Beyond Who Will Live and Who Will Die — Remembering the Future

Yom Kippur 5767

Last week on Rosh Hashanah evening we started together by looking ahead in the Machzor to the section from the next morning where we asked the most basic questions about what we are and what is our life. Not that I’m in a hurry but once again I’d like to look ahead with you in the Machzor, this time to the afternoon service, p. 399. There you see the second blessing of the T’filah, also called the Amidah (the standing prayer), and here designated as “The Power Whose Gift is Life.” In Hebrew, the term for this prayer is G’vurot, which means the powers (of the Almighty.) Those Godly powers include several that are listed, upholding the fallen, healing the sick, freeing the captive, and keeping faith with those who lie in the dust.

However, look closely at this version of g’vurot. What do you see that is different? Mechayeh Meitim, not Mechayei Hakol. Reviving the dead – not reviving “everything,” which is the version of the prayer in every other service in this Machzor. One of God’s powers is to revive the dead? What is that traditional formula doing in our Reform movement liturgy? Did you know, by the way, that it also is included in one of the Shabbat services in Shaarei Tefillah, our current prayerbook, known affectionately as “Gates of Blue,” service number eight?

If we look at the English there and here, we see some beautiful interpretations of this concept since it actually occurs four separate times in the prayer, “God quickens those who have forgotten how to live, causes us to blossom into persons who have gained power over our own lives.” And in the last line “God whose gift is life, whose cleansing rains let parched men and women flower toward the sun.”

In Gates of Understanding, a book that accompanied our 1970s’ siddur, the editor of that prayerbook, Chaim Stern, responded to the question of why mechayei meitim was included in one of the services. He commented, somewhat defensively I think, that it was included for its “interpretive possibilities.”

It is relevant to note, however, that when Rabbi Stern, the author of some of the most moving liturgy in English in the past few decades edited his own siddur, Netivot Emunah, Paths of Faith, published posthumously three years ago, he replaced mechayei hakol with mechayei meitim in all services, translating it there as “You are the source of eternal life…trusting in You we see life beyond death.”

And you may also be interested to note that the prayerbook being published this year by the Reform movement (Mishkan T’filah) includes mechayei meitim along side mechayei hakol, giving the worshippers the choice and the opportunity to decide for themselves how they wish to express what they see as God’s power to revive. This leads to an intriguing question: what has changed in the 150 years since the American Reform movement first altered the traditional Hebrew blessing so that now some of us may wish to recite the earlier language?

But, it is not just a question of language. It is a question of our approach to the meaning of death – and therefore the meaning of life. This is a subject which is close to us on Yom Kippur, with our liturgy bursting with the themes of being on trial for our life, being written and sealed in the book of life.

A traditional observance of Yom Kippur includes refraining from eating, drinking, bathing, anointing ourselves, sexual relations – in sum afflicting ourselves to simulate a non-physical, non-material existence, a voluntary brush with death, as it were. And in fact one tradition is to wear a kittel throughout the entire day of Yom Kippur, the same simple white garment that will serve as our burial shroud.

We addressed the subject of death in the Torah reading this morning where we refer to two different antinomies containing death, one of them described as a choice. First, we read: “See, I have set before you this day life and good, or death and evil,” and then later, when we are asked to choose, the choice is expressed in a subtlety different way: “life or death, blessing or curse.” This choice doesn’t seem difficult does it? Who would choose death and the curse over life and blessing, if we actually had this choice? However, in some ways our tradition denies that we do have a choice! According both to the U’netanneh Tokef prayer, which asserts that during the Days of Awe our fate is sealed, who shall live and who shall die, and also according to a Rabbinic text, we choose neither the day of our birth or death, since against our will are we born and against our will we die.

I want to look at the first set of antinomies, life and good, death and evil. Does this formula imply that death is identical with “evil?!” A curse, yes, we can understand how death is a curse, but evil? Isn’t death really a stage of life? As one of our wisest ancient philosophers Ben Sirah wrote 2100 years ago, in words that may provide some acceptance if not comfort, “We are all destined to die. We share it with all who have ever lived, with all who ever will be.” And as a contemporary Rabbi, Alvin Fine, expressed it so beautifully in the words we read last night, “Birth is a beginning, and death a destination, and life is a journey, a sacred pilgrimage to life everlasting.”

Our Rabbinic sages were so convinced that death was not evil, despite our Torah reading from Deuteronomy, they were even ready to edit the words written in the name of the prophet Isaiah. Second Isaiah (45:7), lived in the same historical era as Zoroaster, who founded a religious movement based on one god who creates good and another god who creates evil. Possibly in response Isaiah said, “Ani Adonai v’ein od. Yotser or u’vorei choshech, oseh shalom u’vorei ra. I am Adonai, there is no other (god). I create light and darkness, shalom (well-being) and evil.” But what does the Rabbinic prayer, the yotser prayer for creation that we recite in the morning service say? We read: “yotser or u’vorei choshech, oseh shalom u’vorei et… (hakol)”. We don’t say in our prayer that God creates “evil” as the Isaiah passage says, rather we alter his quote to say that God creates well-being and everything (hakol), which suggests that everything God creates has the potential for good and redemption – even death.

Let me share with you a story about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, perhaps the most eloquent Jewish thinker as well as social justice pursuer of the 20th century, told by his student, Rabbi Sam Dresner:

Several years before Abraham Heschel’s death in 1972, he suffered a near-fatal heart attack from which he never fully recovered. I traveled to his apartment in New York to see him. He had gotten out of bed for the first time to greet me and was sitting in the living room when I arrived, looking weak and pale. He spoke slowly and with some effort, almost in a whisper. I strained to hear his words.

“Sam,” he said, “when I regained consciousness, my first feelings were not of despair or anger. I felt only gratitude to God for my life, for every moment I had lived. I was ready to depart. ‘Take me, O Lord,’ I thought, ‘I have seen so many miracles in my lifetime.’” Exhausted by the effort, he paused for a moment, then added, “That is what I meant when I wrote [In the preface to his book of Yiddish poems], ‘I did not ask for success; I asked for wonder. And You gave it to me.’…”

Leaving Heschel’s home, I walked alone, in silence, aimlessly, oblivious of others, depressed by the knowledge that the man who meant so much to so many was mortally ill.

I pondered his words. What had he meant by them? Was it possible to accept death so easily? Death. Faceless enemy, fearsome monster who devours our days, confounds the philosopher, silences the poet, and reduces the mighty to offering all their gold, in vain, for yet another hour! Was he telling me not to sorrow overmuch, thinking of my feelings when he was moving toward the end of all feeling? Could he have been consoling me?

Suddenly…I found myself recalling a Hasidic teaching he often quoted. “There are three ascending levels of how one mourns: with tears-that is the lowest; with silence-that is higher; and with song-that is the highest.”

I understood then what it was I had experienced: the lesson that how a man meets death is a sign of how he has met life. Intimations of melody countered my sadness. At that moment the power of the human spirit, mortal and frail though it is, never seemed so strong.

I am sure that for a number of us this story brings to mind the recent death of our beloved Steve Eisen, zichrono livrachah, his memory blesses us. I’d like to dedicate my remarks today in honor of Steve’s memory and also to support a holy part of the work of our congregation, our Mitzvah Corps, some of whose work touches directly on our subject today.

In assessing honestly on Yom Kippur where we have been as individuals, as a congregational family and as a movement we reconsider both what we believe and don’t believe, and what we do and don’t do. In this context I want to share a poem that I find very helpful in this reconsideration. David Ray’s poem asks:

Do you have hope for the future?
Someone asked Robert Frost, toward the end,
Yes, and even for the past he replied,
that it will turn out to have been all right
for what it was, something we can accept.
mistakes made by the selves we had to be,
not able to be, perhaps, what we wished,
or what looking back half the time it
seems we could so easily have been…

Hope for the past not just for the future − that’s a beautiful thought as we think about what we can do better as parents, as children, as spouses, as friends, as Jews with our responsibilities to improve the world into which we were born “against our will.”

On the personal level and on the level of our Judaism, I hope you may find it valuable or at least interesting to return to this question of what is says about us that many of us no longer have the rational certainties of our 19th century forebears, or to put it in a more positive frame, we are more open to the mystery and spiritual side of being human.

Soon we will have a prayerbook that will restore the language that traditional Jews have always understood to imply resurrection of the dead. The translation will say, “Your power is vast, Adonai, renewing life against all odds.” The footnote will say from the words of Rabbi Judith Abrams: “The resurrection of the dead, which may be taken literally, is best understood as a powerful metaphor for understanding the miracle of hope. Winter gives way to spring. Sickness, does, sometimes, give way to health.”

The early reformers in the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885 agreed to the following language: “We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul of man is immortal, grounding this belief on the divine nature of the human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism the belief in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (hell and paradise), as abodes for everlasting punishment or reward.”

Contrast this with the most recent official Rabbinic statement that is more modest, no longer stressing what we don’t believe. The Pittsburgh Principles of 1999 say merely, “We trust in our tradition’s promise that, although God created us as finite beings, the spirit within us is eternal.”

What has disappeared in the newer statement is any mention of the rejection of the idea of resurrection. Why? We have already mentioned that the language of prayer is metaphorical. Even the early Rabbis knew this since they asserted that this prayer refers to three things: our reawakening from deathlike sleep, the revival of vegetative growth brought on by rain, and the actual resurrection of the dead at the end of days.

Two of these events we actually experience, one in nature, and the other every morning when we awake. The elohai neshamah prayer in the morning celebrates in a fashion, a mini-resurrection, a rehearsal for the messianic reunion of body and soul. We may experience it even moment to moment, when involuntarily our breathing continues our connection with the Creator of the breath of life.

The very first American liberal siddur changed the language of mechayei meitim to mechayei nishmot hameitim (you revive the souls of dying mortals, as it was emended and translated by Isaac Mayer Wise.) This was then altered by David Einhorn to the version, notea betocheinu chayei olam, you plant within us eternal life. But is the belief that our souls or our spirits are revived by God or based on a set of rational observations? For that matter, are the founding myths of creation and revelation based more strongly on rational assumptions than anything we believe about the future? Why are past miracles more acceptable than future ones?

What has happened in the Reform movement is that we no longer list those doctrines that are not acceptable to us as modern or rational people. In some way these lists have contributed to the unfortunate tendency of Reform Jews to define ourselves in negative terms, “We are Jews who don’t observe this part of Jewish law,” or “We are Jews who don’t believe that…”

As the main author of the newer Rabbinic position, The Pittsburgh Principles, Richard Levy has written, “Reform, it seems to me, should represent an approach to the entire tradition, encouraging its members to address the full spectrum of belief and practice we received at Sinai – either by a personal response to a call from God, or by a choice emerging out of study and experience. It is the individuality of the response that marks the liberal approach, not a shrinking of the tradition to which one is permitted to respond.”

On the level of action there are also traditions which once seemed distant or somehow against the spirit of modernity. Many of the responsibilities, the mitzvot obligatory on every Jew have been delegated to professionals or to small groups of volunteers. And, some have even been abandoned. For example, one of the most powerful and fulfilling responsibilities we have as Jews, to attend to the burial of a member of our community, has been handed over to professionals, the funeral business.

I am pleased to report as I hope you have noticed in the past year, that members of this congregation have decided that we will be in the vanguard of our movement in restoring the tradition of Chevra Kadisha. The Chevra Kadisha (the Aramaic term for Holy Fellowship) involves some of the most venerated and historic Jewish customs and voluntary obligations. Members of our Chevra Kadisha will learn the traditional customs associated with accompanying the person’s body after death (sh’mirah), as well as the gentle rituals associated with washing and preparing the body (taharah). We hope to have sufficient numbers to offer ourselves to our fellow congregants who request those rituals. A few of our members who have already performed these mitzvot have shared with us that this is a truly powerful and sacred experience.

Please be in touch with me if you have any interest in learning more or participating. And if you have an interest in increasing your knowledge of Jewish customs and rituals surrounding death and mourning, as well as Jewish ideas of life after life I will be teaching a class as part of our exciting new adult study institute/beit midrash on Tuesday nights in November.

Not everyone will feel capable of performing all of the actions of a Chevra Kadisha, but that is not necessary to participate in some of the acts of kindness involved in attending to the dead in addition to the family that is in mourning. The latter responsibilities are those that have been handled with great dedication by our Mitzvah Corps under the strong and gentle leadership of Wilma Braun. The work of this committee is really the work described in the g’vurot prayer as Godly acts, upholding the fallen and healing the sick, but God can use our help through our own acts of chesed, the acts of kindness.

There is no reason why the membership of the Mitzvah Corps should not be identical with the membership of the congregation. For example, the mitzvah of Bikkur Cholim, visiting the sick is listed in our morning prayers as among those mitzvot that have no limit. This command has also been too frequently delegated to the professionals, the clergy. This would be a good year for each and every one of us to figure out that part of the work of the Mitzvah Corps will be our own special mitzvah in 5767.

While we do want, of course, to act on the basis of clear reason and rational scientific thought, to ask and question and analyze and wrestle, we may also affirm ideas that reason alone cannot justify. As the Pittsburgh principles say: “We invite all Reform Jews to engage in a dialogue with the sources of our tradition, responding out of our knowledge, our experience, and our faith.” As Rabbi Levy also wrote, “Let us also look at an idea Reform rejected 150 years ago – techiyat hameitim – and ask ourselves as God asked Ezekiel, can these bones still live? Where is the vitality, the transformational power these ideas once held centuries ago? Is it like buried DNA, still present?”

One of the strongest and ultimately convincing arguments for retaining the option of using this language in our new prayerbook was offered by Rabbi Dan Alexander who wrote:

I am drawn to the image of bodily resurrection in spite of my uncertainty about its reality because it sparks the imagination. The notion remains vital because it promotes a confrontation with death and because it projects a vision in which one will overcome death. Because it describes that which transcends life, it enables one to engage life more profoundly. Is God stronger than death? I cannot answer with scientific certainty, but I do know that I want to restore the language, to revive the myth, in which the question can be posed.

Would an increased concern about life after this life lead us inexorably away from the choice of life and blessing in this world? Would our contemporary Judaism lose its prophetic focus and emphasis on the here and now, deemphasizing our concern with the repair of this, our world of suffering and inequity in favor of life in the next?

Let me conclude with some words of Rabbi Heschel that address this question:

Surviving after death, we hope, is surviving as a thought of God. The question that looms in relation to my own self is: Am I worthy of surviving, of being a thought of God? What is it about myself or my existence that has affinity to eternity?

Survival beyond death carries, according to Judaism, demands and obligations during life here and now. Conditions are attached to the hope of survival.

Eternity is not an automatic consequence of sheer being, and survival is not an unconditional epilogue of living. It must be achieved, earned…

We must distinguish between being human and human being. We are born human beings. What we must acquire is being human. Being human is the essential, the decisive achievement of a human being.

Human being finds its end in organic dissolution. But, being human is not an organic substance; it is an action and a radiance of the personhood of man. The meaning of existence is in the sanctification of time, in lending eternity to the moments. Being human is a quest for the lasting…

It is a distortion to characterize the life of man as moving toward death. Death is the end of the road, and while moving along the long road of days and nights, we are really moving toward living, acting, achieving. Death is the end of the road, but not its meaning, not a refutation of living. That every moment of life is a step toward death is a mechanical view… Those who say that we die every day, that every moment deprives us of a portion of life, look at moments as time past. Looking at moments as time present, every moment is a new arrival, a new beginning…

Death is the end of what we can do in being partners to redemption. The life that follows must be earned while we are here. It does not come out of nothing; it is an ingathering, the harvest of eternal moments achieved while on earth…

The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The cry for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous if there is no cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. God has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a here now.

Baruch Attah, Mechayeh Meitim

May God teach us how to revive what is dead in our lives and thereby connect us with Eternity.

Kein Yehi Ratzon, G’mar Chatimah Tovah

May it be God’s will that you be sealed for a year of blessing!