The Rabbis of Rosh Hashanah 17a sorted the afterlife into categories.
Most of the wicked — those guilty of ordinary sins, the ones who grew coarse through sensuous indulgence rather than through defiance of God — descend into Gehinnom for twelve months. A year. No longer. Then their bodies dissolve, their souls are consumed, and a wind scatters their ashes under the feet of the righteous. The prophet wrote of this moment: ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be as ashes (Malachi 4:3). A year of fire, and then silence.
But the Rabbis named another class, and for them the ledger stayed open longer. The Minim — the sectarian deceivers. The informers who handed fellow Jews to foreign powers. The Epikorsim who denied the Torah and the resurrection of the dead. Those who split off from the community to despise its customs. Those who terrorized the land of the living. Those who, like Jeroboam son of Nebat, pulled whole generations into sin.
For these, judgment runs generation after generation. As Isaiah foretold, they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me (Isaiah 66:24). Gehinnom itself eventually exhausts itself. They do not.
The difference, the sages insisted, is not pleasure versus pain. It is whether a person dragged others down with him.