MY BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY

MY BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

PESACH – 8TH DAY – YIZKOR - 2006

 

What happens to people when they die?

Is death final, or is there something afterwards?

What are we doing here, saying Yizkor ?

I would try to frame some answers to these questions.  Of necessity they are personal, while based on our faith.  I share these stirrings of my heart with you with the hope that they will strike upon sympathetic chords, that it will make Yizkor and the passage of life a bit more meaningful.

There are two sources in our tradition to contemplate:  the verse in Job (14:14): "im yamut gever, hayichyeh". "If a person dies, will he or she live again?"  and the second blessing of the Amidah, "Baruch ata Adonay, mechayeh hamaytim", "Blessed Are You, O Lord, who restores the dead to life."  Job's words may be read as a question or a statement, but the second is a religious declaration.  We repeat these words in every Shemoneh Esrai, weekday, Shabbat and Festival.  While the definition of how and when is beyond specification, open to speculation, the recitation is a declaration of faith that there is something, there is a time, there is an existence for the person, after their physical death.

I must immediately declare that none of this is provable, certifiable, producible-on-demand.  A belief in the "hereafter" is an "article of faith" a "belief" that lies more in the heart than in the head.  But even the scientist must stop and ponder:  what happens to the life source of a person?  The body we know, but what about the soul?

In the first instance my attention is drawn to those who have had experiences of dying and "returned", so to speak.  They write of experiencing sensations of warmth and light, of peace and tranquility.  Every time I have read these reports I felt a sense of uplift and gratification for our rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash.  They, too, speculated on this, and their thoughts, based on prophetic sources, all harmonize with these modern writings.

There is a place outside, beyond the dimension of time and space, a metaphysical domain where the neshamas of our deceased exist.  The question that children sometimes ask, "doesn't heaven ever get crowded?"  is a non-sequitor.  It is never crowded, for neshamas don't take up space.

The rabbis posited a "kingdom" of love, of joy, or peace, of warmth, where, metaphorically, the neshamas "bask in God's presence," "tachat kanfay haShechinah", "under the wings of the Shechinah."  It is an existence without war, without hurt, without pain.  The soul, the life force of a person exists there forever, in peace and harmony, without turmoil or torment.

I personally embraced these beliefs, improvable as they are, for they comfort me and affirm that the essence of a person does not perish.  As the Psalmist says, "God will not abandon us to the grave". There is an essence that is eternal. In the kingdom of neshamas, we will meet again.

Immortality takes on another appearance.  Our relatives and friends whom we remember planted in us certain sparks.  Thomas Campbell wrote in a poem entitled "Hallowed Ground", "To live in hearts left behind, is not to die."  Every life teaches lessons, produces memories.  We, the living may refer to them from time to time.

Sometimes they urge us on to accomplish certain goals.

Sometimes they inspire us to do certain deeds.

Sometimes they comfort us in new hours of need.

The fact that we are here to recite Yizkor, the very fact that you and I remember people who are no longer alive; this is a form of immortality. When we speak and refer to our deceased, and indicate their influence on our behavior, that we are more ethical, more religious, more dedicated, more devoted, because of what they said or did, is to give them the gift of immortality.  They live on in us. They live on in our deeds. They live on in our lives.

I also feel a sense of immortality as a Jew, when I look over the panorama of our history.  Pesach is a holiday of identification and personalization.  We, three thousand years after the Exodus, weave ourselves together with that generation and every generation as we sat at Seder.

We stood with our people in Egyptian bondage.

We walked with our people through the miracle of the Sea.

We stood at Mt. Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments.

We are part of an immortal people, a people that will never die, come what may.  When we attach ourselves to the Jewish people, when we interconnect our conscience and our consciousness to Am Yisrael, we, too, become immortal.  Our lives are a chain of meaning in the rainbow of history.  At Yizkor we remember our "place", our "role". We remind ourselves of the potential or our own immortality.

As we said in the Haggadah, "Dayaynu", it's enough.  These three reasons are enough cause to say yizkor: to reaffirm a belief in the eternity of our souls, to learn from our loved ones, and to reattach ourselves to the Jewish people.  These musings are sometimes difficult, for they reach down into and touch upon the essence of belief, as I look forward and not backwards.  But after it's all done, I refer to two closing quotations to sum it all up.  The first is the epitaph of Benjamin Franklin:

The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer (like the cover of an old book, its content torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding), lies here, food for worms: but the work shall not be lost, for it will appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author.

The second is more familiar to all of you:

            Beyado afkid ruchi, Adonay li, lo erah;

            Into God's hands we place our spirit, our neshamas, our essence,

            In doing so, the Lord will be with us

           

We have no fear.  Amen.