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 CHAPTER
SEVEN - Death and Mourning: End of Life Questions
A: BACKGROUND
16. Death and Mourning: Summing Up
At the beginning of the chapter on the death and mourning process, seven
themes and attitudes were outlined as characterising the Jewish attitude
to death and mourning. This is a review of how they have manifested themselves.
1. It was suggested, firstly, that Judaism is remarkably realistic
in its attitude towards death: death is considered a natural part of
life.
2. The second point was simplicity.
These two attitudes manifest themselves throughout the process of the
death and burial.
- Judaism does not attempt to beautify the picture, or to deny death:
death is accepted as a reality of life.
- It is not percieved as a force of darkness, an enemy, but rather
as something which must be resisted, but ultimately accepted.
- Judaism refuses to mystify the process of death and the mourning
that comes after death;
- It refuses to indulge itself in elaborate larger-than-life ceremonies
and death rituals. Rituals are people-sized; they are for normal human
beings who are saying goodbye to another normal human being.
This is apparent through all stages of the burial and mourning.
3. The third point explored here is the great humanity
of the tradition in its relationship especially, although not exclusively,
towards those left behind.
- Much of the ritual surrounding death relates to the mourners, those
who are left alive after the death.
- Very clearly, great sensitivity is shown towards the mourners,
with their complex of emotions and their ultimate need to be allowed
to work through their feelings towards death and the deceased and,
ultimately, to find a bridge to help them reconnect to life.
4. The fourth principle was the importance of providing a framework
to enable the mourner, ultimately, to move forward towards integration
into the fabric of everyday life.
The entire mechanism of shiva, shloshim, the year of mourning for parents,
and the further steps in ritualised remembrance have clearly emphasised
the contours of this framework.
5. The fifth element was that of the role of community.
- In all these life cycle explorations, the essential role in Jewish
culture, played by the community, has been focal and apparent. As
a witness, a support group, or a teaching framework, the role of community
comes to the fore, time and again, in the different stages of the
life cycle.
- However, never has the role of community seemed more crucial than
in the process of death and mourning - extending beyond its normal
framework: here, the community has been channeled and diverted, in
a sense, from the normal flow of its life in order to rally around
the mourners, echo their experience, and to launch the process of
bringing them back to themselves.
6. The sixth element was moderation.
- Judaism accepts that death can be so tragic, that people are sometimes
unable to cope with life at that moment, calling forth the need for
care by the community - but there must be limits to grief. Endless
grieving amidst personal self-neglect, cut off from community support,
is not the path of Judaism.
- The framework of mourning begins by allowing the raw anarchy of
total grief in the period of aninut, but subsequently steers the mourner
forward through stages of diminishing grief, until it is ritualised
in memory.
The irrationality and essential passionate wildness of raw pain, must,
over time, be placed in overall proportion: this is moderation and
it is clearly expressed.
7. Finally, throughout the process of death and mourning there is present
the integration of all the rituals and attitudes in a theological
framework.
Since Judaism is a culture that believes in meaning that transcends,
by far, the life or death of an individual, it has to provide a perspective
on death which will enable the individual to integrate the death, however
painful, into an ultimate framework of meaning.
This process has been clearly demonstrated:
- Throughout the period and rituals surrounding the death, Judaism
works to gently remind the dying and the mourners that everything
is integrated into a higher purpose and that, ultimately, whatever
the incomprehensibility of the moment, there is a righteous G-d, Whose
decisions must be accepted.
- Moreover, the mourner in shiva is seen as passing through a bubble
of desacralised time, from which he or she will be able to return
to the wider world.
The various themes have all manifested themselves in the mourning
process.
In this last analysis, it is also evident that just as Judaism
makes clear statements about life, it also makes clear statements about
death:
- It offers a complex religious and cultural world-view that
does not shrink back from dealing with the mystery of death;
- Nor does it treat it in a random and inconsistent manner.
The culture encounters death head on and deals with it consistently
and rationally, while reflecting its own perspectives on the process
of living.
To conclude, here is an excerpt from the rather strange and short Biblical
Scroll of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes). It is an odd book, cynical
and world weary in many ways, but it supplies one statement on life
and death that accords well with the ideas explored and the emphases
suggested. The first words are familiar, but in this context, especially
deep and thought provoking.
There is a time for everything
And a season for every activity under Heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die…
I thought… Man’s fate is like the animals: the same
fate awaits them both –
As one dies, so dies the other.
All have the same breath…
All go to the same place,
All come from the same dust and to dust will return.
Who knows if the spirit of man rises upwards
And the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?
So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his
work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will
happen after him?
Koheleth, 3
This is a great and deep statement on the unknown: After all the speculation
about the after-life, can we ever be really sure what happens to us
after death?
The response is that it is better not to think too much about it:
let us rather accept what we know, life, and concentrate on that; there
is a time for death and this will come to all of us, just as it does
for all the animals. From that point of view, there is little or no
difference: death is a part of life. We will not glorify it, rather
will we accept it, and remember that ultimately, at the centre of life,
there are living people. Even in death, they should be the focus of
our concern.
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