Discussion of the afterlife is largely absent from Jewish religious discussion today, but for a long time the concept of postmortem reward and punishment was an important part of Judaism. Elon Gilad traces these ideas from their biblical origins and explains how they changed and developed. It seems that they key moment for cementing belief in the afterlife came around the first century CE, as Gilad writes (free registration required):

According to Josephus, a Jewish historian writing at the end of the first century CE, the question of afterlife was a major point of contention for Jewish theologians of the period. The Sadducees, the prominent priestly class who ran the Temple, did not believe in an afterlife, or in the resurrection of the dead, Josephus writes. Meanwhile, their counterparts and adversaries, the Pharisees, an elite of experts in Jewish law, believed in both.

Once the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the Sadducees and their theology were lost, and the Pharisees and their conception of the afterlife became mainstream rabbinical Judaism.

Thus, from the time of early rabbinic Judaism, belief in the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead became core to the faith. “All Israel have a portion in the world to come,” the Mishnah (200 CE) states, only to qualify this statement with a list of individuals who are excluded: “One who maintains that resurrection is not a biblical doctrine, the Torah was not divinely revealed, and a heretic.”

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.