Do Chareidim Believe in the Afterlife?

The limits of rationalist communal psychoanalysis

Thanks to our dear friend Natan’s repeated provocations against our Holy Torah, we have merited several posts about Torah’s protection, which has dozens of sources in Tanach and Chazal.

There is another particularly nonsensical claim that Natan has advanced, that chareidim themselves don’t believe Torah protects. This may seem shocking, but Natan thinks he has evidence. His alleged proof is threefold:

1. Chareidim make use of the military to protect themselves.

2. Some yeshivos fled rocket attacks.

3. A new problem he just discovered during his Shabbos nap, that yeshivos have something called “Bein Hazmanim”.

I don’t want to further bore you with the details of why #1 is ignorant am ha’aratzus, we already dealt with it here. Regarding #2, there were also many chareidi yeshivos that didn’t flee, in accordance with the guidance of the Gadol Hador Rav Chaim Kanievsky. By Natan’s standard, this proves the opposite of his assertion, that chareidim do indeed believe Torah protects. Regarding #3, Rav Edelstein was calling for more learning during Bain Hazmanim precisely because he felt that Torah protects. So as you can see, Natan’s entire argument is baseless.

Nevertheless, I think most of us can probably agree that in theory, Bain Hazmanim is too long. And this has nothing necessarily to do with Torah’s protection, but with the value of Torah itself. Why do yeshivos need off the entire month of Nissan and three weeks in Av?? Why so much bittul Torah??

And indeed, I found a post on the Otzar Hachachma forum which claims that Rav Don Segal, the Steipler, and Rav Shach were bothered by this very issue (regarding the summer), and wanted to change it, but felt they didn’t have the power to do so. So the question is, if the Roshei Yeshivos feel that Bain Hazmanim is too long, yet they lack the ability to modify it, does that mean that they don’t value the Torah? That they approve of bittul Torah? And does that mean they don’t believe in the Torah’s protection? Natan sure thinks it does. I trust that you all understand why this is so absurd on its face, and dare I say...irrational. But I will dig deeper into the absurdity and irrationality, so that you can better appreciate it.

Does sin destroy?

Let’s ask a different question, the flipside of “Does Torah protect”: Does sin destroy?

According to the Torah, it surely does. Let us examine one little sin, Lashon Hara. The Gemara in Arachin (15a) states that Lashon Hara leads to נגעים, leprosy, and that the sin of the מרגלים was Lashon Hara, for which they suffered a gruesome death, and the rest of the nation who accepted their Lashon Hara were condemned to die in the desert. The Chafetz Chaim explains that Lashon Hara was the primary cause of our exile in the Second Temple period, and the reason why we have not yet been redeemed. Sounds pretty serious.

And yet, even with all the efforts of the rabbis to spread awareness and eliminate Lashon Hara, unfortunately, they have not (yet) been entirely successful. Lashon Hara is still very prevalent in our community. Now, I don’t have a better plan to eliminate it. But does the frequency of Lashon Hara among chareidim prove that they don’t believe Lashon Hara is metaphysically damaging?

What the afterlife looks like for people who speak Lashon Hara. No, you don’t get a gun.

And we can ask an even better question. Do chareidim believe in a metaphysical Afterlife? Leaving the Gemara in Arachin aside, is there any chareidi who believes that there is no punishment for Lashon Hara, either in this world, or the World to Come? When a chareidi speaks Lashon Hara or violates any other mitzva, does this mean he is kofer in the concept of שכר ועונש? In the concept of תחיית המתים? Well, maybe on a certain level, it does. The Gemara states that somebody who speaks Lashon Hara is כאילי כפר בעיקר (which means he is kofer in God Himself). However, the Gemara says כאילו for a reason. It doesn’t mean there is truly no difference between one who doesn’t control his tongue, and an atheist.

But let us go even further. Putting aside issues of reward and punishment, is there any chareidi who doesn’t believe Lashon Hara is wrong? That the Torah doesn’t warn against it? That God has no problem with it? That it doesn’t hurt the people who are its target? And yet with all of this, with all the warnings, the threats of damage, sickness, destruction, exile, of punishment in this world and the next, the reality is that many people simply are careless and don’t control themselves. Does this prove, as Natan is asserting regarding the protection of Torah, that they don’t really believe in these things? That they don’t believe in God or His Torah? Again, I trust you to understand how ridiculous such a claim is.

So in the end of the day, all we have is the boring old assertion that chareidim sometimes don’t practice what they preach, which our dear friend has incredibly misinterpreted as cynically denying what they preach. But what relevance does that have regarding his crusade against chareidim or the chareidi ideology? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Because despite their shortcomings, no rational person believes that chareidim take Torah less seriously than secularists. Except, apparently, one person. As you can see, there are limits to rationalism. And he has hit that limit a long, long, time ago.