Is Hell a Real Place?

A Chassidic idea: heaven and hell are the same place — the difference is what you actually enjoy.

Q. Is hell a real place people go after they die?

According to an interesting Chassidic idea, heaven and hell are really the same place, just that for one person it’s paradise, and for the other, it’s “boring as hell”. It actually makes a lot of sense, for in a world where there is no “place”, we’re all in the “same place”! After death, our soul doesn’t change, but continues exactly as the person we were when we “left off”. For someone whose definition of fun is their car, internet, money, computer and iPhone, when he gets to that spiritual world-to-come it’s going to be super-boring, because there is none of the above! On the other hand, for somebody who gets pleasure from goodness, Torah study, ideological thought and discussion, love and spirituality- it’s Heaven, for he can get constant spiritual pleasure, without worldly distractions like work or sleep, with no disturbances like sickness or pain. A good way to measure your present standing is to ask yourself honestly: Do I enjoy Shabbat (which is considered a taste of the world-to-come, where many of the aforementioned physical or temporal pleasures are in fact prohibited) or not? Do I have independent pleasure being with myself (my G-dly soul), or do I need external stimulants and distractions to entertain me? It’s important to stress, that it’s not too late to improve yourself in these fields, to become the type of person you would like to be.

We don’t know exactly how it will be until we get to the world-to-come, nevertheless, like everything in life, we should utilize these ideas to motivate us towards self-improvement and being better people.