See What Happens There

Death Is a Teacher for How to Live Our Best Lives

Sibling rivalry really is as old as the hills, they say.  So it shouldn’t surprise us that the Bible has a lot to say about it.  In the beginning of Genesis, there is the story of Cain and Abel, with Cain’s jealousy for Divine favor of Abel’s gift to God resulting in Cain murdering his brother.  There is rivalry between Ishmael and Isaac, Abraham’s two sons; Jacob and Esau wrestle in the womb, with God prophesying that the “older shall serve the younger;” and among Jacob’s twelve sons, the favored dream interpreter Joseph is set upon by his jealous brothers and sold into slavery in Egypt.  Joseph will eventually learn to channel his special powers of insight and rise to great power in Egypt, saving the nation and the greater region from famine.  And with that power, he is able to care for his family, protect them, and achieve peace and reconciliation among them.  But of course, as the Book of Exodus begins, a new pharaoh would arise who “knew not Joseph” and the Jews lose favor and the entire nation is enslaved for 400 years.  Generations would pass in toil and servitude until Moses would arise and serve as God’s agent to liberate his people.  

But one subtle but powerful lesson from the story comes from the Sages, who asked, “Why were the Jews enslaved in Egypt for 400 years?  Because of sibling rivalry.”  That gnawing rabbinic cudgel! Each of us is totally responsible for our own actions. And when we least expect it, the accumulation of our actions can have dire consequences for history.  Had the brothers only gotten along in the first place, they would never have found themselves at the mercy of Pharaoh.  

Once I sat with a dying man whose sons had a deep hatred for one another and couldn't get along well enough to solve the decisive question of how to bury their father.  Key decisions which we all face upon the imminent death of a loved one and are commanded of Jews to observe (like burial rites and kaddish prayers, sitting shiva with those paying condolence visits, and what food to serve) were used like internecine weapons of mass destruction, like primordial ancient objects, the hurled rocks of Cain versus Abel, each contending for the higher value of the sacred duty to “honor one’s father.”  One brother insisted on a Jewish burial and a week of sitting shiva.  The other brother said the family was never so observant to begin with and “why not just cremate Dad and move on.”  The mother didn’t have a strong opinion about what to do with her husband’s body either way but she sure didn’t want a full house for shiva.  They were all at odds.

Not a good situation, I'm sure you'll agree.

I was called in by the sons to referee.  And over the course of a few visits that took place during the final two weeks of their father’s life – two weeks in which he had all but stopped eating, drinking or talking – we sat together and talked in front of him.  This dignified man, silent in the face of his sons’ strife, observed from his recliner chair with watchful eyes as each pleaded his case for what to do.

But a beautiful thing happened as a result of talking.  Everyone listened.  Harsh words were exchanged along with loving words.  Difficult, even hurtful things were said and they were then followed by words of compromise and comfort.  A kind of space was created, amidst the rocky terrain of verbal and emotional cultivation, that equalized what each brother had to offer, making both gifts acceptable to the Greater Cause.

The goal in talking was to root out the impediment of sibling rivalry in the face of profound and uneasy but necessary choices that we all must make to help those we love close out our lives, say goodbye, make arrangements, and die.  Some experience the process of dying with violence in their hearts, tearing open continental rifts in the territory of family, and destroying, sadly, tragically, irrevocably, the very bonds that generate and regenerate who and what we are.  The goal was to prevent that from happening.

The rabbis warn us about our words and the way we use language, not just in the mundane spheres of the day-to-day but also in the realm of sacred conversations about life and death.   Peaceful language should be used in order to alleviate unnecessary suffering, the risk of evil or violence, and should be singularly focused at such times on prioritized matters related to the dying and the dead.  Angry words, the sages teach, can be a pollutant to the environment around us.

"None shall defile himself," says the Magid of Mezerich of the priestly caste in the Bible who were charged with offering sacrifices to God. This means that when the priests stand before their people, "they must be very careful not to defile their souls through haughtiness or personal concerns."  Their actions can cause jealousy or rivalry among the people. Rabbis, ministers, therapists, and lawyers alI see this over and over with families in the midst of difficult negotiations:  a peace-making occurs when people sublimate their personal desires for the greater good of the family unit in dealing with a reality which reflects people’s personal will as well as the greater body of the family.  Sublimation of rivalrous views by talking, by speaking, allows for the space of compromise and shared offering to be sanctified.

Similarly, the Hozeh of Lublin writes that in speaking words of peace specifically before the dying and the dead, peace becomes the altar upon which all subsequent sacrifices are made.

So as the family talked and listened to one another, the most challenging conflicts were averted and sublimated as certain primal urges ought to be.  They listened.  They made decisions.  They made peace.  

To celebrate it was decided that we all should share a drink.  It was 5:30 pm, the sun was setting, and moving toward peace was a moment worthy of celebration.  The brothers and I had a bourbon but the dying man had pinot grigio ice chips, small, infinitesimal molecular constructs of pleasure.  There was a break from his headache; a smile on his face; a plan for his end coming in to focus.  We asked, "How's the pinot grigio?"

And with a smile and raised brow he whispered, "Delicious."  For the first time in two weeks he spoke!  And then he said, indicating he had been listening the entire time our negotiations went on, “And whatever you do after the cemetery, I want you to cover the mirrors!”

It was an astonishment.  Through it all, this patriarch had told his sons that whatever the decision was, there was one Jewish ritual that was critical to his sense of Jewish self.  

There are many reasons the tradition gives for why Jews cover mirrors in a house of mourning.  Generally it has to do with removing expressions of vanity in the face of grief.  Mourning law forbids the usual primping that we do before mirrors; it forbids sex during the week of shiva; and covering mirrors is an inherently humbling gesture, a sublimation of our own egos in a moment of facing the radical truth of our mortality.  In the creation story in Genesis, the Torah teaches that God made the human in the Divine Image.  In mourning, that Divine Image is somewhat diminished in us and some say that the covered mirror is meant to prevent us from seeing this rupture in the relationship with the Divine.  Death and grief are humbling, universal experiences.  They teach us how to face life’s relationship with kindness, decency, and peace.  “Death is good,” said Rabbi Meir, a first century sage, because it reminds of our duty to serve God and others with awe and humility.  There was no death in the Garden of Eden.  But we mortals live in an imperfect world.  We strive for peace by making space for each other to live in peace.

It’s been years since I thought of this father’s demand to cover the mirrors.  Was he telling his sons to check their egos?  To stop their needless, ego-driven bickering, to veil their conceit, and do what one is commanded to do?  Or was he simply remembering, while standing at the horizon of his own life, that in his parents’ house or grandparents’ house they covered the mirrors and so it should be done in his house, too?  

Ever the parent, even in his most diminished state, he left for his sons a kind of Jewish ethical will for them to observe.

Joseph, the ego-driven boy who had been sold off into slavery at the beginning of his life, brings his father Jacob down to Egypt toward the end.  Having missed his father’s lessons for years, he is brought back into his presence at the end of Jacob’s life to listen to Jacob’s last wish.

‘And when the time approached for Israel/Jacob to die, he summoned his son Joseph and said to him, ‘Do me this favor, place your hand under my thigh as a pledge of your steadfast loyalty: please do not bury me in Egypt. 

When I lie down with my ancestors, take me up from Egypt and bury me in their burial-place.’ He replied, ‘I will do as you have spoken.’

And he said, ‘Swear to me.’ And he swore to him. Then Israel bowed at the head of the bed.” (Genesis 47:29-31)

The promise exacted by the parent to the child was this:  Where I am buried matters.  It has to be in the family plots.  Not down here where it’s  convenient for you but where I wish to be buried.  The family story matters.

The Bible doesn’t record Joseph’s reaction beyond his assent.  However, when Joseph himself is preparing to die at the very end of Genesis, he tells his brothers to do with himself exactly what his father had taught him to do.

“At length, Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die. God will surely take notice of you and bring you up from this land to the land promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.  So Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, ‘When God has taken notice of you, you shall carry up my bones from here.’” (Genesis 50:24-25)

Anticipating the enslavement of the Jews that would soon occur and reiterating the promise that God made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that though the slavery would be brutal and long, the Jewish people would one day go free, Joseph exacts a promise to be buried at home.  Near his kin.  After having risen to the greatest heights of economic success and living his best life in an Egyptian palace, Joseph has learned to humble himself to the greater narrative animating his life.

“Death is good,” said Rabbi Meir.  

It always has something to teach us, not so much about what may or may not be in the afterlife, in the World to Come, but it can teach us how to live our best lives here and now.

The Kotzker Rebbe once said, “People are accustomed to look at the heavens and to wonder what happens there. It would be better if they would look within themselves to see what happens there.”