This Shabbat, the focus was Devarim 11:26-16:17, known as Parshat Re'eh, which means simply 'see!' or even better, 'take a good look and digest ...'
As I mentioned in my last article, in this parsha of Re'eh, G-d talks about grief, death and dying, and He prohibits self-mutilation or overdoing grief in mourning the dead because death is not final and we are to embrace life.
As you will all know, it is the Pharisees who stressed the radical idea of resurrection of the dead, which the Saducees strongly opposed. It is the Pharisees who also believed in the creation by G-d of the world, while the Saducees though that the world was not created by G-d and that there is no divine figure who cares about us and who is involved in every single life, every minute of the night and day.
It is to the credit of the Pharisees that they stood their ground against the more powerful Saduceeans, who were influenced by Hellenistic thought. And therefore, belief in resurrection is considered as one of the major features of the life of the observant Jew, informing attitudes to death, burial, mourning and taking up life once again.
It is especially pertinent in this time of Covid-19 to explore death and grief in a way that inspires hope and optimism beyond our worldly circumstances. And it may be that the Jewish understanding of life and death might be helpful and beneficial for readers.
I was 26 when my father died very suddenly and unexpectedly on the island of Mallorca where he and my mother were enjoying the first week of his long-anticipated retirement, aged 65. It took ages for the body to be returned from Spain and I was tasked by my mother and younger brother with arranging the funeral here in Greater Manchester. The confusion I experienced at the time, which is part of the grief process, was therefore channelled into two things – caring for my daughter, aged two, and getting it right over the funeral details.
I will never forget the day of the levayah, which is the Hebrew term for the 'accompanying' – a seminal part of the funeral itself when long-lost and very distant relatives from London turned up. The eldest of these, Eric, comforted me with the words: 'Your Dad was the sanest member of our family.' Somehow, this made me feel so much better and was incredibly comforting.
I didn't attend the funeral service itself, as I was informed that this wasn't the custom among Jewish women. And in any case, I had a toddler and mother to look after, and I didn't want to leave either of them on their own in the house, with the men-folk gone.
Twelve years later my mother died, also unexpectedly, having made what we thought was a complete recovery from cancer. This was exactly 30 years ago and took place on a Shabbat, so I couldn't let anyone know by phone. I dashed to Shul on foot and although he was in the middle of taking the normal Shabbat morning service, the rabbi could tell from my face what had happened. Luckily, in Judaism any number of men can take over a service, and the rabbi was therefore able to hand over to someone else and come out to comfort me in his office.
I will never forget that chat in the Liverpool synagogue when the rabbi slowly calmed me down and started talking practicalities. I didn't even have time to register that I was now an orphan at a comparatively young age and that my entire link with the past had gone. But in a whirlwind, my home was turned into a makeshift synagogue. The seven-day Shiva period was set in motion – and for an entire week I didn't have to do anything for myself. Prayers were held at home three times a day with the normal 10-man minyan usually encountered at Shul, and people even brought food so that I wouldn't have to shop or cook.
As I sat on a low stool, with slippers on my feet, people streamed in from all over Liverpool and further afield. And this wasn't just Jewish friends, neighbours and fellow synagogue-goers; nor was it simply parents from the Jewish schools attended by my two daughters. Colleagues also came from the university where I taught Hebrew, and also from the community education initiatives that I had set up. In addition, former students came – who now lived far away – and for the entire week I felt myself to be bathed in love. Not many people in Liverpool knew my Mum very well, since she lived some miles away, but the rabbi was always on hand to say kind things about her to my daughters, so that they didn't feel left out of it either.
The rabbi had torn part of my garment as an act of keriya, which represents the grief experienced at loss. And I cannot fully express in writing the comfort I felt through the influx of love, friendship, empathy and, most of all, the throngs and throngs of people.
Gradually, after that seven-day period, I started – slowly but surely – resuming life again. I used to go swimming every day at the local pool which was a bike-ride away. The kind manager of the nearby pool, knowing that my Mum had just died, allowed me to leave my bike inside the building and assured me that he would look after it. Liverpudlians can be awfully kind at times like this, I have always found.
I will never forget the Liverpool Jewish community, that particular rabbi, the people who brought comfort, some of whom I hardly knew, both Jews and Christians, and the brilliant rite of sitting shiva.
And, it was around six months after that date that the realisation dawned that Judaism's strength lies in its attitude to death and dying. The structures to cope with this experience - which befalls all of us, whoever we are - have been very deliberately set in place by the world's greatest psychologists, psychotherapists and medical practitioners, in other words, by our greatest rabbis. For, in Judaism religious faith does not simply mean piety, but also the embracing of life and death in all its facets, including teaching the bereaved how to re-enter life once again, slowly but surely.
And now, today, we are all going through Covid-19 and some of my greatest friends, even those who are comparatively young, have died, including that rabbi from Liverpool. And how did I learn about this? My daughter who lives in Israel let me know by text – she learned the news before I did, even though the rabbi whom we both knew so well now lived round the corner from me here in Greater Manchester.
I immediately wrote to his own daughter, who had gone to school with my daughter, and told her how I would never forget the time her beloved father had left the Shul service in order to help me in my own grief. This rabbi was buried as soon as possible after death on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, which is reserved for special people. It seems most fitting in his case. We Jews believe through the prophets that the Mount of Olives is the spot where resurrection will begin, heralding the coming of the Messiah when peace will reign on earth and all will acknowledge the one G-d.
Last year, exactly one hundred years after my mother's birth, my synagogue here in Broughton Park Salford invited me to give a dvar Torah (a short homily), and I chose to speak of her last year. Mum and I had celebrated in Madrid my first international conference, where I had spoken about the onus on creation in Judaism – on life and not on death. And my mother, a Holocaust survivor, who was mostly shy and retiring, albeit knowing 10 languages at least, suddenly came to life – she was as if reborn in fact – when we found that the Spanish guides couldn't speak English.
At this potentially difficult moment, Mum stepped into the breach and was able to act as an interpreter for a group of Jewish scholars from all over the world, conveying to us in English what the Spanish guide was telling us about our own former Jewish heritage in Toledo and other Judaeo-Spanish places of note on the Iberian peninsula.
Not a day goes by when I don't reflect on the life of my dear Dad obm who - having lost his own mother and father, two brothers and a sister-in-law in the Holocaust, all of them murdered by the Nazis and their Polish accomplices - always encouraged me in everything I did, teaching me by example how to be bold. While my Mum obm, forcibly separated by this country from her own brother and sister, has left me a legacy of constancy, consistency and calm, interspersed with the odd trenchant remark or aside, whose rarity gave much food for thought!
Every year, following Jewish custom, I light a candle on the Hebrew anniversary of my Dad in the summer, and for Mum in the winter. And whenever I have to make a decision I ask myself: 'What would Mum and Dad have done in my shoes?'
And this, I feel, is one way in which we can at least try and cope with the Covid pandemic. We don't have all the answers, and no government anywhere has managed to get it quite right. But if, when we feel down, or even depressed, we can manage to reflect for a short time on the lives of those who have gone before us and who have contributed such a great deal to who we are, this I feel might help quite a bit with what we are all going through right now.
Dr Irene Lancaster is a Jewish academic, author and translator who has established university courses on Jewish history, Jewish studies and the Hebrew Bible. She trained as a teacher in modern Languages and Religious Education.
Views and opinions published in Christian Today are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the website.
