The latest from Israel: Why did Jesus have to die for us?

Benjamin Netanyahu seems to be in position to win a fourth consecutive term as prime minister of Israel.

As of this morning, 97 percent of the votes have been counted in Israel’s parliamentarian election. As I explained yesterday, no party has ever won a sixty-one-vote majority in the Knesset (their Parliament). The party leader who seems most likely to form a majority coalition with other parties will be given an opportunity to do so.

So far, that leader appears to be Mr. Netanyahu.

“I know that my Redeemer lives”

Yesterday we asked the question: Why don’t the Jews accept Jesus as their Messiah? There’s a related question that is especially relevant to American culture as well.

Job was confident: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25–26).

While life after death is affirmed in the Old Testament (cf. Isaiah 26:19), Judaism has evolved in its beliefs about the afterlife across the centuries since.

Rabbi Evan Moffic writes: “Heaven has [an] open door policy: Heaven is not a gated community. The righteous of any people and any faith have a place in it. Our actions, not our specific beliefs, determine our fate. No concept of Hell exists in Judaism.”

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman believes that “in the afterlife, the soul is liberated from the body and returns closer to her source than ever before.” During this passage, “the good deeds and wisdom the soul has gained on her mission below serve as a protection for her journey upwards.” Then, “at the final resolution, all souls will return to physical bodies in this world.”

Writing for Haaretz, Elon Gilad notes that “even today, Jews believe in different, often irreconcilable, theories of what life after death is like.” For instance, according to the Talmud (Eruvin 19b), most people go to a place where their sins are purged,…