ב''ה,
If this gets munged to my last reply I'll toss a paragraph break in to be readable, but as a separate thought generally for edification of this whole thread, Judaism doesn't have Hell (rather G-d will just make your life shitty in life, generally) but it has Sheol.
To plagiarize encyclopedia.com as hopefully doesn't dox me,
A Hebrew word (
š e
'ôl ) that occurs more than 60 times in the
Old Testament to signify the nether world. Its etymology is very uncertain, being variously derived from
šā'al, "ask, inquire," [thus, a place that keeps asking for more (Prv 27.20; 30.15–16) or a place of interrogation of the dead], from
šā'âl, "be hollow, deep," from
šwl, "be low," from
šā'â, "be desolate," plus an archaic suffix
l, or from various Akkadian roots.
^
I had more on the exact etymology, but this is vaguely like how "grave" "grievance" and "grief" could be mistaken for the same word in English. However it is also that, all that's known about non-existence until any ultimate resurrection is that it involves the grave (burial, literally being below the earth) and G-d occasionally lets people ask of it (as much as the notion of burial seems to ask or beg for lives, mortality rarely if ever being avoided), though that's making the point that it's a puppet show and you can't tell the difference because G-d controls everything anyway. Also doing that generally only delivers bad news, particularly to Jews, as G-d asks us not to bother or try to.
So, in sensibility it's mostly just a word for "the grave," non-existence, though people being people and Jewish law being Jewish law, the Rabbinical and folk traditions are to pray G-d remembers the deads' deeds in life favorably. For Judaism proper it's that this is an important part of how everything functions, as G-d can punish the living for the past 4 generations' iniquities as maybe was supposed to discourage them (complicated way of saying don't fuck up your kids and don't fuck up the world for them, if you care, in most direct causal form), while in folk tradition since we're still prone to regular human stuff there is that element of 'may this improve their souls' lot whatever the fuck being in The Grave actually is.'
So Rome did flip this around, probably via Zoroastrianism rather than Judaism, plus existing Roman thought and Greek influence, as in those traditions it's possible for a soul to suffer in an active afterlife more than just not getting to walk the Earth anymore until the resurrection. So instead of the living being punished by and for the misdeeds of their ancestors (pour leaded gas on the planet the next generation deals with lead) as is how things 'naturally' work, it's put that you can do whatever you want in life but may face an active eternity of suffering after life for it. The popularity of this does suggest a certain narcissism exists more commonly than the Jewish heartstrings G-d was trying to tug as far as, your ancestors wanted and got their seed multiplied and their lines to go on all this time, so you'd really be fucking up all that from the get go to future generations if ruining life for your kids (wherein eating raised bread on Passover, or actively poisoning or beating your children might both equally do that, but that's its own can of worms).
