The World to Come - A Dream Vision In 1994, I visited the Olam Ha'Baah (World to Come), if only in a dream and only for an instant. Here is my recounting of that dream vision, only days after the dream.

by Alon Kaplan

Alon is a prolific writer and co-creator of creativejewishliving.com. He is the father of three wonderful girls and the husband of Nishima Kaplan.         In my dream, I was standing in the grave of a friend whom I was burying. The grave itself was the size of a room, with smooth earth walls that rose above my head.  With me were two other friends and the body lay on the earth without a shroud or a coffin.     As we prayed, my friend's body began to stir, and I supposed that we had resurrected him from the dead. But my living companions were afraid and said to me, "He is still dead. See the grayness of his skin?"     The two other men ran away, and I was left in the grave with the body. He began to rise and I tried to run away, but only managed to reach a narrow ledge about five feet high.     My dead friend walked over to me and took my hand in his, and I felt his coldness and knew that he was not alive.  I saw that he wore clothes that I had thrown away because they were torn and that his eyes were grey like mine. In other respects, he did not resemble me, only I could not remember who he was. I had known him long ago when I was still a child.     "Where have you been?" I asked him.     "Nowhere really," he replied.     Then I asked him, "Is there a world to come and can you tell what it is like?"     At that moment there was a liturgical pause, which seemed to occur out of time. I saw him readying himself for some unknown ritual and I knew that I had asked the right question, that I had never asked that question before to someone in my dreams and that my question was about to be answered.     I grew apprehensive with a mingling of excitement and fear and then my friend told me with a casual shrug, "I have started going to synagogue. I am learning how to pray to G-d".     Then I was flying through the World to Come and seeing what it is like. There were endless forests of tall pine trees like in the Northern Countries. The floors of these forests were covered with brown pine needles, but were otherwise devoid of underbrush, fallen logs or animals.     Smooth paths of brown dirt went through the forests and the sky was at perpetual dusk. It seemed like it was the height of Summer when it is late in the evening, the sun has just set, and the heavens light up the world with a pale blue luminosity.     When I awoke I realized that the World to Come exists in an endless redemptive time at the beginning of Shabbat.     Among the forests of pine there were clearings in which rested towns and cities of all sizes. All the towns and cities had in common that their houses were constructed from completely unadorned pine and that there was a synagogue with a high steeple at the center. The largest towns had several synagogues, for the houses of worship were never overly grand.     I did not see any people in the streets, but perhaps they were all in synagogue.     When I awoke, I realized that the coffins of our people are echoes of the pine houses of the World to Come. Perhaps there are also cities made from shrouds, where our ancestors of the desert dwell.     I asked the unseen people if all the great rabbis and sages of Judaism were present and I was answered, "Yes". But the voices, who were now unspoken, make it clear to me that they were not concerned with who had been great and wise while alive. I was cautioned that there were adventurers in the world who traveled through the forests trying to find what lay beyond them and that those explorers were continually disappointed.     When I awoke, I realized that exploration of the physical world was the only form that sin took in the Next World, and the disappointment was the only form of retribution.     I found myself in a synagogue where people were praying, and I was amazed that in the World to Come, G-d was made manifest in the community through prayer.     I found myself on a path in a forest and in front of me walked a woman. I asked her why she was not afraid to walk through the forest by herself.     She asked me, "What harm could come to me?"     I searched through all the passions of lust and greed and violence that are easily available to us in our own world, and I was surprised that I could not even muster a shadowy image of corporeal desire.     When I awoke, I wondered that I had lived for a moment within a fully embodied spirit. A body of physical arms, legs and eyes, not merely animated by the divine wind but composed of that same substance.         There the dream ended, softly unravelling the visions of a land bathed in redemption and mingling its filaments in my sleeping breath. A breath which now sometimes carries a comforting hymn.

  No Comments.
You need to login or register to post comments.