Dear TBZ Community,
After my father died, 9 years ago, I was gifted the book, The Orphaned Adult: Understanding and Coping with Grief and Change After the Death of Our Parents by Alexander Levy. Since then, I have recommended and gifted this book to those who lose their second parent. Levy not only speaks to the experience of not having any of your parents alive in this world, but to the ways that our culture deals and thinks about death. Levy writes:
We in Western culture currently consider death formidable and avoidable. We avoid thinking about it. We avoid preparing for it. We almost never talk about it and when we do, we avoid saying its name (…) We avoid looking at death directly, as if trying to avoid eye contact with the playground bully, in the belief that if he doesn’t notice us, he’ll leave us alone. And yet the more we try to avoid facing the bully, the more menacing he becomes (page 10).
Jewish tradition, through its many mourning rituals – from shiva (meaning “seven,” the week-long mourning period that starts the day of the burial), to shloshim (meaning “thirty,” the 30-day mourning period that starts the day of the burial), to saying kaddish (meaning “holy,” a hymn said during prayer services and funerals and said by mourners for 11 months after the burial) – challenges us to approach death rather than distance ourselves from it. We don’t try to evade death. We live with it. We live our lives with the mindfulness that death is part of life, challenging us to live to the fullest.
Still, interesting enough, parts of our tradition encourage a distancing from death. This week’s Torah portion, parshat Emor, begins with God telling Moshe to tell the Kohanim (the Priests) that they are prohibited to come in contact with a dead body, unless it is their own family, as they would become impure. Leviticus chapter 21:1-2 reads:
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה אֱמֹר אֶל־הַכֹּהֲנִים בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם לְנֶפֶשׁ לֹא־יִטַּמָּא בְּעַמָּיו כִּי אִם־לִשְׁאֵרוֹ הַקָּרֹב אֵלָיו לְאִמּוֹ וּלְאָבִיו וְלִבְנוֹ וּלְבִתּוֹ וּלְאָחִיו
Adonai said to Moses: Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: None shall defile himself for any [dead] person among his kin, except for the relatives that are closest to him: his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, and his brother;
From these verses we learn about the prohibition for kohanim not to go to cemeteries (a practice that some still follow today).
Rabbi Harold Kushner z”l died this past week. Rabbi Kushner was best known for his bestselling book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I remember Rabbi Kushner visiting Argentina when I lived there; interestingly enough I can’t recall (nor could find it online) if he visited before or after my mother died, killed in a terrorist attack in Buenos Aires. But I remember that the room at the Bet-El synagogue was packed for his talk. It was meaningful and powerful to hear his experience of loss, how he thought of it theologically, and how the loss of his son to such a devastating illness guided the way he lived his life. I remember reading his book sometime after my mother’s death, and that it really spoke to my own theology, to my own understanding, or, at least, to my own attempt to understand my pain and God’s place in it. Rabbi Kushner speaks to those of us who have suffered (is that all of us?), especially those who have suffered a death, one that feels or seems not normal, such as the death of a child, the early death of a loved one from illness, or the death of a loved one from accidents, randomness, or acts of other human beings who choose evil ways. Rabbi Kushner gives some guidance on how to respond and how to live our lives meaningfully after such a devastating experience.
Last Sunday I went to see at the Boston Symphony, Osvaldo Goljov’s Falling Out of Time (and lots of TBZers were there). TBZ member, Argentina-born American composer Osvaldo Golijov transformed the heart-wrenching novel by Israeli writer David Grossman, who lost his son Uri while fighting in south Lebanon, into music, giving sound to Grossman’s words of pain. As I walked out from the theater, I thought, “this is how pain, loss sounds.” It sounded familiar. I knew what that scream was about, what that music was about. I could feel it: it was powerful, moving, heart-wrenching, horrible, beautiful, familiar to me, a powerful performance. (I encourage you to read the conversation that TBZ member Jeremy Eichler and David Grossman and Osvaold Golijov published in the Boston Globe last week to learn more about it.)
As I think of Rabbi Kushner’s legacy, or at least how his Torah touched me, and about Grossman’s experience, especially from the perspective that Golijov brought to us in this performance, I am reminded once again, that death is part of life, that pain is part of life, that the suffering can not be avoided. And the question remains: so what do we do with that? And how do we make the best of our life? How do we live meaningfully and purposely, not despite the suffering we encounter, but as part or as a response to it. How can facing death and pain actually teach us to find God in our lives, in everything we do, and not create distance between us and God?
The priests in this week’s parasha are told to distance themselves from death, so they can live a life of holiness, a life of service. They need to distance themselves from that which is impure, from that which could defile them, as if facing death can distance them from a life of holiness. And perhaps it did. To serve the people as priests, they had to create boundaries between life and death. So maybe we can read this prohibition of the priest coming in contact with death a little differently. I suggest the following interpretation: God says, don’t let death close you off from what it means to live purposely and meaningfully, to live a life of kedusha (holiness). When you encounter death, when you encounter that which paralyzes you, choose life and choose holiness.
In the words of Rabbi Kushner:
I don’t know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don’t understand are at work. I cannot believe that God ‘sends’ illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don’t believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best.
‘What did I do to deserve this?’ is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is, ‘If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?’
We find in the Talmud (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate of Brachot 5a) this rather challenging teaching:
אמר רבא ואיתימא רב חסדא
אם רואה אדם שיסורין באין עליו
יפשפש במעשיו
Rava, and some say Rav Ḥisda, said:
If a person sees that suffering has befallen them,
they should examine their actions.
This text is generally understood as claiming that suffering comes about as punishment for one’s transgressions. The last two words, “yefashfesh b’ma’asav,” mean to examine your actions so that you understand why whatever happened, happened. For many years, I have been guided by a different reading of this text. I suggest that instead of reading it in the past tense – asking us to check what we had done wrong to bring about this suffering – we should read it in the future tense – yefashfesh b’ma’asav, checking my actions now, what do I need to change from now on.
How does this experience shape my future decisions about how I live my life? How do my own experiences of life, of suffering, of fear or loss, of hurt actually help shape my priorities from this point onwards, how do they shape my values and my journey?
David Grossman and Harold Kushner z”l both, and so many of us, have suffered, encounter death, been paralyzed by it, but then find ways to move forward, to give pain a sound, and a purpose for what’s next, for a life that has meaning in it, and, maybe, some holiness.
May this Shabbat bring renewal and blessings to all of you and your loved ones.
May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity.
May all those who are ill find healing. And may we have a joyful, sweet, and peaceful Shabbat.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia