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Judaism: Self, Death and the Afterlife

The Pittsburgh Platform, Divine Justice and Gilgul

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 2

Overview

Recall questions on what the Pittsburgh Platform affirmed and rejected, Gehinnom and the afterlife as completing God's justice after Job and the Holocaust, and gilgul in the Zohar and Luria.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

What did the Pittsburgh Platform reject?

Key term

How has the Holocaust sharpened the argument that an afterlife is needed for God's justice to be completed?

Key term

Which text popularised the idea of gilgul?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Outline what the Pittsburgh Platform was.

    Model answer

    A statement of principles adopted by Reform rabbis in the United States in 1885 setting out the movement's beliefs.

  2. 2

    What did the Pittsburgh Platform affirm about the soul?

    Model answer

    It reasserted the immortality of the soul as an authentic Jewish doctrine.

  3. 3

    What did the Pittsburgh Platform reject?

    Model answer

    Bodily resurrection, and the ideas of Gehinnom and Eden as places of everlasting punishment and reward.

  4. 4

    How does the Pittsburgh Platform's view of the afterlife fit its wider outlook?

    Model answer

    Its emphasis fell on moral progress in this world, so an ethical immortality mattered more to it than a physical hereafter.

  5. 5

    Define Gehinnom.

    Model answer

    A state of purification after death, usually described as limited in duration rather than as eternal punishment.

  6. 6

    Explain the link between belief in an afterlife and belief in the justice of God.

    Model answer

    If the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper in this life, an afterlife allows God's justice to be completed rather than defeated.

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Arguments for the Existence of God
Evil and Suffering
Religious Language
Self and Life After Death

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1 2:8-15.
TimothyCorinthiansPeter

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AExclusivism holds salvation is available only to Christians.
BInclusivism holds salvation is available through Christ to non-Christians.
CPluralism holds salvation is available through multiple religious paths.

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Olam Ha-Ba means the world to come.
TrueFalse

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