian, we must remember that Christianity is an outgrowth of Judaism. Jesus’s teachings

plus the so-called New Testament scripture became the base for Christianity, with a little help

from Greek philosophers as well.

The reason that Jews say Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, for our departed loved ones is

because that prayer (in Aramaic, not Hebrew, incidentally) would carry the departed into the

world to come. At the end of history, the dead would be resurrected and they would travel back

to the land of Israel, which is why Jews were and still are often buried with small sacks of soil

from Israel beneath their heads. The idea of an afterlife is another reason that traditionally Jews

did not believe in autopsy and cremation. It was thought that the body must remain whole for

the next life. Additionally, after World War II cremation was considered as associated

with the Holocaust, and therefore an abhorrent practice. In the last half century that association

has been rejected as unworthy of righteousness, that Jews must rise above clinging to that

shattering period.

Jews prefer the idea of immortal influence---that what we do survives us. Shakespeare noted

that “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Jews

prefer to think that the good or evil that men do lives after them, that all we do survives us.

Therefore “good” Jews must concentrate on living a good and just life. There’s a legend that

says when we perform a good deed, that deed becomes a thread. When we die God weaves all

the threads into sails for the ship to carry our soul into eternity.

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