Hey, Rabbi!

Hey Rabbi, tell me about Jewish ideas of hell. Hell? Well, Jews don't believe in hell. Jews believe in purgatory. In other religions, they use hell as a threat. You better do this or you're going to hell. Eternal damnation. There's no such thing in Judaism. Hell is a process of cleansing the soul. So, imagine you give your child a candy and the candy falls into the mud. They're not going to put that mud in their mouth because it's dirty, it's filthy.
What are they going to do? They're going to take it, put it under the sink and wash it down. That is hell in the Jewish concept. It's cleansing the soul from its impurities. In the process of our life, we were not able to cleanse our soul. And we have purgatory, which is a very temporary state for the soul to cleanse itself so that it can be close to God in the heavens. How temporary is the purgatory?
Up to 11 months for a righteous and up to 12 months for the wicked. Who's making that determination of time? So, that is in the heavenly courts, which is why Kaddish, after someone passes, is recited for 11 months, not for 12 months. Because we assume that everyone has done proper repentance and therefore received proper atonement for their sins and is only a maximum of 11 months of purgatory.