Resurrection: Is it Jewish? Is it Dead?; an Epistolary Essay by Elliot Wilner
Resurrection: Is it Jewish? Is it Dead?
An Epistolary Essay by Elliot Wilner
Photo by Joel Stylis on UnsplashDuring one of our weekly Friday bike rides, my friend Victor, a lapsed Catholic, reminded me of a conversation that we had had, months earlier, on the subject of resurrection. That conversation took place, as Victor recalled, during a long and arduous bike ride that the two of us had undertaken on the towpath of the C&O Canal, a trip that started in Washington, D.C. and ended two days and a hundred and eighty-four miles later in Cumberland, MD. Near the end of the second day, when we were both exhausted and the ambient temperature had climbed to ninety degrees, Victor announced that he wanted to die. His only misgiving about death, he confided, was that he probably wouldn’t – in view of his faithlessness – be eligible for resurrection. He asked me if I, a traditional Jew, held to a belief in resurrection (not necessarily expected at that moment, on the canal towpath, but at some future time)? My reply, according to Victor, was that I hadn’t given resurrection much thought but that I would look into it and get back to him.
Victor and I both managed to survive the bike trip on the C&O Canal towpath, but then months went by, and I forgot all about that conversation…until Victor brought up the subject again during our recent Friday bike ride. Apparently, he still harbored a hope for resurrection, wherever it might be available to him. That prompted me to do my homework and send him the following email message:
Dear Victor,
I must confess that I cannot recollect our having had a conversation about how resurrection is viewed in the Jewish tradition, but I trust that youngsters like you have better memories than an old-timer like myself. Or might that conversation have taken place in another lifetime, before all of us were reborn? At any rate, now that I am coming around to address the subject, at your behest, it would be appropriate to say at the outset that any reference to the subject of resurrection as viewed from a Jewish perspective -- whether that be Judaism today or 2,000 years ago or 3,000 years ago – must be considered as a reference to a Jewish tradition, or philosophy, because resurrection has never had any standing with respect to Jewish doctrine (halachah) or theology.
The idea of resurrection first gained currency among the Judeans, according to some religious scholars, in the first half of the 2nd century BCE, during the persecutions of Antiochus IV (which instigated the Maccabean Wars.) This idea intensified during the period of Roman occupation, which began in 63 BCE, and -- joined to the ideas of a Messiah and a World to Come -- became an obsession of the Pharisees during the Mishnaic Period (1st and 2nd centuries CE.) There is a great deal written in the Mishnah and the Talmud on these subjects but, crucially -- from a halachic or theological perspective -- there is nothing in the Torah itself that treats of such matters. And if you were to read the lengthy rabbinical discussions that appear in the Talmud, you would no doubt be struck by the many, diverse opinions that were offered and debated regarding the definition of these concepts – e.g., Messiah, Resurrection, World to Come – and the timing and sequence of their putative realization. The driving force behind these discussions was - to use a word that would be coined by Leibniz many centuries later- theodicy: the need to vindicate the divine attributes, while at the same time acknowledging the existence of evil in the world. God might be vindicated, at least partly, if the righteous in generations past were to be resurrected so that they might have a share in the World to Come.
A consensus of a sort did emerge from Talmudic discussions concerning the basic meaning of resurrection: Both the body and soul of a person would be redeemed, since the body and the soul should be considered an indivisible unit. And this redemption would be preceded by the arrival of the Messiah, who would usher in a new realm of existence, i.e., the “Messianic Age”, or the “World to Come,” which would represent the final stage in the development of history. All of this was to take place here, on this planet (more precisely, in the Land of Israel), and the human beings who would be resurrected would conduct their worldly business as usual – except that righteousness would prevail everywhere.
So here we have one conception of how events would unfold at some future time: the arrival of the Messiah, then Resurrection (body and soul) of the righteous and the penitent, then a Messianic Age which would endure forever. In this particular scenario, the Messianic Age is equated with the World to Come. However, another conception, which seems to have gained wider acceptance, postulates a different sequence of events: the arrival of the Messiah, then Resurrection (body and soul), then a Messianic Age for a finite period (duration TBD), then the bodily demise of all those who had been resurrected, and finally the separation of the souls of the righteous from their bodies and the ascension of those souls to the World to Come (a heavenly realm, often equated with the Garden of Eden) where they would bask for all eternity in the Divine Light of the Almighty. Yet another conception was formulated by the philosopher Maimonides, in the 13th century, but I will not attempt to explain his ideas, especially considering he had some difficulty in explaining them himself.
All of these conceptions are fraught with difficulties with respect to the mundane details of resurrection. The devil is in the details, so to speak. Who will be resurrected? Only the righteous, or everyone? What about Gentiles? Exactly what would be the condition of the bodies that were to be resurrected? Would they be reborn as they were when they were buried? At the same age? With the same imperfections? (Do I really want to be reborn as a ninety-five-year-old man with severe arthritis, angina and dementia? Will Viagra be available in the World to Come? And Medicare Part D?) These matters are discussed at length in the Talmud. And good news, Victor: righteous Gentiles will be resurrected.
The rabbis did succeed, during the Mishnaic Period, in establishing these concepts as “canonical” within the liturgy, most notably as benedictions inserted into the Amidah, the core prayer of the liturgy. But there is not, to this day, any Jewish canon with respect to the entire field of eschatology: the whole subject is treated as aggadah (folklore), not as halachah (doctrine), and it remains a private matter, which everyone is free to endorse or reject. This view was articulated nicely by Moses Mendelssohn, the eighteenth century Jewish philosopher (an orthodox Jew but, at the same time, a committed advocate for the Enlightenment): “Judaism boasts no exclusive revelation of eternal truths….The voice which let itself be heard on Sinai on that great day did not proclaim, ‘I am the Eternal, your God, the necessary, independent being, omnipotent and omniscient, that recompenses men in a future life according to their deeds.’ This is the universal religion of mankind, not Judaism.”
The Pharisees did, in all likelihood, expect that Resurrection would be accepted as an article of faith – but they failed, because, as Mendelssohn would contend, there are no articles of faith in Judaism (with the arguable exception of the First and the Fourth of the Ten Commandments.) The doctrines of Judaism are defined by a legal code, a compendium of rules (i.e., commandments, nominally 613 in all), and not by belief, since belief cannot really be commanded. I suspect that, in addition to their lacking any halachic imprimatur, the subjects of Resurrection and Afterlife lost much of their appeal to the Jewish community after the 2nd century, and became devalued, for the very reason that those concepts had come to occupy such a pre-eminent place in Christian theology.
Let me close by quoting these words from the Encyclopaedia Judaica regarding the subject of the Afterlife: “The forms which this belief has assumed, and the modes in which it has been expressed, have varied greatly and differently from period to period. Even today several distinct conceptions about the fate of man after death, relating to the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and the nature of the world to come after the messianic redemption, exist side by side within Judaism. Though these conceptions are interwoven, no generally accepted theological system exists concerning their interrelationship.”
My wish for you, Victor, is that you should enjoy a long life in this world and an even longer life in the world to come. Amen.
Elliot Wilner is a retired neurologist, living in Bethesda, MD.
Inquiry
Thoughts on Resurrection: Is it Jewish? Is it Dead?, provided by the author:
I wrote this about ten years ago, and it was consigned to my private “genizah,” long forgotten, until recently. I am a retired neurologist, now eighty-five years old, a resident of Bethesda, MD, and a lifelong student of the Hebrew Bible (In recent years, I have become a sometime student of the New Testament, also). It’s probably fair to say that I belong to a sizeable “sect” within Judaism, comprising those Jews who practice many of the rites of the religion, who study biblical and post-biblical texts, but who do not believe in God.
Is ”Atheistic Jew” an oxymoron? To an Orthodox Jew, yes. To a Christian, probably. To myself and many other Conservative or Reform Jews, no. This gets to the heart of the matter about which I wrote in “Resurrection…”: No matter how steadfastly an Orthodox Jew may believe in “Moshiach” (Messiah), and Resurrection, and a World to Come, these concepts are definitely not found in the Torah – the Five Books of Moses – and cannot be, therefore, doctrinal. These concepts have left large footprints in Jewish folklore, liturgy, literature, and philosophy, but they are not doctrinal; they are just traditional, optional ideas. For that matter, there do not appear to be any prescribed beliefs in the Five Books of Moses apart from the beliefs (a) that God is the creator of everything, and (b) that God rescued the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. Everything else is Law or legend.
By contrast (if I be not mistaken), Messiah, Resurrection and Heaven are foundational, doctrinal beliefs – and not just beliefs, but vital realities – amongst religious Christians. My friend Victor, the lapsed Catholic to whom I addressed my essay, could not accept that doctrine. But he remained an admirable Christian in terms of his character and his many charitable activities. He was dubious about the Jewish concepts, too, but he admitted that he would accept Resurrection if it was offered to him on condition that he could be thirty years old forever. Victor passed away a few years ago, and I hope his wish was granted. I thank him for pushing me to research this subject.
28 Ellul, 5773