death. Jewish people vary about what they think of Jesus as a man. Some respect him as an ethical teacher who accepted Jewish law, as someone who didn't even see himself as the messiah, who didn't want to start a new religion at all. Rather, Jesus is seen by these Jewish people as someone who challenged the religious authorities of his day for their practices. In this view, he meant to improve Judaism according to his own understanding not to break with it. Whatever the Jewish response is, one point is crucial. No one who is Jewish, no born Jewish person and no one who converts to Judaism, can believe in Jesus as the literal son of God or as the messiah. For the Jewish people, there is no God but God. Free Will and Original Sin Judaism does not accept the notion of original sin, the idea that people are bad from birth and cannot remove sin by themselves but need an act of grace provided by the sacrificial death of Jesus as atonement for all of humanity's sins. For Christians, there are no other forms of salvation other than through Jesus. In contrast, the Jewish view is that humans are not born naturally good or naturally bad. They have both a good and a bad inclination in them, but they have the free moral will to choose the good and this free moral will can be more powerful than the evil inclination. Indeed, Jewish ethics require the idea that humans decide for themselves how to act. This is so because temptation, and with it the possibility of sin, allows people to choose good and thus have moral merit. The Jewish view is not that humans are helpless in the face of moral error. Death, Heaven and Hell In general, Jewish thinkers have focused on the ways to lead a good life on Earth and improve this world, leaving concerns about death and beyond until the appropriate time. Judaism has stressed the natural fact of death and its role in giving life meaning. Of course, issues of death are inevitably importan...
