5 myths
Myths, legends, and mystical writings about Immortality from across Jewish tradition.
5 myths on JewishMythology.com retell how Jewish tradition imagines immortality, drawn from the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, Talmud, Kabbalah, and later Jewish literature. Each story below synthesizes primary sources into a single narrative; follow any myth to read it, and from there into the source passages behind it.
She appears in Genesis and again in Numbers, four centuries apart, with no explanation. The rabbis gave her one: she never died.
A handful of mortals slipped past death into the living Garden, while its apples and pearls keep leaking back into the world they left.
Eve passed the forbidden fruit to every creature, but the malham refused and received a life that death could not enter.
Elijah never died. The Tikkunei Zohar says the reason is not his power or zeal but one quality: he caused righteousness to multiply in other people.
The Torah says Enoch pleased God and was taken. Philo of Alexandria read the word pleased as proof the soul keeps living after the body is gone.
