Few (if any) Jews believe in eternal damnation. Generally speaking, Judaism places very little emphasis on the afterlife, and there's no widely-held doctrine about it. To the extent there's a shared belief at all, it's that everybody goes to a place called Sheol, without differentiation by merit.

That's so strange that Christianity and Judaism can have such divergent views on the afterlife. I guess it never occurred to me (as a former Christian) that Christian views on the afterlife are totally derived from the new testament.

There's a good case to be made that modern evangelical views on the afterlife aren't even based on the NT.

Annihilationism (cessation of existence, "the second death", "fear him who can destroy body and soul", etc) is much closer to what's in the NT than the widely-accepted Infernalism (eternal torture in hell).

That's how it reads to me, anyway, after decades of reading the Bible.

Isn’t that mostly a middle ages creation? The whole Dante’s Inferno and related imaginary is not based on canon as far as I know.

Jesus was much more practical in my view and placed much more emphasis on helping others through real means.

I think it’s also that. The fact that someone would hold to such a dumb belief even in the face of death is strange. The (usual) human instinct is to survive, and I would argue it’s strange to not.