Gehenna

But he also notes somewhat casually the darker aspects of rabbinical wisdom: misogyny ("When a man talks too much to his wife, he causes evil to himself, disregards the words of the Torah, and in the end will inherit Gehinnom [Hell]"); contempt for the physical world ("The more flesh, the more worms; the more possessions, the more worry; the more wives, the more witchcraft; the more maidservants, the more lewdness; the more menservants, the more theft"); and a kind of fanatical, elitist intellectualism ("One who does not study deserves to die").

Concepts such as immortality of the soul, a world to come, Gan Eden (Garden of Eden), Gehinnom (a place of spiritual punishment and/or purification for up to a year after death) and resurrection are vaguely referenced in the Bible.

The texts selected for inclusion here occasionally strike this reviewer as unusual, for example, the Legend of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, an account of how Yehoshua ben Levi tricked the Angel of Death and was able to visit Gan Eden and Gehinnom while still alive.

The idea that a demon, nay, a demon queen, can gain divine pardon is, quite frankly, a much more Judaic than Christian theological conceit, as is the parallel subtext that hell is not an eternal fate; like Jewish Gehinnom, Vampirella's Drakulon is more a kind of purgatory, a place of regret rather than of despair.

According to their theology, all of us should be going to Gehinnom because we don't believe in their human god!"

From Abu Tor one can see the Temple Mount, and below it the Valley of Gehenna, or "gehinnom," the Hebrew word for hell, a place where tire, cold, and darkness reign together and where children were sacrificed to Moloch.