At the Phoenix House in New York, the celebrated drug rehabilitation center in New York City, newcomers arrive and gather for their first session. They sit around in their chosen seats and gab. Then, someone will say something like, “It isn’t your mother or society or even the pushers who put the needle in your arm. You did.” Only then does the therapeutic process begin. US News and World Report
Most of what we have leaned is due to pain. We suffer and grow. Who among us cannot attribute innumerable physical and psychic scars to moments of shame, despair, and loss? No one seeks pain but we all grow from it.
They say that nothing is assured except “death and taxes.”
Regarding the first, we are all survivors. As we age the scythe of the Angel of Death comes closer and closer and we feel more vulnerable to its sharp edge. Judaism has many prescriptions for addressing death. You know what they are: immediate burial, shoveling earth into the grave, sitting shiva, observing the eleven months of mourning, yahrzeit… I find most folks nowadays want to remove themselves from the process. They want to get it over with quickly and “move on.”
Life waits for no one and we have to run if we expect to keep up. It is shame.
I wish society would turn back to when time was not a commodity but a luxuriant gift. With a determination to sit, tells stories of the dead, say kaddish, and openly weep we give ourselves the gift of healing. We take responsibility for the true loss we have experienced. We own it, understand it, and learn from it. And such time is a luxury.
What do we learn from such attention to the time of shiva and going to say kaddish on yahrzeits? One lesson is that we are far less than we think we are. In the end we are dispensable. We may attempt to stave off the claws of the death but it will only be a temporary stay. Then what will happen to our clients? People who depend on us? They will “move on” and forget about us. This is one of the lessons of being quiet and waiting for the lesson.
An idea from our past: the kaddish is the prayer that asks God to acquit the dead. It is an altruistic prayer, a gift to the souls who have passed. That is noble. It is also an act of memory and who does not want to remembered after their life is over?
Another item learned from saying kaddish is the broad path that is left by death. When we stand to say kaddish in a community we are rarely alone. Looking around we see others who have suffered. We knowingly look at them and they at us as we share a bond, a sacred unspoken bond. We support one another. That is why kaddish happens only in a minyan, in a community. It is never to be said alone.
Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “God is concern, not only power. God is He to whom we are accountable. In the wake of religious insight, we retain an awareness that the transcendent God is He to Whom our conscience is open.” In other words, God wants us to be accountable. He does not desire us to pass by the many roads of life without looking both ways. We are supposed to laugh, cry, talk, be silent at all the appropriate times.
And regarding taxes (see third paragraph), a law student was finishing a course in federal income tax. As he was walking in to take the final he spotted a penny, heads up, on the ground. He picked it up and said to the professor, “It must mean good luck for the exam.”
“Not necessarily,” he replied. “But it does mean you have taxable income.”
Be accountable. Be responsible. It is God’s gift to you and the best gift you can give yourself.
