I'm not sure if mentioned this before. If I did, it's worth repeating.
Years ago, when I was involved with Hickman's church, my uncle leaned on me to go to a Lubavitcher Seder (Passover ritual dinner). One of the rabbis gave a talk about how if a person converted to another religion and then came back, they could never really trust the person again.
Well, trust works both ways. When I was persecuted for being Jewish (and religiously Zionistic at that), all the other Jewish kids in my class turned away from me. As long as they didn't get hurt, it wasn't their problem. So much, for "not standing by your brother's blood."
And no rabbis were around and who even knew what was going on? So eventually, when I was rather young (14) I converted to Christianity for about 5 years.
From what I know, orthodoxy is now all over Long Island, NY and my battles are mostly long forgotten, except by myself, my family and some of my friends.
And the question I always had is, why weren't any of the Jewish outreach workers around for me? And why did these
people only show up in my life when I cut out on them?
At a Shlomo concert one time, some yeshiva student told me "before you left Judaism you should have checked out what it had for you." Persecution mostly.

I've been wanting to ask someone with a Jewish background this for a long time. Does Judaism teach any concept of hell? I mean the traditional idea of eternal torment, fire and brimstone.

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Originally posted by shibbo
I've been wanting to ask someone with a Jewish background this for a long time. Does Judaism teach any concept of hell? I mean the traditional idea of eternal torment, fire and brimstone.

Hell is called Gehinna after the Valley of Gehnom (check ou the spelling). It is not a place of eternal torment. After people dies, some people go there as a type of purgatory for sins committed.
Jews say the Kaddish over their parents for 11 months because a wicked person would have to stay in Gehinna for 12 months and you don't want to say your parents are evil, so you only infer that they are there for a maximum of 11 months.
Also, from what I've heard, hell is a state of mind. You don't have to be physically anywhere for it to happen. You could even be physically or spiritually in Heaven but if you state of mind is off, you're still "in hell".

I heard these stories from Shlomo Carlebach so, most of them are on tapes of his. One story (and I'm going to be brief unlike Shlomo) revolved around some Chasid whose rebbe died.
The Chasid complained that he wanted the Rebbe to come back to the physical world because he has to celebrate the Sabbath by himself now and it's not the same without the Rebbe.
So the Rebbe explained that he couldn't help the Chasid because when the Rebbe was alive, the Chasid experienced the taste of Heaven (Gan Eden) that the Rebbe created for the Chasid. But now that the Rebbe is gone, the Hasid is experiencing the Gan Eden he created for himself.