The Politics of Dancing

In my recent piece The Banality of Paradise I made the assumption that Christianity had inherited the idea of Heaven from Judaism. I have since received correspondence from a friend pointing out that this is inaccurate. In the interests of preventing the further dissemination of inaccurate  beliefs  I  quote the relevant section of her correspondence in full.     'In essence, mainstream Judaism does believe in some sort of life after death, but is vague on the details. For example, the funeral service includes the words, 'So and so, who has gone to his/her eternal home'. What is missing from Judaism is the idea that this life is a prelude to the next one, and also really of reward or punishment in the next life. It's been said that Judaism is a religion of the living, and because of the vagueness about what happens after death, you are encouraged to live as if this is all there is. Having said this (and always in Juda...