One Big Table: As
Abq Jew stated in
Torah and Talmud and Zombies:
What Traditional Judaism has in mind [when we speak of resurrection] is the righteous sitting at tisch with The Holy One, Blessed Be He, scarfing down Leviathan chunks.
How does this work? Here's an interesting view, reported by Rabbi Rami Shapiro in his
Ethics of the Sages: Pirke Avot: Annotated & Explained (available from the publisher,
Jewish Lights, or from
Abq Jew's Amazon Store):
Heaven and hell are a single feast, with everyone seated at a grand table overflowing with the finest food and drink. The only rule is this: you must use the utensils provided, each being six feet in length. Those who attempt to feed themselves with these tools starve, for they cannot maneuver the tools to reach their own mouths. Those who learn to feed others are themselves fed in turn. The first are in hell, the second in heaven, but the feast is common to them both.
Abq Jew finished reading Rabbi Neil Gillman's
The Death of Death. In the final chapters, Rabbi Gillman dismisses the doctrine of the immortality of the soul - it's just not enough - and makes a very strong case for the traditional Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead. Only resurrection of the body, says Rabbi Gillman, will prove God's supreme power, solve the problem of the misfortune of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked
(tzaddik vi'ra lo, rasha vi'tov lo), and make each of our individual lives eternally meaningful.
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