"Being born is the shock of transfer to a set of circumstances in which almost everything is done in a different way, in which there is an order of a different kind.
Dying is doing the same thing—again, in a different way, perhaps coming to a point where I discard certain things about my being.
The shock there is clearly that of transferring from one set of circumstances to another.
Our notion of people going to hell has to do with this transfer.
I might be magnificently suited to survive in this world, but now I have to go into another world with other rules, whether I want to or not.
And the things that equipped me to be, for instance, a financial success in this world will send me to hell in a different world!
If a person doesn't grow through adaptation to a certain order and then move into another one, he is unable to deal with it.
It is like the tadpole and the frog.
We see this all the time: men who were wonderful as boys in schools are not necessarily wonderful as adults out of school.
Because a change creates a necessity for a different order."
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From The Strife of the Spirit by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz