He decried all types of witchcraft, sorcery and communication with the dead. However, Maimonides took another approach. One view accepts that it is possible to communicate with the dead but we are not allowed to do so. Rabbi Yehudah Levi (cont.), in The Science in Torah, explains that there are two traditional opinions on this subject. This seems to imply acknowledgment that the living can communicate with the dead but forbids Jews from engaging in that activity. 18:11) forbids inquiring of the dead, conducting seances and otherwise attempting to communicate with those who have passed on from this world. He contends that angels can appear physically if they want. A spiritual being cannot appear physically. Maimonides even says that any biblical text about a person seeing or speaking with an angel must have taken place in a prophetic dream or vision, not in physical reality. Purely spiritual beings, whether angels or souls, cannot be seen by human beings. According to Maimonides, souls in the Afterlife have no bodies.
This discussion connects directly to the ghost debate. This debate about the nature of the Afterlife has never been resolved, with two schools of thought spanning centuries. If a body commits a good deed it should receive reward, not just the soul. 1270) believes that people in the Afterlife have souls and bodies, just like we do in this world. 1204), the Afterlife is a purely spiritual experience of souls receiving reward and punishment for the good and bad things they did during their lives. Classical Jewish theologians debate the nature of the Afterlife. The soul, which was joined to a body in life, continues into an Afterlife. Judaism teaches that death does not end a soul’s journey. According to the Torah, do ghosts haunt our society, crossing over from the dead to appear before and communicate with the living? Texts spanning millennia offer two different approaches within Jewish belief. The Ghostbusters franchise has come back from the dead, raising questions on what Judaism teaches about ghosts.
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