What Happens After I Die? Jewish Views of Life After Death

by Rifat Sonsino, Daniel B. Syme, Behrman House

Book Overview

Offers a wide spectrum of Jewish responses to the question of life after death. Classical answers are drawn from traditional Jewish literature. Modern Jewish thinkers, from all denominations in the Jewish community, add their personal notions of life after death.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807403563
• ISBN13: 9780807403563
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Behrman House Publishing
• Length: 1 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Summary of Reform Judiasm views on afterlife

This is a book of 12 essays by Jewish Rabbi's and other intellectual thinkers expressing their individual views on what happens to us after death. All well written, some uplifting, some chilling in their precision and logic which concludes that there is nothing to look for after this life. Interesting that, if you are Jewish, you can believe anything you want on this subject and still belong to the club.

I learned something

My gentile friends (and my less educated Jewish ones) occasionally ask me what Jews think about the afterlife. After reading this book, I know the answer. The answer is: there's no consensus. Certainly Jews don't have the precise picture of Heaven and Hell that some fundamentalists have. There is (outside the leftward fringes of Reform Judaism) a consensus that there is some sort of afterlife -- but no consensus (even within Orthodox, Conservative or Reform as far as I could tell) as to what that afterlife looks like, except for some vague notion of some sort of reward and punishment in the world to come.

Great perspectives and approaches to the afterlife

This book's usefulness is certainly not limited to a Jewish audience. The wide range of essays included in Sonsino & Syme's book provide insight into the views of other faiths as well, especially Christianity. I was required to read this book as a college religion student to better understand Jewish views of the afterlife, but it is just as well suited for someone who wants to sort out their own personal views. I am confident that regardless of your own opinions and the level of your reflection on the afterlife, you will be moved by several of the included essays.

A nice intro, brief and simple

This book is obviously an attempt on the part of the Reform movement to correct the misconception, common among Reform Jews, that there is supposedly no Jewish belief in an afterlife. The authors explore a variety of beliefs about life after death from different periods and branches of Judaism. I was pleasantly surprised to see a section on reincarnation, acknowledging that Hasidim and some others believe in it. All in all, although the book takes a more rationalist approach than I would prefer, it does give the average reader a nice introduction to Jewish afterlife doctrines. Best of all, it's short and very reader-friendly.