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To: bdeaner

Found some more that might interest you.

A Mishnah passage says, “This world is like a lobby before the Olam Ha-Ba. Prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter the banquet hall.” The tractate Moed Katan teaches, “This world is only like a hotel. The world to come is like a home.” Yet it is also emphasized that this world provides the ability and privilege of doing good works and performing the mitzvot:

There will be three groups on the Day of Judgment: one of thoroughly righteous people, one of thoroughly wicked people and one of people in between. The first group will be immediately inscribed for everlasting life; the second group will be doomed in Gehinnom [Hell], as it says, “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence” [Daniel 12:2], the third will go down to Gehinnom and squeal and rise again, as it says, “And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on My name and I will answer them” [Zechariah 13:9]... [Babylonian Talmud, tractate Rosh Hashanah 16b-17a]

Maimonides:
In the world to come, there is nothing corporeal, and no material substance; there are only souls of the righteous without bodies — like the ministering angels... The righteous attain to a knowledge and realization of truth concerning God to which they had not attained while they were in the murky and lowly body. (Mishneh Torah, Repentance 8)

Gehinnom is the postmortem destination of unrighteous Jews and Gentiles. In one reference, the souls in Gehinnom are punished for up to 12 months. After the appropriate period of purification, the righteous continue on to Gan Eden (Rabbi Akiba and Babylonian Talmud, tractate Eduyot 2:10). The wicked endure the full year of punishment then are either annihilated (”After 12 months, their body is consumed and their soul is burned and the wind scatters them under the soles of the feet of the righteous (Rosh Hashanah 17a)”) or continue to be punished.

This belief is the basis for the Jewish practice of mourning and asking blessings on deceased loved ones for only 11 months (one would not wish to imply that the departed needed the full 12 months of purification).


193 posted on 07/21/2009 10:14:08 PM PDT by ET(end tyranny)
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To: ET(end tyranny)
A Mishnah passage says, “This world is like a lobby before the Olam Ha-Ba. Prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter the banquet hall.” The tractate Moed Katan teaches, “This world is only like a hotel. The world to come is like a home.” Yet it is also emphasized that this world provides the ability and privilege of doing good works and performing the mitzvot:

Great stuff. I am immediately reminded of Christ's parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22.

The reference to the three groups judgement day in the second quote also matches the wedding banquet parable -- there are those who reject the invitation, those called but who are improperly dressed (one assumes they could change), and those who are called and remain at the banquet.
198 posted on 07/21/2009 10:26:19 PM PDT by bdeaner (The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16))
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To: ET(end tyranny)
Rashi is chopped liver?
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach

290 posted on 07/22/2009 1:10:06 PM PDT by Uri’el-2012 (Psalm 119:174 I long for Your salvation, YHvH, Your law is my delight.)
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