In rabbinical literature the belief in a postmortem existence is rather obvious. Related terminology is relatively abundant, although fluid and obscure at times. The use of this terminology by a diversity of Jewish sources further complicates the understanding of the enigmatic notion called afterlife.

The purpose of this article is to explore one aspect of the Jewish credo of the afterlife: the nature of divine recompense in relation to martyrdom. The article aims at determining when a relationship between voluntary death and divine recompense was first established and what the nature of this recompense was. While this relationship does not contain answers to every question regarding Jewish tenets on the afterlife, I believe it to be indicative of general Jewish attitudes toward life and death in various periods and Jewries.

Death, the space of death, the moment when one as mourner or passerby comes into the orbit of the dead, engaging the face of the dead, is one of the defining moments of the human experience. Understanding the cultural construction of that space promises to shed light on some of the central questions of the culture.

The poet Haim Gouri is a central figure among the artists of the generation of the War of Independence and one of the first Israeli poets and novelists to express experience of the Holocaust. Gouri, who was bom in Tel Aviv in 1922, was sent to Europe in 1947 to smuggle Jewish Holocaust survivors into Palestine. Subsequently, he served in the Palmach and fought in the battles in the Negev in 1948. He attests that his encounter with the survivors of the Nazi camps changed his life, and that the experience became an obsessive theme throughout his work. This article focuses on two complementary subjects: (1) Gouri's perception of Jewish history and the effect of his encounter with Holocaust survivors in the formulation of his autobiography; (2) the concrete shaping of the experience of this encounter in his first three books of poetry, Pirhey esh, 'Ad 'alot ha-shahar, and Shirey hotam,1 and in his autobiographical novel Ha-haqira, sippuro shel Re 'u 'el?