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Elijah Showed Rabbi Joshua Gehinnom and New Jerusalem

The prophet appeared to Rabbi Joshua on the road and offered him two tours no living person had seen: Gehinnom and the gates of the world to come.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Offer on the Road
  2. The Chambers of Punishment
  3. The Marketplace and the Refusal
  4. The Gates of Future Jerusalem
  5. What He Carried Back

The Offer on the Road

Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was walking when Elijah appeared beside him. The prophet never announced himself in these encounters; he materialized into a conversation already in progress, or at least that is how the accounts read. He had a question, or rather, an offer. "Would you like to see the gates of Gehinnom?"

Rabbi Joshua said yes. He was a sage of the third century, one of the most significant figures of his generation, a man who had spent his life studying texts about the world beyond death. Elijah was offering him something no text could provide: a direct look. They went together.

The Chambers of Punishment

What Elijah showed him was organized with terrible precision. The punishments in Gehinnom were mapped to the sins that had produced them, body part to body part. Men hung by their hair, they had grown it long for the purpose of attracting others into sin. Others hung by their eyes, which had followed the gaze into transgression. Others by their tongues, which had spread slander. Others by their hands, which had stolen. Others by their feet, which had run to commit evil. Women hung by their breasts, for having deliberately enticed men away from righteousness.

Deeper in the chambers, Rabbi Joshua saw men being fed hot coals and drinking burning liquid, their mouths forced open, their throats scorched. He saw people torn apart and reassembled, the punishment cycling without end. He saw the judges of Israel among them, those who had perverted justice, and scholars who had honored themselves at the expense of Torah.

The Marketplace and the Refusal

Elijah had tried, once, to arrange a meeting between Rabbi Joshua and another figure entirely. According to the Legends of the Jews, Elijah approached Rabbi Joshua in a marketplace and offered him the chance to speak with the departed Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the sage to whom tradition attributes the Zohar, the great mystical text, a towering presence in any century's reckoning of the righteous dead.

Rabbi Shimon declined. He was not available for conjured conversations. The refusal itself was revealing: the dead moved on their own schedules, and even a prophet's connections did not override a great man's discretion about his time. Rabbi Joshua accepted the answer. He had enough from the road.

The Gates of Future Jerusalem

On another occasion, Elijah showed Rabbi Joshua something on the other end of the spectrum from Gehinnom: the Jerusalem that would exist at the end of days, the city rebuilt not by human hands but descending fully formed from heaven. Not the Jerusalem of Roman occupation and ash. Not the city whose Temple had been reduced to a single surviving wall. The future Jerusalem, promised by the prophets, the city God had kept in reserve.

The gates were made of carbuncle, enormous stones that blazed with their own light. Not reflected light from torches or oil lamps or even the sun. The gates themselves radiated brilliance, a light so intense that Rabbi Joshua stood speechless before them. The portals were pure light, and the city behind them was a city God had not yet released into time.

What He Carried Back

Rabbi Joshua came back from both tours with the same structure in his mind: consequence and promise, exact and real. The punishments in Gehinnom were not random cruelty. They were the logic of sin completed, what it looked like when the thing you had done with a part of yourself became the thing done to that part of you. And the gates of Jerusalem were not vague consolation. They were specific: carbuncle stone, blazing light, a city God had preserved for the generation that would finally receive it.

He had walked with a prophet who had never died, through corridors of the dead and visions of the unborn, and come back to the road. The rest of the walk he finished in silence.

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From the tradition

Sources

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Chronicles of Jerahmeel XVChronicles of Jerahmeel (Gaster, 1899)

Rabbi Joshua ben Levi was walking on the road when he met the prophet Elijah. "Would you like to see the gates of Gehinnom (the place of spiritual purification after death)?" Elijah asked. "Yes," he answered. According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle compiled by Jerahmeel ben Solomon, what followed was a guided tour of punishments that matched each sin to the exact body part that committed it.

Elijah showed him men hanging by their hair. These had grown their hair long to make themselves attractive for sin. Others hung by their eyes, for following their gaze into transgression. Others by their tongues, for slander. Others by their hands, for theft. Others by their feet, for running to do evil. Women hung by their breasts for deliberately enticing men.

Deeper in, Elijah showed him men forced to eat fiery coals. These had blasphemed. Others swallowed bitter gall, punished for eating on fast days. Still others ate fine sand until their teeth broke. God Himself addresses these sinners: "When you ate stolen food it was sweet in your mouth. Now you cannot eat even this."

Others were thrown from fire to snow and back again, endlessly. These had turned away the poor who came asking for help. Others were driven from mountain to mountain like sheep, with death itself serving as their shepherd.

Rabbi Johanan explained the system: for every sin, a specific angel is appointed to extract its expiation. They take turns, like creditors collecting debts. Three categories of sinners descend to Gehinnom forever and never ascend: the adulterer, the one who publicly shames their neighbor, and the perjurer. But even Gehinnom observes the Sabbath. On Friday evening, the sinners are led to two mountains of snow and left there until Saturday night. Some try to smuggle snow under their armpits to cool themselves during the week. God rebukes them: "You steal even in Gehinnom."

Full source
Legends of the Jews 7:67Legends of the Jews

It happens to the best of us, and even to some of the greatest Rabbis in Jewish lore. Take the story of Rabbi Joshua, for example.

The familiar version gives us the prophet Elijah. The one who ascends to heaven in a chariot of fire? Well, according to Legends of the Jews, compiled by Ginzberg, even Elijah couldn’t always get his way. He once tried to connect Rabbi Joshua with none other than the departed Rabbi Simon ben Yohai.

Rabbi Simon ben Yohai, or Rashbi as he's often known, is a towering figure. Tradition ascribes the authorship of the Zohar, the central text of Kabbalah, to him. So, understandably, Elijah thought a conversation between these two great minds would be a momentous occasion.

Here's where the story takes an unexpected turn. Rabbi Simon ben Yohai wasn’t interested. He apparently didn't think Rabbi Joshua was important enough to warrant his attention! Can you imagine?

Why? Well, apparently, Rabbi Simon had posed a question to Rabbi Joshua, and Joshua, in his characteristic modesty, gave an answer that didn’t exactly scream "genius." He wasn't trying to show off, just giving an honest reply.

But here’s the kicker, the truly beautiful irony: Rabbi Joshua, despite his humble demeanor, possessed such exceptional qualities that when he entered Paradise – Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden, paradise) – Elijah himself walked before him, calling out, "Make room for the son of Levi!" Elijah, the prophet, acting as a herald, clearing the way for Rabbi Joshua in the ultimate reward. It just goes to show you, doesn't it? True worth isn't always immediately apparent. Sometimes, the most profound wisdom is cloaked in humility. And sometimes, the greatest recognition comes from the most unexpected places.

It makes you wonder, doesn't it? How many times have we underestimated someone, or been underestimated ourselves? How often do we mistake modesty for a lack of substance? Maybe the real lesson here is to look beyond the surface, to seek out the hidden depths in ourselves and in others. Because who knows? Maybe there's an Elijah waiting to announce your arrival.

Full source
Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 201Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924)

The prophet Elijah, who never died but ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire, appeared to Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, one of the greatest sages of the third century, and offered him something no living person had ever seen: a vision of the future Jerusalem.

Not the Jerusalem of rubble and Roman occupation. Not the city whose Temple lay in ashes. Elijah showed him the Jerusalem that would exist at the end of days, the city rebuilt by God Himself, the city that the prophets had promised would descend from heaven.

What Rabbi Joshua saw took his breath away. The gates and portals of that future Jerusalem were made entirely of carbuncles, enormous precious stones that blazed with their own light. Not torches, not oil lamps, not sunlight. The gates themselves radiated a brilliance so intense that the whole city was illuminated from within. No external source of light was needed. The walls glowed. The doorways burned with gemfire.

This vision corresponds to the prophecy in (Isaiah 54:12): "I will make your windows of rubies, your gates of carbuncles, and all your walls of precious stones." What Isaiah described in words, Elijah showed to Rabbi Joshua in full, blazing detail.

The Talmudic tradition records that Rabbi Joshua ben Levi had an unusually close relationship with Elijah, meeting him regularly and receiving revelations that other sages could only dream about. This particular vision, the carbuncle gates of the future Jerusalem, became a beloved image in Jewish eschatology, a promise that the city would one day outshine everything the ancient world had built.

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Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 201Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924)

The Prophet Elijah, who never died but was taken up to Heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11), was known to appear to the righteous in moments of great need. One such visit was to Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, and what Elijah showed him that day left the sage trembling with wonder.

Elijah took Rabbi Joshua on a journey, not through the streets of earthly Jerusalem, but through a vision of the Jerusalem that was yet to come. The heavenly Jerusalem, the city that God would one day lower from the skies to replace the ruined Temple and the broken walls.

What Rabbi Joshua saw defied description. The portals of the future Jerusalem were not made of stone or cedar or even gold. They were fashioned from single carbuncles, enormous precious stones that glowed with their own inner light, each one large enough to serve as a city gate. The radiance that poured through these gates was so intense that it cast no shadows. The streets themselves seemed to be made of light.

The Midrash HaGadol on Exodus records that Rabbi Joshua wept when the vision ended. He had seen the splendor that awaited Israel at the end of days, and returning to the dusty, occupied, diminished Jerusalem of his own time was almost unbearable.

One of Rabbi Joshua's students later mocked the idea. "Gates made of jewels? A single carbuncle that large? Impossible." But soon afterward, the student was at sea and glimpsed, through a break in the clouds, something shining on the distant horizon, enormous jeweled gates blazing with light. He returned home shaken and told Rabbi Joshua what he had seen.

"So you needed to see it with your own eyes?" the sage replied. "If you had simply believed, you would have been spared the voyage." Faith in the future Jerusalem, the tale teaches, requires no proof. The portals are already being prepared. One day, every eye will see them.

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