The Resurrection of the Dead in Jewish Faith: The Ultimate Miracle of Redemption

One of Judaism’s Thirteen Principles of Faith is the belief that God will resurrect the dead in the future — one of the greatest and most wondrous miracles that will occur with the coming of the Mashiach.

When Rabbi Elazar Menachem Shach lost his young daughter in 1940, he went to seek comfort from Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, who told him that he too had lost his only daughter at a young age. “If not for the Torah being my delight,” he said, quoting the verse, “I would have perished in my suffering.” The Torah, he explained, was his comfort.

Rabbi Shach then asked, “But what about a mother — how can she find comfort?” Rabbi Chaim Ozer replied: “In the Amidah we say, ‘He keeps His faith to those who sleep in the dust.’ One must strengthen faith in the idea that death is not an end but a sleep — a long sleep, and that we believe with certainty that the resurrection of the dead will come soon. When we live with this faith, we can endure such pain more easily.”

Rabbi Aryeh Levin asked that on his gravestone it be written that whoever visits should say: “I believe with complete faith in the resurrection of the dead.”

The Joy of Resurrection

The Sages interpreted the verse, “When the Lord returns the captivity of Zion, we will be like dreamers; then our mouths will be filled with laughter and our tongues with song” (Tehillim 126:1–2),
as referring to the time of resurrection — a joy so great that no one has ever experienced anything like it.

The Zohar (Bereishit 118b) teaches that in the future, God will restore beauty to the bodies of the righteous, like the splendor of Adam when he first entered the Garden of Eden. Their souls will once again enter their bodies, radiating divine light — “the wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens” (Daniel 12:3). The righteous will delight in this divine radiance, and the entire world will be filled with joy as never before: “Then our mouths will be filled with laughter.”

The Zohar adds that this laughter will be literal — joyful astonishment at the wondrous reunion of generations: A father who died at 25 will rise to see his son, now 90 years old. The old man will look at the young one and call him “Father”! Families will be reunited across centuries, meeting relatives they never knew. It will be a time of endless rejoicing.

The Miracle Beyond Imagination

Rabbi Shimon Agassi, in Yesodei HaTorah, explains that the great wonder of resurrection is not that God will create new bodies — but that He will reconstitute the same physical bodies that already turned to dust.

Even if a person’s remains were scattered across the earth — consumed by animals, swept away by wind, or mixed with others in mass graves, God will gather every particle, perfectly returning each grain of dust to its rightful place: the dust of the eyes to the eyes, the hands to the hands, the heart to the heart.

Who could possibly count or arrange the billions of particles of dust, each one in its exact position? Only the Almighty, “mighty in strength,” can perform this — restoring the precise form of each human being, as before, in His infinite power and wisdom.

The “Tunnels of Resurrection”

The Sages taught that resurrection will take place in the Land of Israel, as it is written: “Thus says God… who gives a soul to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk upon it” (Yeshayahu 42:5).

What, then, of the righteous buried outside the Land of Israel? At that time, the Midrash says, God will descend from the highest heavens and sit upon His throne in Jerusalem. He will call upon the angels and say: “My children, I created you for this very moment — to bring Me joy!”

The angels will then go forth to the four corners of the earth, lift its edges, and make tunnels beneath the ground — “tunnels of resurrection”, through which the righteous buried outside the Land will roll until they reach the Land of Israel. There, God Himself will stand over them, restore their souls, and raise them to life.

God will then take a great shofar in His hand and sound it. With each blast, creation will tremble: First blast- the world will quake, second- the dust will separate, third- the bones will gather, fourth- the limbs will warm, fifth- skin will form over them, sixth- the souls will return to the bodies, seventh- they will rise to their feet, alive and radiant, clothed in garments whose fragrance will fill the world like the scent of Paradise. (Otiot d’Rabbi Akiva, 9)