I know the title of this post is meshugge but I have to say something about Gehinnom and why I am terrified of it. I was told by rabbis I know that the founders of other religions (Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Confucius, Joseph Smith, Zoroaster) are being tormented there. I was also told by frum peers that all sinners including righteous gentiles who worshiped other gods would also go or literally cease to exist

I found out I wasn’t halachically Jewish but for some reason gehinnom makes me feel like I need to become Chassidish again. I imagine Hashem with a scale viewing my middos, waiting before I am tried before yeshiva shel maala and I fear having more bad than good and getting thrown into geninnom because I either appropriated being a Jew, didn’t convert after knowing it is the truth, or became another religion, or married someone wrong.

I once asked a frummie and then AI (forgive me) on what happened to saint francis, a dude who gave his life to charity chastity, and helping others and his god to the point where he injured himself

They said either gehinnom, gilgul, or Hashem just obliterated him

I’m scared

Edit: I’m not a catholic. I just used Saint Francis as a lot of people know who he is and most people don’t see him as a “bad dude,” and he is a Gadol of another religion, who even other religions say “yeah he’s pretty damn good.” I was also told that people who deny things in Torah, like Reform Jews, Albert Einstein, Muslims, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Conservative Jews, Female Rabbis, and Religion Scholars were doomed as well

For the past 3 months I have been returning to God. Not the God we were raised to believe in, who cared about all the little things we did at every moment, but the concept of God as the divinity that gives existence to the human condition and to reality as we know it. The indescribable, unknowable force that embeds itself in our consciousness and in everything we perceive.

I’ve been doing it through the lens of Jewish faith, at my own pace and discretion. It came about unexpectedly, since I became an agnostic about 15 years ago (I’m 43 now). It was sparked by inspiring stories about Rebbe Nachman and some of his principles that friends shared with me, even non-religious friends. It started because I’m so far past any feelings of guilt or shame, or needing to be right about things, that I’m comfortable defining what I want to practice and believe on my own terms.

To be clear, for as long as I’ve been agnostic (and for a while before that, atheist), I was still connected to the community. My wife remained “religious” (although daily modern). My kids go to Jewish school. We kept some form of Shabbat: we ate Shabbat meals, put away our devices and TVs, and didn’t drive. But we all turned on lights (not my wife), and I would often use my phone or do work after the kids went to bed. My family eats dairy out, but on my own time I kept no kosher at all (pork and shellfish were fair game, and my favorites).

I haven’t had any non-kosher meat or shellfish in almost 3 months. I still like it, but after a long time I felt like I was hiding things from my kids, and that got old. I also started to redefine what I wanted to connect with in spiritual practice through the lens of Judaism, and I decided that for now I can give it up.

I started to think about spirituality through the lens of personal sacrifice, in addition to the connection to the Higher Force beyond consciousness and unity, which I began connecting with a few years back outside the context of Judaism, closer to Buddhism.

Recently I’ve been regaining interest in Jewish texts and ideas and trying to understand them through a new lens with new interpretations. When I was reading Parshat Bereshit a few weeks back, I began to re-read the creation story as the dawn of human consciousness. I thought of Gan Eden as the pure spiritual place of “just being,” without needing to work or worry. The ultimate “present moment.” I thought of the snake as the intrusive thoughts that pull us out of this place.

I started to think about “The World to Come” as the future version of myself. Perhaps even the moment of death and the ultimate coming to terms with my existence and how I lived my life. The absence of regret and fear.

I reached out to the Rabbi of my shul and hope to start learning Rebbe Nachman with him (I haven’t learned any Jewish texts in many, many years). I’ve toyed with the idea of putting on tefillin and saying Shema. I’m not quite there yet, and I haven’t worn tefillin for most of my adult life.

Through these ideas I’ve started to ponder what it might mean to “love God” vs. “fear God” and to build a practice around that love. But I’ve also wondered if some people aren’t capable of existing in that space, and if maybe, for some, fearing God is a necessary form of practice and connection (unfortunately). It’s made me think that the Torah stories relating to commandments and fear are human expressions of this need in some individuals, and thus part of “God,” since God is in fact the whole of human consciousness and experience.

Anyway, I share all this not to preach, but to offer a framework that is working for me in this season of life that may resonate with some of you or point to possibilities.