Shaarei Shamayim

CHAYEY SARAH 5771

Last week I spoke about the “Miner Miracle,” and how all 33 miners in Chile felt like they were reborn after their rescue. I compared it to a famous parable about twins in the womb about to be born—an optimist and a pessimist. The pessimist says, “It looks like the end is coming soon for us, because I can feel movement, and we will probably be expelled from here soon. I don’t see how we can possibly survive.”

            The optimist responds, “Stop being a pessimist. It would be absurd for us to be here for 9 months just to go to extinction.” 

            As fate would have it, the optimist is born 1^st and the pessimist strains very closely to the walls of the womb to hear what has happened to his brother and he hears from without crying and screaming. He says, “Too bad for my brother, I guess I was right after all. Poor boy, he is gone.”

            While on the other side at the very same moment, happy mother and father are wishing each other mazal tov at the birth of a new child, who has gone from one kind of existence to another. While in the other kind of existence, no one would be able to describe, predict or imagine the other.”

The point of the parable is that even as there is one kind of existence leading to another in the birth of a baby as we enter this world, so too we believe that when our story is finished here and we hear the cry and the scream as we leave this world, someone in the World to Come is saying, “Mazal tov, welcome home, glad to have you back!”

I quoted Elizabeth Kubler Ross who put it beautifully when she said: “Death is breaking out of a cocoon and emerging as a butterfly;” and the poet Tagore: “Death is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

Ok, so there is life after death. But what happens to us after we die? You make think this is a strange topic to speak about on a Shabbos when we celebrate a forthcoming marriage. But if you knew how Debbie and Tony met each other, you may not think it was so strange. They met in their EVP group. EVP or Electronic Voice Phenomenon is the study of communication by spirits through tape recorders and other electronic devices. There have been some amazing findings that are hard to explain. I will not speak today about the messages our dearly departed may leave us. I’ll leave that for another time. But for today I want to address the question of what happens to us after we die?

Today’s Torah portion opens with the death and burial of mother Sarah in the Cave of Machpeyla. The Talmud tells us that this was the burial place of the 1^st human beings—Adam and Eve. Kabbalah maintains that each of our souls, after we die, must visit this cave as a passageway into the next world. It describes it much like the long dark tunnel those who have had near death experiences say they went through towards the light. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

At the end of the Torah portion we have the death of Abraham described as follows (Gen. 25:8): Vayigva vayamat Avraham b’seyva tova zakeyn v’saveya, va-yeyaseyf el amav, “And Abraham expired and died at a good old age, mature and content, and he was gathered to his people.” It sounds like a beautiful way to die—if dying can at all be called beautiful—“a good old age, mature and content.” He too was buried in the Cave of Machpeyla and so he too went from there through the portal, the passageway to the other side. How do I know? The verse tells me: va-yeyaseyf el amav, “and he was gathered to his people.”

What does this phrase which the Torah also uses to describe the deaths of our other patriarchs, Isaac and Jacob, mean? That’s what I asked myself when I reviewed it the other day. And suddenly it came to me. Today—because of the marvels of medical technology—we have thousands of examples of people who were clinically dead with no breathing or heart beat or brain waves and were revived and brought back to life.    

If a person has stopped breathing, if there are no brain waves, no function of mind, if there is no working heart, then based upon what we know about how a human being can think, feel, respond or be aware, there is no possibility of on‑going activity. If there is no neshama, if there is no soul, then any awareness should end the moment the body ceases to function. But we have thousands and thousands of cases now when people have been revived and can tell the story of what happened to them between the time they were clinically dead and when they were revived. The stories are virtually the same in all cultures and it was spoken about by Kabbalah thousands of years ago.

Dr. Raymond Moody Jr., who has done the pioneering work in this field, in his classic work, Life After Life, summarizes the experience (p. 21) as follows:

            A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress, he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of emotional upheaval.

            After a while, he collects himself and becomes more accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a “body,” but one of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body he has left behind. Soon other things begin to happen. Others come to meet and to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already died, and a loving, warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before—a being of light—appears before him. This being asks him a question, nonverbally, to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing him a panoramic, instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. At some point he finds himself approaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representing the limit between earthly life and the next life. Yet, he finds that he must go back to the earth, that the time for his death has not yet come. At this point he resists, for by now he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love, and peace. Despite his attitude, though, he somehow reunites with his physical body and lives.                                                

Let’s go back to what happens right after coming out of that long dark tunnel: “Others come to meet and to help him.” Who are they? “The spirits of relatives and friends who have already died.” How does our verse in the Torah put it? Vayeyaseyf el amav, “He was gathered to his people!” And that must be what Gd meant when he promised Abraham (Gen. 15:15) many years earlier that when he dies he will: “go to your fathers in peace.” This is not some esoteric expression but an actual promise that Abraham, after he dies, will again see his father and grandfather, etc.

So again, what happens to us when after we die? The 1^st stage is what Moody described—when the neshama, the soul, is in the room above the body. It could be in a hospital room or at the scene of an accident, or wherever. How long does it stay above the body? As long as the body has not returned to its source—to mother earth from which human beings were created—the neshama does not return to its source, to Gd, and stays in close proximity.

This has many implications in Jewish law and practice: from simple respect, to not being allowed to eat, to—amazingly enough—not being allowed to learn Torah or fulfill certain mitzvot in the presence of the deceased. The Talmud refers to this principle as lo-eg larash, or “mocking the poor.” It means that in the presence of a poor person who can’t afford a delicious cake or piece of meat, etc., we are not allowed to munch away and give the message: “I can do it, but you can’t.” So in the presence of the soul which sees and can no longer do these things, we don’t taunt the soul.

There are things that a rabbi, or any of us must be very sensitive to in the presence of the deceased. The eulogy must be presented in a manner that recognizes that the deceased, being in close proximity, is listening. We should all be careful of what we say and do in the presence of the deceased. Talk to any member of the Chevra Kaddisha who prepare the body for burial, and they will tell you how they can actually feel the presence of the deceased.

The 2^nd stage occurs when the body is placed into the ground—mother earth. As the Torah teaches: B’zeyat apecha tochal lechem, ad shuvcha el ha-adama; ki mimenu lukachta; ki afar ata v’el afar tashuv, “By the sweat of thy brow you shall thou eat bread, till you return unto the ground; for out of it you were taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Gen. 3:19)

In much of the modern world we try to delay the decomposition of the body by getting a metal container, by sealing the body in a mausoleum, by embalming so that the body does not have an opportunity to decompose. In the Jewish view of reality, this is the very worst situation, because the soul is not allowed to, and cannot find its rest and move away until the body decomposes. Decomposition of the body is not only beneficial, it is for the soul a requirement, a necessity. It should be obvious, therefore, why cremation is so abhorrent to Judaism.

The 3^rd stage is when we come out of that long dark tunnel to the light. Moody took us as far as the “panoramic, instantaneous playback of the major events of...life.” What follows?

Do Jews believe in reward and punishment in the afterlife? Yes, if you define your terms properly. We do not believe in the burning fires of hell. The moment you do that, you are projecting a physical image and there is no physicality in the afterlife. In contrast, the Mohammedan concept of heaven is equally impossible with every righteous man eating fatted lambs on quaffed carpets and having at least 72 virgins or more depending on how good he was. They never say what happens to the righteous women!

With regard to punishment, Judaism believes that there is a maximum time for punishment of how long? Unlike Christians who believe in the Dantesque version of hell with the sign on the door, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here,” that there will be an eternal burning and damnation, etc. … we Jews believe that this soul which leaves the body and is somewhat still earthbound and trying to ascend, goes through a period of purification which lasts for the very worst sinner one year. For those who are not the worst sinners, the period of purification is less. [Note: For those who are truly evil and have done great evil like Hitler, according to Maimonides, their souls will be cut off after they die and cease to exist.]

Notice that I said purification and not punishment. It’s like the old fashioned way of cleaning clothes. You pound them in water in order to clean off the schmutz, the dirt. We have stained our souls by doing things that we should not have done. How is this cleansing accomplished? Part of the answer is by judging. Who judges you? When you see the playback of the major events of your life, you feel either amazing pride or great shame. You can’t hide anything you have done in the world of the souls, and the genuine pain of that shame is cleansing.

Remember, this period of purification is not really a punishment, but a way of getting rid of those stains. But after the cleansing—which takes less than a year for us—we find our rightful place with Gd.

What is our rightful place with Gd like? I can’t say because it’s probably different for every soul. But I can quote the Talmud (Avot 4:22) that teaches: “Better is one hour of spiritual bliss in the World to Come than all the happiness that you may of had in your life in this world.”

As children of Abraham, I bless everyone of you here today that when your time comes—may it not be for a very long time—that you, like Father Abraham, die at a good old age, mature and content, and be gathered to your people. Amen!

                Rabbi Mark Hillel Kunis

                10/30/10