The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought [Hardcover]

Neil Gillman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1997

Does death end life, or is it the passage from one stage of life to another? In The Death of Death, noted theologian Neil Gillman offers readers an original and compelling argument that Judaism, a religion often thought to pay little attention to the afterlife, delivers a deathblow to death itself. This new work is an intellectual and spiritual milestone for all of us interested in the meaning of life, as well as the meaning of death. Combining astute scholarship with keen historical, theological, and liturgical insights, Gillman traces the evolution of Jewish thought about death and the afterlife. From Judaism' s original belief not only in the afterlife but in bodily resurrection, to later ambivalence about resurrection and reincarnation, today, somewhat surprisingly, more contemporary Jewish scholars including Gillman have unabashedly returned to the notion of bodily resurrection.

The Death of Death gives new life to a very old debate. By exploring Jewish thought about death and the afterlife, it presents readers with challenging new ideas.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gillman, a professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary, takes on death, at least as an intellectual exercise, and offers an interesting survey of the topic in the context of Jewish religious thought. Starting in the Garden of Eden, Gillman examines the various ways Judaism, a religion often thought to be concerned exclusively with living, has dealt with the matter of dying. Throughout, Gillman compares and contrasts the doctrines of bodily resurrection and spiritual immortality, whose competition for preeminence has caused tension in the ring of Jewish eschatology. Gillman's writing style is workmanlike, but his organization and knowledge of history are excellent, making this a good starting point for anyone interested in the topic. His own personal conclusion--a belief in bodily resurrection--makes for an intriguing summation. Ilene Cooper

Review

Judaism doesn't provide an afterlife belief familiar to Christians and others. When I was prepared for Bar Mitzvah, and the question came up, I was told that in the next life my reward would be to sit with Moses and study the law. Like all 13-year-olds, I was convinced of my immortality. At this point in my life, Moses beckons me joyously. Gillman establishes that there is no basis, in Jewish sacred canon, for an afterlife mythology, but he does argue that the suggestion is implied, and he repeats himself, fashioning suggestions on almost every page. None of the rewards and torments appearing in secular literature, like Milton's Paradise Lost or the Inferno of Dante, appears in Judaism. In the catalogue of Jewish secular writing I could only discover one short story by the Polish-born I.L. Peretz, who wrote in Hebrew and in Yiddish, which has any mention of a heaven, and his paradise is a diminished miracle. An excellent contemporary collection, The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse, which I suspected had some evidence of acculturation, has not one verse contributing to a heaven. For this we may chide Gillman, a distinguished scholar, teacher, and Conservative rabbi who teaches at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (a major training school for Conservative clerics), for having arrived at a spiritual argument that tends to accentuate Christian myths and values as he examines Jewish canon. However, the book promotes the force of scholarship and theological insight that students of modern theology, from all quarters, would find valuable. I think the writing rambles courageously in an attempt to telescope millennia of thought and tradition, even selecting from modern sources and disciplines that frequently are not viewed. Death is one event within the framework of human life, but not the final event. The author says, "...that Jewish tradition broadens the time-frame of human destiny." He offers us a thorough examination of Jewish eschatology (this word refers to the reasoning about the last). He admits that the fathers of Jewish postmodernism, Buber, Rosenzweig and Abraham Heschel, were not preoccupied with afterlife. This is an understatement of sorts. Heschel, a theologian universally acknowledged wrote in his book Man Is Not Alone, "...man is but a short critical stage between the animal and the spiritual. The emancipated man is yet to emerge." And finally, he wrote, "For the pious man it is a privilege to die." The complexity of Jewish theology has many pitfalls for the uninitiated (and here I include Jews and gentiles alike). Jewish Lights Publishing, the house responsible for issuing this tome appears to have an ambitious list in print including Gillman, Heschel, and others. -- From Independent Publisher

The Death Of Death explores the original and compelling argument that Judaism (a religion often thought to pay littler attention to the afterlife) not only offers rich ideas on this subject, but actually delivers a deathblow to death itself. By exploring Jewish thought about death and the afterlife, The Death Of Death presents the reader with fascinating and challenging new ideas about life. Author Neil Gillman combines astute scholarship with keen historical, theological and liturgical insights as he outlines the evolution of Jewish thought about bodily resurrection and spiritual immortality. Beginning with the near-silence of the Bible on the afterlife, Gillman traces the development of these two doctrines through Jewish history. The Death Of Death is an innovative and personal synthesis creating a strikingly modern statement on resurrection and immortality, the meaning of life and the meaning of death, from the perspective of Judaism. -- Midwest Book Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing; 1ST edition (February 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1879045613
• ISBN-13: 978-1879045613
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #414,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent review of Jewish ideas about life after death, December 2, 2011

By 

Israel Drazin (Boca Raton, Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Hardcover)

Neil Gillman offers his view of life after death in this National Jewish Book Award winning second printing of his book. He recognizes that the Hebrew Bible has no clear statement about life after death and that the concept was not introduced into Judaism until after the second century BCE. He cites the Jewish historian Josephus who writes that the more conservative Sadducees of the second century BCE rejected the notion of life after death, while the Pharisees, who stressed the existence of the Oral Torah, accepted the notion. He notes that the idea of a soul is not found in Pharisaic writings until a century later. Since Rabbinical Judaism developed from the Pharisaic teachings, the ideas of life after death and the soul achieved a kind of canonical status.

He points out that Jews and the rest of the western world took the notion of a soul and its survival after death from the Greek pagan philosopher Plato (429-347 BCE). The idea is discussed in detail in Plato's description of the death of his teacher Socrates in Phaedo. (He does not mention that Plato's student Aristotle, like the Jewish philosopher Maimonides [1138-1204] rejected the notion and used the term "soul" to denote all bodily functions that keep people alive, such as the nutritive and respiratory systems. All parts of the "soul" die when the body dies, they said, except for one system, intelligence, which joins, according to their science, "the active intellect.")

He sees three biblical passages, none earlier than 200 BCE, that "unambiguously affirm that at least some individuals will live again after their death." He notes that the Bible's nefesh does not mean "soul," but "life" or "person." He dismisses Genesis 5:24 that "God took" Enoch and II Kings 2:11 that "Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind" as metaphors, which as other biblical metaphors, is not meant to be taken literally.

One passage is Daniel 12:2 and 9. The first verse reads: "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, others to reproaches, to everlasting abhorrence." Daniel 12:9 is: "But you, go on to your end; you shall rest, and arise to your destiny at the end of the days." These may be the first mentions of life after death, but they do not speak of a soul. However, they may be metaphors: although the current generation may not see success against their Greek persecutors, later generations will triumph and the dead will be vindicated. In any event, the notion of life after death is in no Jewish writing before this time.

The other passages are Isaiah 25:7-8 and 26:18-19, which scholars date after 200 BCE. The first says that God "will destroy death forever" and the second says: "let Your dead revive." These passages may express the belief in everlasting life, but many scholars read them as hopes against "the kind of mass dying caused by warfare."

The idea of resurrection - the reemergence of body and soul on earth after death - is totally distinct from the notion of a continued life after death in an undisclosed place. Gillman suggests that Jews took the idea from Christians who took it from Egypt and Persia, most likely from Zoroastrianism. It is not even hinted in the Hebrew Bible.

Gillman offers many other ideas. He discusses the views of mystics concerning what transpires between death and resurrection. He examines some modern views on the subjects. He admits that he does not know if there is life after death. He speaks of "My hope for the hereafter." He writes: "That kind of hope takes me beyond the conclusion of my rational self." Noting that Judaism offers no clear answer, he asks: why be Jewish? And he answers: "Not because it is `the' Truth, not because it originated in the explicit word and will of God, but rather because of its intrinsic richness, its ability to help us cope with life, to make sense of our world."

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well done, especially on history, April 8, 2002

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Michael Lewyn (Forest Hills, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Hardcover)

As another reviewer pointed out, this book's great strength is its tracing of the evolution of Jewish thought relating to the afterlife. Not only does Gillman discuss the differences between Biblical, Talmudic, and post-Talmudic Jewish thought, but he also offers plausible explanations as to WHY Jewish thought evolved as it did.

Some quibbles: based on Gillman's discussion, I didn't really understand why the concept of "soul immortality" made so much more sense to modern commentators than (a) bodily resurrection (the Talmudic view) or (b) total repudiation of the idea of an individual afterlife. And Gillman's arguments for bodily resurrection aren't that persuasive -- but only, I suspect, because no argument as to an issue so far beyond our experience can possibly be entirely persuasive.

3 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable exploration of Jewish thought on the afterlife., October 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone seeking a survey of Judaism's thoughts on the afterlife. Much more satisfying than "What Happens After I Die?"