Is There a World-to-Come?
Many options exist within the range of traditional Jewish sources on this matter:
Some say: The world to come is the world we leave to our children.
Some say: The body will be physically resurrected into renewed life when a messiah or messianic age dawns.
Some say: Souls travel disembodied through many levels in another realm of being until they rejoin the pool of all souls or cluster to create a wisdom pool called the “World’s over-soul.”
Some say: There is a form of reincarnation, gilgul. You may be surprised to learn this means that souls that have not yet reached the level of tzaddik, of the highest level of an ethically pure life, will be reconditioned and “re-cycled” after being in an interim space called sheol for about a year. These souls are said to re-enter life as the soul sparks of a newborn in order to evolve more completely. This can happen repeatedly, even with rebirth as an animal or plant. Many soul sparks can combine to comprise the soul of any one person.
Some say: Souls are able to touch this earthly plane of being with messages in dreams or by the process of ibbur, wherein an elevated soul chooses to enter and help you with the mission of your life.
Some say: There is also the process of dybbuk, wherein a soul that was meant to depart enters someone quite randomly and clings to that person, requiring professional intervention to help soul accept that its term here is over.
Is it permissible to reach out to speak with ascended souls of those who have died? Jewish law and tradition does not allow us to contact them or disturb their rest. , We are allowed to reply should they contact us.
Scholarly documentation of these diverse approaches to life after death is widely available. Three volumes for consideration would be Seeking & Soaring: Jewish Approaches to Spiritual Direction [2], Jewish Views of the Afterlife by Simcha Paull Raphael and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and Does the Soul Survive: A Jewish Journey to Belief in Afterlife, Past Lives and Living with Purpose