Do Jews believe in hell?

[F0uad]

I believe every single person has a sort of "Karma" as its called in Eastern religions, but I call it a "Divine record" or rather "Record in the Book of Life", each person has a certain "weight" to their sins and good deeds. This is nothing outside of traditional Rabbinical and early Christian thought, that there is a sort of balance between one's Lawful and Unlawful behavior. The Torah (and the rulings in between which is part of what "Christ" was teaching as opposed to the Pharisee's in-between-rules that can be called "Proto-Talmudic") is the rubric of how one is measured. It also equates to one's worthiness and Honor and earned Glory in the Kingdom.

Lol are you sure you aren't a Muslim by chance?

[Jayhawker Soule]

Originally Posted by Chisti

Do they?

Some do. I do not.

Originally Posted by Chisti

What is the destination of members of other religions, or atheists, agnostics etc.?

I my opinion: the memories of those whose lives they've touched.

Consider reading ...

[TheKnight]

Originally Posted by Chisti

Do they? What is the destination of members of other religions, or atheists, agnostics etc.?

I think you will find that any questions about the afterlife are bound to produce a myriad of results when you ask in the presence of Jews.

So far as I understand it, there is no authoritative claim concerning the afterlife in Judaism, nor anything that specifies that a person must believe in a certain concept or even a singular unanimously accepted idea regarding the afterlife exists.

Personally, I believe very strongly that the righteous man's goal in life should be devekut. Essentially, that one should seek to unify with God by becoming as similar to Him as possible. I see the afterlife as the ultimate measure of devekut reached during a lifetime. Long story short, I think that upon death those who lived righteous lives will, in essence, be as one with God (or as close to "one with God" as one can get without actually being God) and that those who did not will simply "cease" to exist.

I sort of see it as a infinite spectrum of "real-ness" with the ends being existence and non-existence. God being the ultimate infinite existence, a life lived apart from God places one further on the non-existence side of the spectrum.

Death, being a sort of reality filter, strips us of our misconceived notions of what is real and what is not leaving us only with a perception of what is real (IE God and those things that are of a similar nature).