Hope this isn't an offensive question, just crossed my mind on the ride home today...
If there is no punishment, does that mean Hitler is in Heaven?
Don't get me wrong, Hitler is a HORRIBLE guy, but just wondering what do you think.
It's not an offensive question at all. Many have wondered about more or less the same issue.
Not all Jews believe in Heaven. Some would argue there is no Heaven. Others would argue Hitler is in Purgatory for a very long time.
Yes. And many also believe that there is no Gehinnom ("Purgatory") at all. And some have no answer for what happens to the wicked when they die. Yet others still believe that part of the wait in Gehinnom involves punishment of some kind.
And historically, some Jews might have answered (and may yet answer, for all I know) that the evil simply give up their right to eternality of the soul: as some of our medieval philosophers believed, essentially the soul "energy" of the wicked is, at death, simply re-absorbed into the "energy" of the Divine that created it, losing all individuality and awareness. They cease to be, and at death they essentially just "stop."
Also there are those of us (a minority, but hopefully a growing one) who believe in
gilgulei neshamot, or reincarnation. Thus, a person may be reborn and reborn again, in many different circumstances, perhaps even in many different forms (some who believe in
gilgulei neshamot have said that souls can sometimes transmigrate into animal bodies as well as human), working off the "demerit" of their misdeeds, learning new things, and acquiring merit to "balance their scales" (as it were), until they are essentially purified, and have lifted the burden of their prior sins, and are ready to enter
Olam ha-Ba ("The World to Come," about as close as we get to the concept of Heaven).
