How Does Hell Work?
Heaven's laundromat for the soul
By Tzvi Freeman
Why Does Torah Talk About Punishment?
A Jew, the Torah says again and again, must connect to G-d from the heart. When you serve G-d out of fear of retribution, you may be better off than someone who does not serve G-d at all, but you’re not serving Him from your heart. You are serving Him only to avoid pain.
If so, why do you need to know about punishment—whether in this world or in the afterlife and Gehinnom? Why do the classic works on Jewish ethics find it necessary to discuss these things?
Simply because you need to know who you are, where you are, how life works, and the power of your actions.
Who are you? A divine soul.
Where are you? In a very challenging world.
does it work? It provides options at every turn, to go down or to rise up. What are the consequences? One moment of sincere, good deeds, our sages say, is worth more than the highest heaven could provide.
That alone makes a lifetime worthwhile. But, inevitably, you will also come in contact every day with all sorts of substances and situations very foreign to your soul. As they say, it comes with the territory.
You want to keep that to a minimum by always keeping in mind why you are here: To make whatever you can into a holy experience, and by avoiding those things that can’t be budged.
When your soul leaves, she will rise upward to the blissful experience she has prepared for herself. But she will need to release all the baggage holding her down. That’s really all that the punishments of Torah are about: helping you drop the bad baggage.
Because G-d does not punish for the sake of punishment. He’s not out to get back at you. That’s absurd. You can’t cause Him any harm, so why would He take vengeance? Rather, out of His great love and kindness, He provides the means to rid yourself of whatever prevents you from rising to the place where you truly belong.
Why Must It Be Painful?
Pain has a purpose: to protect you from getting hurt. There are people who don’t feel pain, and they are perpetually suffering severe burns, cuts, and other serious injuries.
Pain also has a vital role in the healing process. We know, for example, that chemically blocking the pain receptors in an animal’s nerves slows skin and bone healing. That’s because the same nerves that send pain signals to the brain are also busy dilating blood vessels, attracting immune cells, and stimulating tissue repair.
The same with the soul. To the soul, any interruption of divine energy is like a stoppage of oxygen or blood to the body. So those unholy activities or words naturally cause her a lot of pain. If your soul is sensitive and feels the pain, she doesn’t allow such a thing to happen. If it slips by, the pain triggers an immediate response of remorse and the internal healing we call teshuvah.
But too often, the physical body desensitizes the soul and anesthetizes her pain. That’s how transgressions happen. You slip up and you can’t feel the consequences. Your soul’s lifeline is blocked, the current of life is set in disarray, and things cease to go the way they should. Hopefully, that’s a wake-up call and you get things in order. Then the final steps of recuperative healing can begin.
Is that healing a punishment? Certainly not in the common sense of the word. When your parents changed your diapers or bathed you and washed the sand and mud out of your hair, were they punishing you? They loved you and they wanted you to be clean and healthy. And, the truth is, had you not kicked and whined so much, it would have gone a lot easier.
So, too, in adulthood, if you can muster the strength to embrace whatever pain comes upon you, recognizing it as divine love and healing, you will lead a much happier life.
But what if you never pick up the call? That’s the real problem—when you don’t feel the pain. Or if you imagine that the pain is not telling you anything. Much illness, researchers are beginning to realize, comes from people lacking what’s come to be known as interoception, a perception of what is going on inside their bodies and what the pain they feel is trying to tell them. The roughness and toughness of life, it seems, can become its own anesthetic.
Upon leaving the body, however, the anesthesia wears off and your soul begins to ache from her wounds. No longer a denizen of this world, teshuvah is no longer on the menu. Now, the pain alone must do its healing.
Before we describe that process, here’s a story to illustrate the problem:
It’s Just Dirt
David Goldberg lived on an upscale street in a Michigan suburb. So upscale, they never paved the street, leaving it a bumpy dirt road. That way, nobody came by who didn’t belong there.
David told us about the luxury car he bought to commute to work every day. He thought it was a great deal, but after only two years or so, it was forever giving him trouble. The brakes, the transmission, the mileage—everything was substandard. David figured he’s been sold a lemon.
Before returning to the dealer, David went to see his mechanic. “Let me hoist it up,” the mechanic said, “and take a better look.”
As you may have guessed, the entire underside of the car chassis, inside and out, was caked over with several inches of dry mud. “The problem is not the car,” said the mechanic. “It’s just smothered with dirt!” After a good power wash, David’s car ran like new again.
“Only then,” David concluded, “did I understand why a soul, as pure as a soul may be, might need a cleaning.”
The Body Detox
Your body is holy. It was chosen by its Creator as the sacred means by which the soul performs mitzvahs. That’s why it requires a sacred burial—just as we bury a Torah scroll.
By Jewish tradition, a group called the chevra kadisha prepares the body before burial by cleansing it and submerging it in a mikvah. We want to return our body to its Maker as pure as it was given to us.
