Unlike pious Christians, I have no fear of hell. I scoff at the notion such a place exists. But sometimes I wish hell were real. I like the idea of an excessively stuffy penal colony for history’s great villains. A place where Hitler, Pol Pot, Bin Laden and their BFFs can roast away in that “dungeon horrible” (as John Milton phrased it) where “peace and rest can never dwell, hope never comes.”
Or, as described by the character Elaine in a classic “Seinfeld” episode: “The worst place in the world! With devils and those caves and the ragged clothing! And the heat! My God, the heat!”
But alas, I believe there is no hell below us. Above us, only sky.
Given my limited knowledge of comparative religion, I’ve often wondered why Judaism places so little emphasis on heaven, hell and the afterlife. In Christianity, it’s pretty much the whole shebang.
Of course, Judaism does have its own version of hell. It’s called Gehenna (derived from the Hebrew “Gai ben Hinnom” or “Valley of Hinnom”).
This was presumed to be a real locale somewhere in ancient Israel, a place where dearly departed sinners headed to purify their misbegotten souls.
Gehenna, say the talmudic sages, is a kind of zombie boot camp, where you come to terms with your screwups and atone for them via a rigorous regimen of torment. Unlike the far nastier Christian hell — a realm of endless torture and pain — in Gehenna, the longest you can stay is 12 months. After that, you receive an upgrade to Gan Eden, or the Jewish heaven.
According to some Jewish commentaries, heaven and hell actually are the same place, but viewed differently depending on the life one led.
Which reminds me of that other famous Milton quote from “Paradise Lost”: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
Now that’s a hell I can believe in.
I’ve spent countless hours sweating the small stuff and needlessly making a living hell of my life. I have been known to go nuts over long red lights, 2 percent drops in the Dow, the din of a gardener’s noisy leaf blower, a Giants come-from-ahead loss in the ninth.
I’ve also been known to violate the terms of the Serenity Prayer: un-accepting of things I cannot change and short on the courage to change the things I can.
Easily the most hellish moment of my life had nothing to do with any sin I committed, other than, perhaps, the sin of spacing out.
I had taken my son, Aaron, to the park for an afternoon’s frolic. He was 3 at the time, and squirrelly enough to dash out of sight in a split second.
That’s what happened, and for 15 nightmarish minutes, I couldn’t find my boy. I looked everywhere. Every ghoulish “America’s Most Wanted” scenario passed through my mind. The dread and panic were beyond measure.
At last I found him, squatting behind a tree, playing with his Tonka truck, as happy and oblivious as could be. Hell morphed into heaven for me at warp speed.
That merest taste of hell showed me that the ultimate torment is loss. Everything else in the world may be in perfect working order, but without those you love, all is ash and brimstone.
But to return to my question: Why don’t Jews dwell on the afterlife, whatever the destination, north or south?
My former rabbi in Los Angeles once explained it to me thusly: The Jewish take on this subject could be divined from the first word of the Torah. Make that the very first letter: bet.
As in Genesis, in the beginning. The letter “bet” is a box, closed on three of four sides. That is, closed to what came before, above and below; open only to what is yet to be.
In other words, maybe there is a heaven and a hell. Maybe there is an afterlife, but it is none of our concern. We came here to live this life here and now, as fully as we can. As for the rest, we’re simply boxed out.
I can live with that.
Dan Pine can be reached at [email protected].