Sir, Jonathan Romain suggests that Judaism is uncertain about the question of the afterlife (Faith, Aug 22). Yet he is a Reform clergyman. Reform Judaism is barely 200 years old. The vast majority of practising Jews subscribe to Orthodox (Rabbinic) Judaism which is well over 2,000 years old and which has no doubts on the matter. Non-belief in the concepts of Techiat Hameitim (Revival of the dead) or Olam Habah (The world to come — where our souls will eventually go) amounts to “heresy” (to borrow a Christian term). Indeed, the rabbis depict this world as only a preparation for, or a lobby or vestibule to the “world to come”.
David Levy
London N3
Sir, Dr Romain falls into the all-too-common trap of equating Christianity with the Roman Catholic church when he writes: “Christianity has a clear map of the hereafter . . . with stopovers at perdition, purgatory and limbo”. While “perdition” is simply another name for hell, neither purgatory nor limbo is part of the beliefs or teaching of either the Anglican church or any other Protestant denomination. None of them has the presumption to claim that it knows in detail what happens after death, although they unite in the belief — based on the New Testament — that there is indeed an afterlife; they are content to leave the details
to the loving God revealed by and
in Christ.
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Laura Hicks
Portesham, Dorset