Finding Light in Life's Final Chapter

by Roberta Ness

A Jewish Perspective

Welcome back to the Diner on this lovely Saturday morning. The sun is shining, daffodils are blooming and for Jews, this is the day of rest. Each week, Jews welcome the sabbath on Friday nights with a blessing (kiddush) over wine. I’m taking a little poetic license to instead bless our coffee. "Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, borei p'ri hagafen." And with that, let us talk today, just as I did years ago with my grandmother, about a Jewish conception of death. In Judaism, the oft-ebullient optimism of Christianity is replaced by quiet, struggling endurance. Christian believers find meaning in the hope of an ecstatic and enduring future. Jewish survivors hunger for meaning in the face of loss and suffering. As we will see, Jewish beliefs focus little on an afterlife and much more on living in the here and now, survivors, and community.

Transience as treasured teacher

Absence and loss are a constant presence in Jewish life. Every generation faced pogroms, expulsions, and exterminations. As a Jew, you may well have grandparents or parents who barely escaped the Holocaust while 6 million extended family members died. Somehow faith perservers despite the question: how did God - merciful and almighty – remain silent while, generation after generation, his chosen children have been slaughtered?

Perhaps the only way to resolve this dilemma is to imagine that death sheds light on life…