Judaism

[pbrower2a]

Here is a big one: on the salvation of humanity.

Judaism seems to hold that the righteous of all origins will convert to Judaism at the gate of Heaven because such will be the nature of the righteous. God is merciful enough to recognize that those who had no opportunity to be Jews are not at fault for that. Judaism is the reward for righteousness, and someone like Raoul Wallenberg is in Heaven and is a Jew. Would it be fair to send a righteous person where the Nazis are instead of with those that he tried to rescue?

The evil people of all origins have no chance at Heaven, even if they were devout Jews on the surface. Their anti-human deeds are abominations before God, and the unrighteous could never appreciate Heaven, anyway. Out of sight and out of mind, so there is no chance of a Jew in Heaven -- that includes Sir Winston Schulberg (originally Churchill) or the former Christian X of Denmark (who goes under a different name, for obvious reasons) -- having the questionable pleasure of watching any tortures inflicted upon Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, or the like. 

Such does not hold for most of Christianity or Islam. Suppose that a righteous Hindu sacrificed his life to save multitudes of  Christians or Muslims from horrific death. Would Christianity of Islam have Heaven awaiting him? That's not so clear, and according to some theological interpretations the consequence of believing in the wrong gods is eternal damnation. But note well that Christian doctrine holds that a person of utter evil who repents on the threat of death can get cheap grace that might not be available to someone whose chance ended when some SS "soldier" released Zyklon-B pellets into a gas chamber. Some Khmer Rouge mass-murderer actually converted to Christianity before he went on trial and contended that he would go to Heaven because of his resolute new faith.

Because of my Christian background, I have used the threat of Hell in some arguments, but only in extreme cases, as with a neo-Nazi or a Stalinist: "Do you really want to go where the Nazis/Stalinists are?" Any place full of Nazis or Stalinists would be Hellish, as would a place full of thieves, addicts, vandals, and rapists. I must ask this: can a Just and Loving God forgive believing in Him the wrong way, believing in the wrong set of supernatural realities, accepting the wrong Prophets or Savior, or believing in nothing? I would think so.

I think that the promise of Judaism of salvation to the Righteous of all nations is far more generous than any other that can be associated with any other tradition. I think that it is also the best that humanity can hope for, and at least as good as any.   

 

[pbrower2a]

I honestly don't know (what happens to the most egregious sinners of all time -- Hitler, Stalin).

Let me guess -- out of sight and out of mind. Probably in contrast to Schadenfreude that some Christians suggest, a ringside seat to watch torments inflicted upon such types as Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein.

In the summer of 1980 I was in Hell -- Dallas that year. On a day on which that the  temperature reached 113F I made the flippant remark to a Jewish co-worker that I had just seen Hideki Tojo. Or was it Benito Mussolini? I was saving Stalin for 114F, but I had gone through a series of Wild West outlaws, gangsters, dictators, and war criminals. The co-worker didn't get it, and it wasn't for a lack of intelligence or ability to appreciate grim humor. So there is no Hell in Judaism? If any people has villains to condemn, it is the Jews.  

I once engaged a Nazi sympathizer (a piece of work -- a Holocaust denier and a horrible hypocrite on European-Arab relations... the sort who loved Palestinians as fighters of his nemesis Israel but didn't want them living in Europe or the Americas) on a now-defunct Forum and eventually got him into a discussion of Dante's Inferno in which I challenged him to contemplate what eternity would be like for people even worse than the well-characterized sinners of Dante's time. Dante Aligheri could have never contemplated Nazis, Stalinists, the Khmer Rouge, and Ba'athists. Maybe one could imagine Karl Marx (at least to conservatives of the 20th Century) being consigned to the peculiar torment that Dante allotted to Mohammed for "tearing the world apart with his heresy". I could imagine Nazi hanging judge Roland Freisler dangling forever on piano wire from a meat hook as was the sentence that he imposed upon those that he convicted of the July 20 plot. But such takes no imagination.  

But ignore the sensory insult and deprivation... I asked him whether he wanted his soul to be around those souls who betrayed, lynched, tortured, robbed, beat, and murdered people. Sulfurous smells, hunger, thirst, and general ugliness are less ominous to me than being around the grossly-unjust. Maybe I would get some grim satisfaction out of seeing Josef Goebbels getting his lies pushed back into his mouth as lye, with predictable effects. But I wouldn't want to see such for long. "Out of sight and out of mind" is best for all.

Performances of operatic collaborations between Shakespeare and Mozart would be a fitting eternal reward for the righteous.

[pbrower2a]

Why are Jews so well represented in Congress, yet we've never had a Jewish president?

Good question. Not that I would predict that our next President will be Jewish, but you-know-who has forcefully shattered the near-WASP lock on the Presidency.