This, of course is also the central message of these holidays

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• Publié par: Nishur
• Nombre de lectures: 31
• Langue: English

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The Lessons that Death can Teach Yizkor 2010 Some years ago, I saw an unusual film entitled:My Dinner with Andre. If you have seen it, you know that it is almost entirely devoid of action. Instead, it mainly consists of a conversation between the actor and playwrite Wallace Shawn and the theatre director Andre Gregory over dinner at the Russian Tea Room in NY. What I remember most clearly from the film is a story that Gregory tells Shawn about a transformative experience he had while participating in a workshop on an estate out in Montauk. He recounts that he was awakened in the middle of the night and taken to the basement of a burned down house in the woods where he was given pencil and paper and asked to write out his last wishes. He was then led to a small shed where was told to take off all of his clothes. After that, Gregory was washed, wrapped in a sheet and carried blindfolded through the woods to a clearing where a freshly dug grave lay waiting. He was lowered into it, covered with a layer of earth and left there for about a half hour until they brought him out again. Andre Gregory said that the symbolic experience of his death fundamentally changed his life. Why do I tell you this today?I do it because, in a strange way, the High Holidays are meant to accomplish something very similar. Traditionally, Jews dress in a kittle, which is actually a burial shroud, for services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We go to the cemetery before Yom Tov and then gather on these days in shul to recite Unetanetokef and Yizkor. All of this is intended to remind us of our mortality; to shock us into the realization that yet another year of our lives has passed and that because none of us will live forever, we must make every day count. I know that all of this talk of death can be depressing, but also I know that it is crucial and timely. The awareness of death is a great teacher. It helps to focus our minds on things of real significance and to clarify what is truly important in our lives. In fact, death teaches us three basic truths. These three ideas are enormously powerful. If we take them to heart they will change our lives. The first lesson we can learn by contemplating our own death is conveyed in four little words. Life is a gift.Life is a gift.. It is precious beyond measure yet so very easy to take for granted. Sometimes it takes an encounter with serious sickness or death to teach us how wonderful and miraculous it is to be alive. Rabbi Milton Steinberg once wrote remarkable sermon in which he described what it was like to go outside after being gravely ill. He said: “After a long illness, I was permitted for the first time to step out of doors. And, as I crossed the threshold, sunlight greeted me. So long as I live, I shall never forget that moment.

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The sky overhead was very blue, very clear, and very, very high. A faint wind blew from off the western plains, cool and yet somehow tinged with warmth – like a dry, chilled wine. And everywhere in the firmament above me, in the great vault between earth and sky, on the pavements, the buildings—the golden glow of sunlight. It touched me, too, with friendship, with warmth, with blessing. And as I basked in its glory, there ran through my mind those wonder words of the prophet about the sun which some day shall rise with healing on its wings.” Just to be alive, just to be able to walk in the sunshine and breathe the air, is such a gift. One of my favorite blessings is the Shehecheyanu. While it is most familiar as the prayer we recite when we light candles or make Kiddush for the first time on holidays, Shehecheyanu is actually said on many other occasions as well: One of them is when we eat a new fruit for the first time in its season, an act that usually goes unnoticed. But, it shouldn’t be that way. Shehecheyanu draws our attention to the fact that even a simple moment like this is filled with blessings if we will butstop and notice. How wonderful to inhale the fruits bouquet, taste its lush sweetness feeling it delight in our spirits and nourish our bodies and then to say Shecheheyanu, thanking God for sustaining us in life and enabling us to reach a new season. You know if you think about it, we really have reason to say Shehecheyanu all day long, every day. It’s so easy to take life for granted or to squander it on vanity and superficial things that don’t really matter. In her remarkable book Kitchen Table Wisdom, Rachel Naomi Remen a physician who counsels cancer patients tells the story of a woman named Joan who was utterly devoted to her looks. She writes: th “Shortly after her 35birthday (Joan) entered into a battle with time with a plastic surgeon at her side. With his skill, she stripped back the years reclaiming the eyes, the chin, even the breasts and bottom of her youth. Unwilling to grow old, she examined her face and body constantly, exercised daily and was on a continual diet. No one needs to grow old, she said, aging is a choice.” Then Joan was struck by cancer and her body was ravaged by the disease, and weakened by surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Several years after the treatments were completed; Dr. Ramen was stopped in the market by a handsome gray haired woman she didn’t recognize. “It’s me, Joan” the woman said. “I’m growing old. Who would have thought that someone like me would be grateful to have wrinkles?” Joan’s near brush with death had taught her to appreciate life, wrinkles and all. Life is a precious gift, easily wasted, but how are we to use it? This brings me to the second lesson that death can teach us. It is that we must not only appreciate the gift of our lives, we must also use them to make a difference, to make our own unique contribution to the world. Otherwise, why are we here?

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An old friend of mine,Dr. Jerry Groopman wrote a chapter in his book The Measure of Our Days, about a man he called Kirk Bains. Kirk was a venture capitalist who had amassed a large fortune through high stakes deal making: and who, despite his doctor’s best efforts, was dying. He came to see Jerry as a last resort, seeking a longshot experimental treatment that might prolong his life. He was desperate to live, willing to try anything no matter how painful or unpleasant. Remarkably, the experimental therapy they tried was, for a time successful. Kirk’s health stabilized and then improved. True to form, he had gambled and won. However, instead of being elated by his remission, he became depressed. Eventually he decided not to seek further treatment. He told Jerry that he just didn’t care anymore. He no longer had a reason to live. Jerry was stunned by this sudden turn around and asked for an explanation. Kirk said : “I don’t read newspapers anymore. They used to be a gold mine for me. Filled with information I could use for deals and commodity trading. I never really cared about the world’s events or its people. Now, my deals seem pointless. Pointless, because I was a shortterm investor. I had no interest in creating something, not a product in business or a partnership with a person. And now I have no equity, no dividends coming in, nothing to show in my portfolio.” There are so many ways that we can make a difference in the world. So many ways to use the gift of life to build our portfolios by acting in ways that will leave this earth a better place than we found it. Our tradition teaches that we were put on this earth “Letakain Olam bemalchut Shaddai”.” To perfect the under the Kingdom of heaven.” A woman I know named Sara Weiss is oaperson whose encounter with death taught her that she had to make a difference in the world. One day when she was on a business trip her husband called her with the worst news a parent can ever receive: her nine year old son Jordan had gone to bed the night before feeling a bit under the weather. In the morning he was found lifeless in his bed. It turned out the Jordan had died of an undiagnosed form of juvenile diabetes. In the anguished months after Jordan’s death, Sara came to a simple decision. She resolved that if she can help it, no parent should ever lose their child the way she lost Jordan. Along with loving friends, including the parents of many of the children in Jordan’s school, she established the Jordan Bennett Weiss fund, which has distributed information on diabetes and related diseases to tens of thousands of parents and recently spearheaded legislation in Massachusetts mandating diabetes testing as routine part of a child’s annual physical.

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There is one final lesson that death has to teach us. It is that life is best lived through loving relationships—our relationship with God, our relationships with our families and other people. These ties nourish our souls and help to give our lives lasting significance. When all is said and done, relationships are what really count. The late Johnny Unitas understood that. When the legendary quarterback was once asked by a sports reporter to name his greatest accomplishment, Unitas didn’t mention his 3 NFL Championships with the Colts, nor did he cite his extraordinary record of completing at least one touch down pass in 47 consecutive games over four years. Unitas didn’t mention his induction into the hall of fame or being twice voted by his peers, the greatest quarterback who ever played. He didn’t mention any of these things. As far as Johnny Unitas was concerned his greatest accomplishment was his eight children. Relationships give life meaning, they make it worth living, and contain within themselves the possibility of something even greater. Dr. Remen writes in Kitchen Table Wisdom, about an 87year –old man who was struggling with the decision of whether to have risky surgery that might save his life, or just let nature take its course. In the end, he chose to have the operation. When she asked him why, he told her about a reverie he had had: He said he was sitting in a chair in his living room reading the paper and had nodded off. It seemed to him that his wife came and sat beside him and as she looked at him he was struck by the love in her eyes. As they sat together, he felt his fear easing and then looked up to see one of his oldest friends standing behind her chair smiling at him. And after that others came, family and friends, teachers and students, children and grandchildren even the family pets. He had had a long life and there were fifty or sixty of them crowded in the living room and down the hall. The presence of all the people in his reverie comforted him and helped him to see that his life would continue to be meaningful. When Dr. Ramen told him his vision was a beautiful thing. He said: “Yes, and some of these people are dead now. I guess any good you have been given is with you forever.” We have come together on his most solemn day of the year to confront our mortality; to acknowledge that our lives are precarious and epheral like a passing dream, a fleeting shadow, a leaf in the wind. We have come together to ask ourselves the questions that must be asked: Mah Anachnu, Meh Chayainu, mah chasdainu umah tsedkainyu? Who are we? What are our lives, what claim can we make to goodness and righteousness? Let us answer these questions by cherishing God’s gift of life, committing ourselves to nurturing loving relationships, and contributing to building a better world. For if we do these things, then our sojourn on this earth, whether long or short, will be rich in love and full of significance, and it will remain as an enduring blessing, even as we were blessed by those who came before us..

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