The World-To-Come (And How To Get There From Here)

The World-To-Come (And How To Get There From Here)
D’var Torah on Parashat Ki Tavo
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
September 16, 2011


The Torah conscientiously avoids any talk of the afterlife. Not that the topic was ever far from anyone’s mind. In ancient days, death was everywhere. The widespread belief systems of the time all gave detailed descriptions of what happened after death. Early Judaism was the exception. In Judaism, it is this life that matters, not the one following.

It is curious that while literature and art from all periods of world history contain depictions of hell, feverish images that are the fruit of some very disturbed minds, only scant material about it can be found anywhere in the Jewish sources and texts.

Again, that isn’t because people didn’t think about it all the time; in fact, much of the art of Medieval Europe is a depiction of either hell or of the Last Judgment and the damnation of the non-believer. Dante’s Inferno is a guided tour of the ten circles of hell, each worse than its predecessor. None of that is part of the Jewish concept of the afterworld, a place and/or time that the ancient Rabbis called ‘Olam Ha-ba, “the world to come.”

Contrary to Christian belief, the Jewish concept of the World To Come was of a good place, the reward of the righteous. Envisioning it was one of the fantasies Jews would indulge in—the food one would eat, the look and feel of that coveted seat at the Eastern Wall of the synagogue, the discussions one would have about difficult issues in the Torah and Talmud!

Hell did exist, as much for the early Jews as for the non-Jews around them. Only it didn’t occupy the world to come. It could happen anytime, anywhere in this world, during one’s lifetime, not after.

The dreadful Hell that some think God had devised for sinners doesn’t hold a candle to the devilish, cruel hell that we human beings can create for ourselves and for one another.

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo (“When You Arrive,” Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8) contains passages that do conjure up that nightmare—for that is what it is: A nightmare.

The portion contains some of Moses’s final words to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land. He will not be at their lead from that point on. On their own, they would now have to rely on other leaders and visionaries. Moses instructs the people to write the words of the Torah on stone, to review and understand, to interpret and adapt throughout the generations. At least once a year, Moses instructs the Israelites to recite a formal account of their history (a ritual we still perform, 3000 years later, repeating its words verbatim when we read the Passover Haggadah). The basic rules of Judaism are then repeated: Honor your parents; do not push back your neighbor’s boundary stone; do not subvert justice in the case of the poor, the stranger, the widow and the orphan; do not take bribes; do not engage in acts of sexual depravity. And then come the lists of blessings and curses. If you do the right thing, you will be blessed. If you fail to do the right thing, you will be cursed.

The character and course of these blessings and curses are not unnatural. They all deal with the world we know—the seasons; the earth; the fruit of the grasses and trees; the fruit of the womb. Rather than the curses we see flying around in the exciting conclusion of Harry Potter, the curses we read about in Ki Tavo are the result of our own doings. Call them punishment, call them curses—what they really represent is the consequences of our actions and choices. For better—and they become blessings; or for worse—curses.

The horrors depicted in these chapters are so upsetting, that a tradition has evolved in synagogues where the whole portion is chanted on its appropriate Shabbat. The passages of Ki Tavo that contain the curses are chanted quickly and in a low, subdued undertone. Nobody really needs to be reminded of the horrors that surround us. They emerge out of the darkness, unbidden, in nightmares. They cause rubbernecking on the highways; they fill our newspapers with lurid detail.

So why do we read them anyway? To reinforce in us what we already know, as well as to teach the younger generation, which may not know yet, how terrible we can make our world—this world—with the choices we make; and, conversely, what a wonderful place it could be if only we followed these basic laws of humanity (Deut. 27:15—26).
Ki Tavo—“When you arrive.” Perhaps there is an afterlife and an afterworld after all. Ki Tavo implies we’re not there yet. It’s true. Just open up the newspaper and start reading. We are still so far from that wonderful place of blessings! Our world is anything but that.

But if we wait for God to spread some sort of holy blanket over us, one which would turn everything as though by magic into a blessing, we are bound for disappointment. If we wait, we will never get to that Promised Land. We have to create it ourselves. For us and for our children, not for eternity. Not for tomorrow—for today! Not tomorrow—but rather, now, starting at this moment. Only then will the words of this Torah come true: “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out” (Deut. 28:6). Blessed, indeed, in all our endeavors.



©2011 by Boaz D. Heilman