In the bestselling novel, Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, a character named Desdemona, begins to plan for her own death. The narrator describes her preparations: From her bed she directed my mother to clean out the closets … you can give (them) to Goodwill. My nice dresses, too. Now I only need something (to be buried in)…’ But her funeral preparations didn’t end there. Not only did Desdemona pick out her burial plot. She also picked out her mortician. . . He carried his sample cases of caskets, crematory urns, and flower arrangements … and sat by Desdemona’s bed while she looked the photographs over with the excitement of someone browsing travel brochures. . .”
Yom Kippur has often been described as “a dress rehearsal for our death”. Many of our Yom Kippur rituals are connected to this idea. We wear white, as though we were clothing ourselves in the white shrouds that Jews are traditionally buried in, and we refrain from life-affirming activities such as eating, drinking and procreating.
Rabbi Shefa gold explains that, “we fast from food, drink, sex, washing, and wearing leather as a way to detach ourselves from the physical body and to experience the (vulnerabilities) of our existence . . . For the whole day of Yom Kippur, we act as if it is our last day, our only day to face the Truth, forgive ourselves and each other, remember who we are and why we were born.” Rabbi Alan Lew, author of “This is Real and You Are Totally Unprepared,” describes Yom Kippur as the day on which we all “get to read our obituaries.” It “reminds us that we are all dying.”
It may surprise us that given Judaism’s emphasis on the importance of life, we would spend our most sacred day focusing on our own deaths. Rabbi Ed Feinstein anticipates our shock or confusion about this. “Yom Kippur is an unusual holiday,” he writes. “We are such a passionately life-affirming culture. We cherish and sanctify life. Any ritual law of the tradition may be suspended to save or protect a human life. We say “L’Chaim — To Life!” over every glass of wine. But on Yom Kippur, we confront death. We rehearse death.” Why? Because considering our own death is almost as important as considering our lives. We have birth plans, education plans, career plans, retirement plans… we have life plans, but how many of us have a death plan?
Rabbi Gold teaches about Sogyal Rinpoche, the founder of over 100 Buddhist centres. When Sogyal came to the West from Tibet, “he was shocked to find … modern Western society had no real understanding of death or a way to deal with it. “I learned that people today are taught to deny death,” he wrote, “and taught that it means nothing but annihilation and loss. . . Others look on death with a naïve thoughtless cheerfulness, thinking that it is nothing to worry about: ‘It’s not a big deal, it’s natural, I’ll be fine.’ That’s a nice theory until one is dying.”
And so perhaps Yom Kippur’s rituals nudge at us to contemplate our own deaths precisely to avoid these Western cultural pitfalls – so that we will not be able to deny the fact of our death, and so that we won’t make light of it. Yom Kippur is reminding us that death is inevitable, but that it does not have to take us by surprise.
I read recently that, “if on Yom Kippur we rehearse our own death, then on Tishah B’Av (which we observed last month), we begin the annual process of preparing for death.” The seven-week period from Tishah B’Av to Rosh HaShanah provides us with an opportunity to prepare our souls for the observances and spiritual work of the High Holidays. It is filled with related texts and rituals. We read weekly Haftarah texts that remind us of God’s judgement and also of God’s forgiveness, we blow the Shofar and recite Psalm 27 throughout Elul. These spiritual exercises are reminders of what is coming. We can’t pretend to forget or deny that the holidays are upon us – Jewish tradition makes it difficult for us to be caught by surprise.
So too, does Judaism encourage us not to ignore our own encroaching death. “As much as it celebrates life,” Rabbi Am Eilberg teaches, “Jewish tradition does not shy away from the reality of death. . . (It) is rich with texts that cultivate our awareness of mortality as a part of the divine plan for humankind. Death is as predictable a part of living as being born and growing … We can find this teaching in our High Holiday liturgy, when we chant: “Adam yesodo k’afar … All of humanity is founded on dust—of dust we are made, and to dust we shall return … Like grass we wither, like flowers we fade, like shadows we pass, like clouds, we become empty.”
This awareness of mortality that Rabbi Eilberg describes, is also embodied in our Jewish burial and mourning customs. One of our most important mitzvot is l’vayat ha-met – accompanying the dead for burial. Through the custom of shmira, we ensure that our loved ones are not left alone between the time of their death and the time of their burial; and through a ritual called tahara, where the body is washed gently and lovingly, while verses from Psalms are recited, we take extreme care to prepare our loved one’s remains in a way that honours the physical vessel that carried them throughout their life. Rabbi Toba Spitzer writes that through these rituals, “Judaism prizes life while reminding us that there is holiness in death as well.”
An interesting thing happened this year. As part of a professional development course I was taking with other Rabbis learning about how to support our communities in thinking about death and dying, I conducted a series of empathy-interviews with members of Am Shalom, who volunteered to speak with me about matters relating to end-of-life. The participants were asked the following questions: In thinking about end-of-life, what are your needs and priorities? What do you need in order to address these priorities? How can our congregation support you in meeting these needs?
The results were somewhat expected, and somewhat unexpected. While all of the participants had spent time thinking and speaking with their loved-ones about the need for planning ahead for end-of-life, only some of them had already taken specific steps. Others felt a bit stuck – not knowing exactly what types of planning were needed, or how or where to begin.
This was not surprising to me. As a Rabbi, I have encountered families who have been well-prepared for the death of a loved one, but unfortunately, far more often, I encounter families who are not prepared. Sometimes they are not sure about their loved ones final wishes. Other times there is a disagreement in the family about whether or not to uphold their loved-one’s wishes. I have seen families struggling to make medical, legal, financial or religious decisions, all in an already deeply painful time. Sadly, it is much more common to discover how many decisions have to be made after a death, then it is to encounter individuals and families who have made them beforehand.
We even see this in our Torah narratives. In Genesis we read about Abraham going to purchase a burial site for his wife Sarah.
He does not do this until after Sarah’s death. Although it is likely that Abraham is following the expected customs of the time, we never have the opportunity to learn what Sarah’s final wishes might have been. If she and her husband spoke about it, the Torah didn’t record it.
But a few generations later, their grandson Jacob gives his son Joseph specific instructions about his own burial. Jacob does not want to be buried in Egypt, so he does not leave anything to chance. Instead of assuming that his sons will know what to do after he is gone, he tells them explicitly to take his bones back to Canaan and bury him there. And that is what happens. His sons were able to honour his final wishes because he had made sure to convey to them what was most important to him.
I have heard some people explain that they don’t want to discuss their own death, or the impending death of a loved-one, because of the Jewish teaching “not to hasten death”. For some, the act of making end-of-life plans may be considered “hastening death”, but this is a misunderstanding of Jewish tradition.
Talking about death does not invite it. In fact, Judaism teaches us that it is a mitzvah to plan ahead. It is a mitzvah because it alleviates our loved-ones from the guess-work and painful decisions that can come from not knowing what we would have wanted.
Planning ahead helps us to designate and have conversations with those whom we wish to handle our health and financial matters should we become ill or unable to make our own decisions. Planning ahead also allows us to study Jewish values and traditions, engage in difficult but important conversations, and communicate our feelings and preferences. By planning ahead, those who love us and live on after us can be guided by our wishes and our values when the inevitable time arrives.
Planning ahead for the end-of-life, rather than being counter to Jewish values, is actually deeply rooted values such as zikaron – memory, chesed – acts of loving-kindness, and the sacred connections mi dor v’dor – from one generation to the next.
Judaism places great value on memory, which is how we share our most important stories, lessons and traditions. By planning ahead, we can affect the ways in which we are remembered, and help others to tell our story.
Judaism places great value on how we treat one another. Planning ahead is a generous act of loving-kindness, because it alleviates stress by removing uncertainty, and providing clarity and comfort for the people that we care about the most.
Judaism places great value on what we pass from one generation to the next. The connections between the generations that precede us and follow us are echoed across Jewish tradition and culture. Planning ahead allows us to pass on our values and legacy to the next generation.
Planning in advance, in Hebrew we call it hachanah, gives our loved ones the space to focus on grief, memory and connection, rather than logistical decisions made under pressure.
In my empathy-interviews – most of the participants understood the value of end-of-life planning, but weren’t sure where to begin. This is partly because there are different categories of planning, overseen by different authorities and requiring different types of documentation. There are medical decisions to be made, such as who will make decisions for us if we no longer can make them for ourselves, and what we want those decisions to be. Do we want heroic measures to be taken; do we want to donate our organs; at what point, if any, do we want life-support to be withdrawn? Then there are the legal and financial decisions – who holds power of attorney (and what does that even mean?); who is responsible for ensuring our wishes are carried out; for wrapping up our financial affairs? Who has access to our financial information and our internet passwords? Who will care for our children? For our pets? What charities or causes would we want a portion of what we leave behind to go toward – or which ones would we want our loved ones to support in our memory? Who will inherit our property and our cherished items?
And of course, there are the details that no one ever wants to have to take care of for another, but which at some point, almost all of us will have to attend to. Who will arrange our funeral or memorial? Our burial or cremation? Who will speak about our lives? Who will pay the bill? Who will decide what it will say on our headstone? Who will clean out our closets, and drawers? Who will find our secret stashes and who will clean up whatever messes we have left behind? The amount of things we don’t think of when we are contemplating our own deaths can be staggering. And the more of these questions we can answer before we die, the bigger the mitzvah we do for those we leave behind.
Rabbi Dara Frimmer writes, that “on Yom Kippur, we confront our death so that we can choose a life in greater alignment with our values and our purpose.” We also confront death so that we can ensure that our own death – how we approach it and what happens after it, also come into alignment with our values and our purpose.
Like me, Rabbi Frimmer has had the honour of sitting with many families as they tell stories about loved ones who have died. “In the 10 years I’ve been officiating (at) funerals,” she told her congregation, “only once did a family walk in with a document from their loved one that said, “Here’s what I hoped to teach you” or “Here’s what I want you to remember…” Most people do not write down their most precious teachings.” And so for Yom Kippur, Rabbi Frimmer sent her congregants home with an assignment, one which we may also want to consider doing in the coming weeks: The Assignment: Get your paperwork in order. And don’t delay. “Despite Yom Kippur’s best attempts to send us into an existential crisis as we rehearse our death(s),” Rabbi Frimmer writes, “we may still not feel a sense of urgency. We can always say, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’”
There are lots of good excuses to delay this assignment. We don’t always know what documents we need, how to structure them, how to ensure they are legally binding. We will have find a lawyer, or rabbi, or someone else with experience in these matters to help walk us through it. (And please know, I am available to sit with you and help you get started). Taking on this assignment means thinking about things we don’t want to think about; Setting aside time we’d rather be spending on less morbid activities. It means sitting in discomfort.
And yet – it’s a mitzvah. And truly, I believe it is more than that – not just something that is nice to do, or that is good to do – but it is a mitzvah in the more traditional sense – a sacred obligation. A necessary requirement. Avoiding this responsibility might not only cause us discomfort or dismay at the end of our lives, but it will likely cause undue distress to our loved ones. We can’t save them from losing us, but we can ease their burden when the time comes – our final gift to them.
And we don’t have to do it alone. The biggest surprise of my empathy interviews, as discovering that while the participants all saw their Jewish community as a place where they could rely on support during an illness, while a loved one is dying, or after a death has occurred, none of them saw the synagogue as a place of resource or support in thinking through end-of-life planning. We show up in crisis. We show up to mourn together. But what if we showed up to try to do this work together; To learn about it together; To encourage one another not to avoid it?
Next month, Am Shalom will be hosting a program about MAiD – Medical Assistance in Death. I hope this will be only the first program for our community that provides information, resources, and support in thinking through matters relating to end-of-life. Our Jewish community should not only be a place where we think about how we want to live, but a place where we can be held and supported as we think through how we want to die.
Israeli writer Dvora Waysman penned the following message to her children: I am at an age where I should write a will, but the disposition of my material possessions would take just a few lines. They do not amount to much … I have different things to leave you. I hope you will understand that they are more valuable than money in the bank, stocks and bonds, and plots of land, for no one can ever take them away from you. I am leaving you the fragrance of a Jerusalem morning… I am leaving you an extended family – the whole house of Israel. They are your people. They will celebrate with you in joy and grieve with you in sorrow… I am leaving you the faith of your forefathers… I am leaving you pride… I am leaving you memories…
The last part of your assignment is the most important: Once you’ve done some thinking and planning, make sure to share your hopes and wishes with a loved one. Make sure someone knows what documents you’ve prepared, and knows where to find them. If you think your loved-ones might be resistant to your wishes, reach out to a rabbi or therapist who can help facilitate a conversation so that you have the opportunity to hear one another without spiraling into arguments, and so you don’t give up on passing along the important information you want and need your loved ones to know.
Many have taught that Yom Kippur asks us to contemplate our own deaths so that we will be motivated to reevaluate our lives, and try to live as our best selves, knowing each day or year might be our last. And yet, while we must surely strive to live a good life, we can also make every effort to die a good death – one that can be supported with intention, with compassion, and with as much softening of suffering and regret as possible.
May each of us love ourselves and love our friends and family enough to take on this uncomfortable and sacred work. And may it be many long and good years before its results are required.
Kein Yehi Ratzon. Be It God’s Will.