Resurrection

During a class I was teaching the other day it became clear to me that there was a bit of confusion about the Torah's ideas of what will occur:

• In the time of Moshiach
• After a person dies
• At resurrection
• In Olam Haba, the World to Come

In all fairness the Rambam makes it clear that no one really knows what goes in in the places and that everything we know about it is, at best, an educated guess. That doesn't prevent him and others from giving it their best shot. Ramban wrote a work to elaborate on the Rambam's writing on the topic in which he disputed many points as well.

There are several reasons for this confusion. One is that certain terms can mean:

• More than one thing, depending on context
• Different things to different authors

For example, does Olam Haba refer to the time of resurrection that will occur during Messianic times, or is it a reference to a purely spiritual existence that will manifest itself after the world as we know it ceases to exist. Is Gan Eden a real place on earth, or is it a spiritual "place." Does it exist at the present time?

An additional source of confusion is that from the perspective of Kabbalistic teaching, the picture painted in the Talmud, which is the basis for the Rambam, is only a small glimpse of the whole picture. As such, the conventional view is missing many key pieces.