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September 2003
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www.shma.com
Yizkor, the memorial prayer recited on Yom Kippur as well as on other holy days, helps us to recall and honor the memories
of our dead. Judaism has much to teach about death, dying, and the meaning of life. This expanded issue of Sh’ma, specially
placed this year on thousands of Yom Kippur synagogue seats, offers new voices and insights on the ancient traditions surrounding burial. It suggests that our finite lives be full, that we approach each new year with anticipation and awe. We wish
you a shana tova, a sweet and healthy year.
Death and Meaning
David Wolpe
When reading a novel, we almost invariably flip the pages to see how many remain until the end. For we always know when stories of imagination will end. The movie will run a
few hours, the book so many
pages. We do not know how
they will end, but we know
when. This is a major difference between a true story and
an invented one: in life we cannot count the pages or check
the clock. The end of our story
could come at any moment, or
not for years.
We tell stories of life in retrospect, and our tale is determined in large measure by the
ending. Sudden death colors
everything about a life. Illness becomes the dominant strain of a life that was about so many other
things. To modify Shakespeare a bit, all too often nothing so defines a life as the leaving of it.
There is both certainty and mystery in limitation.
We know life will end but not when; we know that
death defines life but we seek to minimize its power.
Kabbalah associates the left side of the sefirot with limi-
tation and negation. The essential religious insight in
addressing the mystery of death is that all creation ne-
cessitates restriction: the picture its frame, the story its
denouement, the life its death. The Garden of Eden is
the unreachable vision of infini-
tude; we live in limitation.
We know life will
end but not when;
we know that death
defines life but we
seek to minimize its
power.
INSIDE
David Wolpe: Death and Meaning ................................. 1
Lynn Greenhough: The Washer and the Washed .......... 2
Ilana Harlow: Personal Rituals ....................................... 3
Alison Jordan: The Deathbead Confessional ................. 5
Jan R. Uhrbach: The Origin of Death .............................. 6
Roberta Louis Goodman: Teaching Our Children ........ 7
Peter Metcalf: Knowing the Ancestors ........................... 9
Bob Minder: Crossing Over ........................................... 10
Ronald Wolfson: A Gift of Comfort .............................. 10
Avriel Bar-Levav: Jewish Rituals for Dying ................. 11
Misha Zinkow: Writing Eulogies .................................. 12
Anne Brener: Doing Kaddish ........................................ 13
Sinclair: Book Review..................................................... 15
Tsvi Blanchard: NiSh’ma ................................................. 17
David Zinner: 21st Century Judaism ............................ 19
Neil Gillman: Sh’ma Ethics ............................................ 20
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