Does the Soul Survive?: A Jewish Journey to Belief in Afterlife, Past Lives & Living with Purpose

It was early on a Sunday morning. My father was in Seattle, lying in a hospital bed, recovering from open-heart surgery. I was in Southern California, at the synagogue where I work, opening up the building for religious school. The sanctuary at our synagogue, when it is not being used for worship services, becomes a multipurpose room. A special family learning experience was scheduled to take place in it that morning for students and their parents.As I opened the sanctuary doors, anger flowed through my veins when I saw that the room was not set up the way it needed to be. Did I forget to give the custodian directions on how the room needed to be set up? Or, did the custodian just mess up? I took off my jacket, loosened my tie, and began moving chairs and tables.Sweat started dripping on my forehead. In the corner of the room, I saw my father sitting in a chair dressed in his pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers. I immediately walked over to him and engaged him in a conversation, which was really an argument. For some unknown reason, I did not inquire about his health but felt the need to talk with him at that particular moment about a painful childhood memory, a memory that I was surprised to remember.A few hours later that same morning, as I walked into my office, the phone rang. It was the baby sitter who was with our children. She said she had an emergency message, that I needed to call my brother immediately. My brother was not home. His wife answered the phone. She gave me the message. My father died that morning.When I tell people about the conversation I had with my father that morning, they respond in one of two ways. They think I was either hallucinating or that I actually encountered my father's soul. That week, my thoughts centered on my father's condition. The combination of mental exhaustion (from worrying about him,) physical tiredness (from being up early in the morning,) and anger (at the room not being set up correctly,) led my mind to imagine a mystical encounter.On the other hand, there is an idea of Gehenna (Hebrew for "hell") in Jewish tradition. Unlike the Christian notion of eternal damnation, Gehenna is only a temporary state. At death, the soul departs from the body and goes to Gehenna, a process of purification where the individual confronts his or her sins and atones for them. After this real Yom Kippur, the soul then either returns from Gehenna to the world in another life (reincarnation) or goes to heaven to be with the Divine. Perhaps our encounter that morning had something to do with this mystery.Since this experience, I have engaged in many conversations about the afterlife. I have become open, in these discussions, to the possible belief that our souls are eternal, that our souls existed in a previous life, and that our souls will be transferred into another life after we die. Elie Spitz, the spiritual leader at Congregation B'nai Israel in Tustin, California in his new book Does the Soul Survivie? A

In Does The Soul Survive?: A Jewish Journey To Belief In Afterlife, Past Lives & Living With Purpose, Rabbi Elie Spitz writes with complete candor and impressive scholarship about his belief in telepathy, near-death experiences, communications with those who have died, past life regression, and reincarnation as being within the scope and compass of Jewish tradition and teaching regarding the continuance of the soul beyond a physical death. Rabbie Spitz examines all the arguments, pro and con, regarding these issues from a thoroughly Judaic perspective. Enhanced for the reader with an appendix presenting a comprehensive view of what Torah and Jewish scholars throughout the ages have had to say regarding the immortality of the soul, Does The Soul Survive? is informative, challenging, at times controversial, but thought provoking and firmly grounded in Jewish scholarship.

I have begun to get interested in the afterlife, after reading some of Sylvia Brown's books. Since I was Jewish, I wanted to really know if the soul survives death. This book is a must-read for any person who is intrigued by the possiblity of life after death. I found many of the things said in the book correlated with the ideas of Sylvia Brown and Gary Zukov. The author delved deeply into the many facets of afterlife, and includes his own personal experiences, which are really interesting.

Rabbi Spitz (a member of the Conservative movement's law committee, so he's no wacko) weaves a fascinating personal narrative throughout this insightful and thoughtful look at the possibility of soul survival. He shows how he has learned from his own experiences, and the experiences of his congregants and other rabbis, that there IS life after life. Not only well written, but persuasive. Most important, I think, Rabbi Spitz shows how belief in the afterlife can show us how to live more profound lives today, in the here and now.