Okay now. I looked at the review, and I would agree that our concept of the next step is not the same as the Christian view (from what I’ve been told, many times from being told where I’d end up). It is more of a cleansing, and it surprisingly efficient, given how much schmutz we can accumulate over a lifetime.

I had a discussion with Sergey the other day on translations. My position is that no translation is very good. One reason is that all of the subtleties that creep into the English lexicon are very much tied to the history of western civilization, and the Torah is not part of that civilization. Any efforts to make it so are forced. The trick is to try to understand the subtleties of language for a civilization that does not exist, and one could argue hasn’t existed.

Herzl is going to be translated from German. Basically, the idea is for Jews to live in peace somewhere other than antisemitic Europe. Eventually, the thought was that a return to the ancient homeland is the best idea. That’s still in progress. That it happened at all is something I consider to be miraculous. Of course, since it was originally written in German, it could be anywhere from 400-700 pages too long (kidding).

Regarding your second paragraph, about the light—now you’re getting into the old debate between Chasidism and scholarly Judaism. That story is very Chasidic, in that is it very colorful and speaks to an artistic sensibility. There are more subtle issues with Chasidism, but there is no need to go there. It’s an answer to the question—if Gd is perfect and omnipresent, how is it that we can even exist?

That’s really the key move in understanding Judaism, understanding the Torah, figuring out what question is being answered. You have to figure out the question, and that is not at all easy or obvious. So, for instance, nothing answers the question—who does Gd hate? Wrong direction, wrong question. Frequently, you have to do a lot of self-adjustment to find the right question.

Good luck.