In yeshiva I was always told about gan eden and gehinnom, and how the good go to the former place while the bad go to the latter. However, in popular culture, Jews are always said to not believe in Hell (and many times Heaven). Why the discrepancy?
Answer
It might be because the Written Torah doesn't really go much into the topic. (Why that is so is a whole other question.) So people may have incorrectly concluded that these ideas weren't originally part of Judaism.
Another possibility is that they mean that we don't believe in the popular conception of Heaven (angels with harps) or of Hell (fiery lakes, satanic demons torturing souls, etc.). Which is perfectly true; those are Christian ideas (partly from Dante's Inferno) that have no place in Judaism.
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