Tag Archives: questions after death

Fifth day of Elul

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In the Talmud there is a discussion about what happens after we die. We go to Sheol – a Hebrew word deriving from the verb “to question” – and there we are interrogated. We will be asked four questions about the life we have lived. They are good questions and I want us to ask – and even to try to answer them for ourselves. They are questions that can stay with us as we prepare for the Yamim Noraim – and as we move into the coming years.
The first question is this
“Kav’ata Itim L’Torah? Did you set aside time for Torah?”
Did you set aside time for torah? Not, you’ll notice, ‘did you study Torah’. Nor ‘did you follow all the halachic requirements predicated on torah text?” But did you set aside time for Torah – the question isn’t academic.
Torah you see isn’t simply a book, it isn’t a text that we can learn or a narrative we teach our children. Torah has many more dimensions than that. It is a process, it is a history, it is the ongoing dialogue across generations between Jews and Jews, and Jews and God. So when we get ourselves involved in Torah, when we join the conversation and add the experiences and reflections of our lives to the living narrative of Torah, that is when we fit ourselves into our people and truly enter the Covenant. To set aside time for Torah is to be willing to identify in, to be prepared to challenge our ancestral understanding of God, to be ready to encounter God in modernity with open heart. To set aside time for Torah is to say “I will engage with life as a Jew – and in doing so I hope to enrich Judaism and deepen life. And I will add my link to the chain of tradition that remembers the past, supports the present and reaches out to a future I will not know”.

The next question will be posted tomorrow

23rd Elul – the question we will be asked in heaven – why were you not you?

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Martin Buber tells the story of the great Hasidic Rabbi Zusya (Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol). On his deathbed he began to cry uncontrollably and his students and disciples tried hard to comfort him. They asked him, “Rabbi, why do you weep? You are almost as wise as Moses, you are almost as hospitable as Abraham, and surely heaven will judge you favourably.”

Zusya answered them: “It is true. When I get to heaven, I won’t worry so much if God asks me, ‘Zusya, why were you not more like Abraham?’ or ‘Zusya, why were you not more like Moses?’  I know I would be able to answer these questions.  After all, I was not given the righteousness of Abraham or the faith of Moses but I tried to be both hospitable and thoughtful.  But what will I say when God asks me, ‘Zusya, why were you not more like Zusya?’

As a teenager I had a poster of a Peanuts cartoon which had Linus complain “there is no heavier burden than a great potential” Like all those cartoons, there was great wisdom in those funny sideways comments. But the reality is each of us has great potential, and during this time of the year we need to think about the answer we might give to the question Rabbi Zusya feared so much.

Every human being has unique capacity to add to the world. Each of us can bring love and goodness, creativity, thoughtfulness, human warmth. We don’t all need to be great scholars or rise to the top of our profession. We each have potential to be fully present in the world, fully open to the possibilities of relationship with the other. We make our choices every day, waking – as the Morning Prayer reminds us – with a pure soul that was given to us by God. So in Ellul it is a good time for us to pre-empt the question of Zusya – as we continue to live out our days, how shall we be more fully our best selves?