Dining on Leviathan. Discoursing with Socrates. Debating the nature of existence in the afterlife. These are among the topics authors address in this wide-ranging account of how Jews have conceptualized the world to come and structured their lives in this world accordingly.
Some authorities portrayed the afterlife as an endless round of feasting and drinking of chazerie that would put the fanciest Las Vegas buffets to shame. There were visionaries who mapped out otherworldly climes populated by monstrous creatures. Others, decidedly more staid, saw the world to come as a location where neither food nor wine would be consumed; instead, it would offer the opportunity to bring moral certitude to questionable practices that could not be eradicated in this world. More down to earth are comparisons between Rabbi Akiva and Socrates, and analyses of influential thinkers like Moses Mendelssohn and Emmanuel Levinas. And more practical are discussions of how concepts of the afterlife serve to determine mourning practices, or more broadly, how humans should fashion their lives in the here and now.
The chronological range of these chapters also is impressive. The earliest documents discussed are from Apocryphal literature, including apocalypses, that were composed from 400 BCE to 200 CE. There are creative analyses of rabbinic material and documents from the medieval period through the 20th Century. Evolving ritual and liturgical practices bring readers up to the early 21st Century.
Each of the 13 authors whose works are brought together in this volume shows historical, cultural, and religious sensitivity both to the unique features of these differing manifestations and to the elements that unite them. For the readers of this volume, which is equally rewarding for general audiences and for specialists, the result is a carefully nuanced, creatively balanced exploration of the breadth of Jewish thought and practice concerning some of the most profound and perplexing issues humans face.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Editor’s Introduction
Contributorsx
s“The End of the World and the World to Come”: What Apocalyptic Literature Says about the Time After the End-Time, by Dereck Daschke
Warriors, Wives, and Wisdom: This World and
the World to Come in the (So-Called) Apocrypha, by Nicolae Roddy
The Afterlife in the Septuagint, by Leonard Greenspoon
Rabbi Akiva, Other Martyrs, and Socrates: On Life, Death, and Life After Life, by Naftali Rothenberg
Heaven on Earth: The World to Come and Its (Dis)locations, by Christine Hayes
Olam Ha-ba in Rabbinic Literature: A Functional Reading, by Dov Weiss
Dining In(to) the World to Come, by Jordan D. Rosenblum
What’s for Dinner in Olam Ha-ba? Why Do We Care in Olam Ha-zeh?: Medieval Jewish Ideas about Meals in the World to Come in R. Bahya ben Asher’s Shulhan Shel Arba, by Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus
The Dybbuk: The Origins and History of a Concept, by Morris M. Faierstein
Tasting Heaven: Wine and the World to Come from the Talmud to Safed, by Vadim Putzu
Worlds to Come Between East and West: Immortality and the Rise of Modern Jewish Thought, by Elias Sacks
Emmanuel Levinas’s Messianism and the World to Come: A Gnostic-Philosophical Reading of Tractate Sanhedrin 96b–99b, by Federico Dal Bo