Heaven And Hell In Judaism And Islam – OpEd

Speculations about Gehinnom (Hell), like those about Gan Eden (Heaven), were always regarded by Jews as no more than speculations. Rabbinic sages never accorded them the honor or emphasis reserved for discussion of our obligations toward our fellow humans. 

Speculations about heaven and hell were merely exercises of the imagination. And, as long as one isn’t disturbed by their variety and frequent contradictions, one can find insights in the dicta of the sages, and in passages in the Zohar concerning heaven and hell.

The Zohar Hadash speaks of Gehenna (a westernized spelling of Gehinnom) as being divided into seventy-two compartments. Moses de Leon, the editor and part author of the Zohar, in a book under his own name, speaks of Gehenna as being divided into seven compartments in the upper Gehenna, and seven compartments in the lower Gehenna. However, the most important question about Gehenna is not the size or structure of Gehenna, but  who goes there. 

According to some Rabbis, everybody goes to hell because there is no one who never sins.  But while everybody goes, hardly anyone stays in hell, at least not forever.

The Zohar and other Kabbalistic sources theorize that even the righteous go to Gehenna. The righteous and the wicked differ in the purpose of their going, and the length of their stay. There is a lot to be said for the Zohar’s conclusions. After all, no one is perfectly righteous. Even the best among us have shared with the worst among us at one time or another some common act, or error, or omission.  

Further, an essential part of being good is the desire to help those who are less well off. It is only natural, therefore, that the righteous would want to enter Gehenna to attempt to rescue those who are there. The righteous do not stay long in Gehenna, however. When they leave, they may take with them some of those whom they have redeemed by their influence, or their example.

It is interesting to note that such popularizers of the torments of Christian hell as Dante, Milton, and contemporary revivalists, for all their imagination, have not added significantly to the horrors of the punishments of Gehenna’s inmates listed in the Zohar. Tortured by thirst, they are burned by fire, scalding water, brimstone, heaping coals, boiling semen, fiery stones, and molten lead. Worms  crawl up  and down their bodies. Their flesh is pounded by hail, chewed by dogs and lions, stung by scorpions and snakes. And they are starved throughout this torment  until finally in despair and frenzy, they eat their own flesh.

These descriptions sound so Christian that most Jews are astonished to discover that they come from medieval Jewish literature. The concepts of an after-life taught in Christianity and Islam were expanded and extended by medieval Christians and Moslems. and then influenced medieval Jews in return.

If Pharisaic and medieval Orthodox Rabbis went for the idea of hell condemning in their imagination those who died to a stay there, they were successful in resisting the concept of eternal damnation. Gehenna actually resembles the Catholic notion of purgatory more than the Christian concept of hell. Most of the Rabbis who speculated about Gehenna agreed that the average person spends no more than twelve months there.

Talmudic statements indicated some are punished for thirty days, some for sixty days, some for ninety days, and some stay in Gehenna for as long as six months. Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri felt that the general period of punishment is only seven weeks. Another opinion quoted in the Talmud states that especially kind sinners are punished no more than an hour.

One interesting view in the Zohar indicates that a sinner’s punishment lasts only as long as it takes the body to deteriorate. The passage says, “All sinners as long as their bodies are in the grave intact, are judged body and soul together, each in their own way. But as soon as the body is decayed, the punishment of the soul ceases”. This interpretation reflects the Jewish view that the body should return to the earth and decay as quickly as possible. 

Judaism teaches that of all approaches to interring the dead, the best is a simple funeral using a plain wooden casket, which does not impede the natural processes of the body’s decay. It would be ironic if those people who had wasted thousands of dollars on caskets made out of metal, and used elaborate chemical procedures to preserve the body, were merely prolonging the sufferings of the dead.

There are many words used for hell in the Quran. The very descriptive word “al-naar” (Fire) is mentioned most frequently as in: “God’s kindled fire, which reaches up to the hearts: it is closed in over them in long columns” (Quran 104:5-9). 

The second most used term is the name, “Jahannam”. There are seven names for the seven layers of hell: al-hāwiya, al-jaḥīm, al-saʿīr, saqar, laẓā, al-ḥuṭama, and jahannam. The name jahannam is used both for hell as a whole and for one of the seven layers. Each layer is assigned to a different group of people. Azrael in Islamic tradition is the angel of death who separates souls from their bodies. Azrael is the Islamic counterpart of the Jewish Malakh HaMavet, the angel of death.

Several verses in the Quran mention the eternal nature of hell or both heaven and hell. Quran 7:23 states that the damned will linger in hell for ages. But two verses in the Quran (6:128 and 11:107) emphasize that while going to hell is horrible and eternal it is always “except as God (or your Lord) wills it” which means that it is not human judgements that count; but God’s because God can always choose to be merciful.