What Happens to the Soul After Death? The Ramban Explains

In Parashat Re'eh, the Torah tells us:

"You are children of Hashem, your God. You shall not cut yourselves or make a bald spot between your eyes for the dead. For you are a holy people to Hashem, your God, and Hashem has chosen you to be His treasured people from among all the nations on the face of the earth."

These verses contain a powerful message about grief, death, and what happens to the Jewish soul after a person leaves this world. The Torah allows us to mourn and cry for someone we have lost. But it also places limits on mourning, reminding us that death, as painful as it is, is not the end of the soul.

Why Does the Torah Forbid Cutting Oneself in Mourning?

The Torah forbids a person from cutting or scratching his flesh, or making a bald spot between his eyes, as an expression of mourning for someone who has died.

Why?

Rashi explains that it is "because you are the children of the Omnipresent, and you are worthy of being beautiful, not cut and not bald."

As children of Hashem, the Jewish people should preserve the dignity and beauty of the bodies Hashem has given them.

The Ramban, however, offers a different explanation. He notes that according to Rashi’s reasoning, it would seem that such behavior should be prohibited even when it has nothing to do with mourning.

The Ramban therefore connects the prohibition specifically to the meaning of death and loss.

Extreme expressions of grief, such as cutting oneself or making a bald spot, would be appropriate only in response to a complete and final loss.

Judaism does not forbid mourning. Crying over the death of someone we love is natural and permitted. Separation causes pain. Even when two people who love one another must part during their lifetimes, they may cry over the separation. How much more so when death separates us from someone close to us.

But there is a difference between mourning a painful separation and responding as though the person has ceased to exist entirely.

According to the Ramban, extreme mourning is inappropriate because, for the Jewish people, death is not an absolute and eternal loss.

What Does It Mean to Be Hashem’s "Treasured People"?

The reason for this prohibition appears in the loving words surrounding the commandment:

"For you are a holy people to Hashem, your God, and Hashem has chosen you to be His treasured people from among all the nations on the face of the earth."

Rabbi Hadar Yehuda Margolin, in his book L'Margelot HaRamban, explains the Ramban’s words.

To be a "treasured people" and a "holy people" means that we are in Hashem’s hands. And because we are in His hands, we are never truly lost.

The soul continues to exist after death.

This is why excessive mourning is inappropriate. To cry, yes. To experience grief, certainly. But to mourn as though the person has disappeared forever does not reflect the Jewish understanding of the soul.

Complete and absolute mourning belongs to complete and absolute loss.

And that is precisely what death is not.

Every Jewish soul continues to exist forever.

"All Israel has a share in the World to Come." We are people of the World to Come, and the soul of every Jew has an eternal existence.

This remains true even when someone dies young, before having the opportunity to fulfill his potential or accomplish everything he hoped to achieve during his lifetime.

The Ramban emphasizes this explicitly: "Even if he dies in his youth."

Because every soul is Hashem’s treasure, every soul remains in His hands. Hashem ensures that no soul that has been cast away remains cast away.

Death Is a Separation, Not the End

The Ramban writes:

"In my opinion, the meaning of ‘a holy people’ is a promise that souls endure before Hashem, blessed be He. It says: Since you are a holy people and Hashem’s treasure, and God does not take away a soul but devises means so that no one cast away remains cast away, it is not fitting for you to cut yourselves or make yourselves bald over a soul, even if he dies in his youth.

"Scripture does not forbid crying, for human nature is stirred to cry over the separation and departure of loved ones, even during life. From here our sages found support for forbidding excessive mourning over a soul."

These words contain an extraordinary source of comfort.

Judaism does not ask a mourner to deny grief. It does not tell us that separation does not hurt. The Torah recognizes the depth of human attachment and the tremendous pain that comes when someone we love is no longer physically beside us.

We cry because we are separated.

But we do not mourn as though the soul has disappeared.

The person has left this world, but the soul remains. It continues to exist before Hashem.

This is the profound message hidden within the words "a holy people" and "a treasured people." Every Jewish soul is precious to Hashem, held in His hands and connected to an existence that extends far beyond this physical world.

Death is painful. Death brings separation.

But death is not the end.