Lfe Chain Rise in Peace

Life: Chaim (חַיִּים)
Rise in Peace
By Mendel Kalmenson and Zalman Abraham

Art by Sefira Lightstone
In Jewish thought, the term afterlife is a misnomer. Colloquially, the expression “afterlife” suggests that after life comes to an end, something else follows. In contrast to this, Judaism teaches that life is eternal—it has no end. It is experienced in a physical body for a period of time, and when that time is up, we lay down our body, and the soul returns to a higher dimension of eternal existence.

A contemporary analogy for this can be understood from a television broadcast: a transmitting station broadcasts images and sounds in the form of energy waves, which are received by a physical device that displays them. Imagine that something goes wrong with the device itself, so that its screen and speakers no longer display the images, sounds, ideas, feelings, and actions encoded within the energy waves.

The transmitting station, and the energy waves incorporating the media, exist no less than before; it is only that the receiving device is no longer translating them into physically visible and audible phenomena.

By way of analogy, we can thus envision the soul itself as the transmitting station (i.e., the source of one’s personality, character traits, thoughts, emotions, actions, etc.) and the body as the receiving device. The death of the body does not in any way affect the integrity of the soul, nor does it halt the soul’s self-expres​sion(analogous to the energy waves that are emanating through space); it is only that we have been deprived of the ability to see and hear it in the phenomenal world.

The comfort in knowing that the soul lives on may be overshadowed by our inability to fully comprehend the concept of life beyond the physical realm. We may have disconcerting questions about the quality of the soul’s existence and experience in the next world: What is it like for a soul to be “deprived” of physical existence? What kind of “life” does one have as a soul?

In a letter1 written to a family who lost a loved one, the Lubavitcher Rebbe described the soul’s experience when it departs this world:

“Needless to say, insofar as the soul is concerned, [death] is a release from its ‘imprisonment’ in the body. For so long as [the soul] is bound up with the body, it suffers from the physical limitations of the body, which necessarily constrain the soul and involve it in physical activities that are essentially alien to its purely spiritual nature…. In other words, the departure of the soul from the body is a great advantage and ascent for the soul.”


Accordingly, the Hebrew word for life, chaim, is phrased in the plural and literally translates as “lives,” indicating multiple phases and expressions of a single, never-ending life.

Famously, on the last day of Moses’ life, he tells the Jewish people2 : See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity... choose life. Obviously, everyone would choose life over death, so what kind of choice is Moses actually offering?

The explanation is that, essentially, Moses is offering sound investment advice. You can spend your life investing in self-centered pursuits that are physically pleasurable but fleeting, or you can invest in that which is eternal—life.

The Talmud teaches3 : “Righteous individuals are considered alive even in their death,” whereas “wicked individuals are considered as dead, even during their lifetime.”

This is because righteous individuals spend their lives infusing eternal meaning into everything they do.

In stark contrast to the culture of “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” when Jews have occasion to drink, they say “l’chaim!” reminding each other that there is so much more to life than the shallow indulgences of the here and now, and that every meaningful act one does and every mitzvah one performs creates an energetic imprint that outlives our temporary time in a physical body.

In fact, we learn that even after one’s body is laid to rest, mitzvot performed in the merit of a departed soul help to continue that soul’s journey and ascent as it travels through the infinite worlds beyond.

Therefore, instead of saying: “May their soul rest in peace,” in Jewish tradition, we say, “May their neshamah (soul) continue to have an aliyah (ascent).” For the soul does not rest; rather, it rises, continuously, even after death.4

Indeed, this perpetual process of ongoing elevation is the very essence of life itself.

The Big Idea
We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.5

It Happened Once
In 1960, a group of college students came to see the Lubavitcher Rebbe. One of the topics they discussed was the Jewish understanding of death.

The Rebbe explained: “The term used to describe death in Judaism is histalkut, which does not mean death in the sense of coming to an end; rather, it refers to an elevation from one level to another. When one completes his or her mission in life, the departed person is elevated to a higher plane.

“Death is not a cessation of life; rather, it describes the process whereby one’s spiritual life takes on a new dimension. This notion is consistent with the scientific principle of conservation of matter, which states that nothing physical can be annihilated. This table or a piece of iron can be cut, burned, etc., but in no instance can the matter of the table or the iron be destroyed. It only takes on a different form.

“Likewise, on the spiritual level, our spiritual being—the soul—can never be destroyed. It only changes its form or is elevated to a different plane.

“Accordingly,” the Rebbe concluded, “the term ‘afterlife’ is inappropriate, for what we experience after death is a continuation of life. Until one hundred twenty (the human lifespan mentioned in the Torah), life is experienced on one level, and from one hundred twenty-one, one hundred twenty-two, and one hundred twenty-three onward, it is carried on at another level, and we continue to ascend higher and higher in the realm of the spirit.”