Shabbos 32
“If you fulfill these mitzvot, fine, and if not, then I will take your soul.”
The Rabbis in today’s text, just like all of us, attempt to make sense of life and death and ask why some people die young while others live long lives. They attribute an early death to transgressions that one might have made, but interesting enough, these transgressions only threaten one’s existence when ill and vulnerable. It’s an interesting twist on the mystery as to why some righteous people die young (all those innocent souls who died during the Holocaust, or September 11th, or the pandemic), while some mean-spirited people live a long time. The rabbis’ theory is that it is only when one is suffering from disease that he or she will be asked to account for transgressions. And since all of us have transgressed in many different ways throughout our lives – and this held especially true 2,000 years ago when there were so many rules to break – we will have things that we must answer to when we are sick and vulnerable.
This theory is carried through to women who are in a vulnerable state when they are giving birth – especially women of 2,000 years ago: “Similarly, as long as a woman is in a healthy state, her sins are in abeyance, and she is not held accountable for them. However, when she is giving birth, which is a time of danger, she is held accountable for her sins and a calculation is made whether or not she is worthy of a miracle.”
The sins that women are held accountable for are seemingly disproportionate to the punishment of dying young: violating the law of menstruation, failing to separate a small portion of dough from the batter as an offering to the priests, and for not lighting the Sabbath lamp. Although these seem out of proportion for the consequence of dying in childbirth, the Talmud tells us that these transgressions are added to the original immense one: Eve’s sin of eating from the tree of knowledge.
Men are also held accountable and “vulnerable to judgment.” We discover that it is when they are out in the world and crossing a bridge, which must have at the time been a dangerous walk between two different terrains, and potentially exposed one to the fear of crossing over bodies of water and unfriendly people in a different town. (The Széchenyi Chain Bridge comes to mind which traverses the Danube and separates Buda and Pest.)
We also are told that anything like a bridge places a man in danger. Rav says crossing a river in a ferry with a gentile puts him in danger, while his verbal sparring partner Shmuel says that this is a safe proposition because “Satan does not have dominion over two nations” and “settles his accounts with people from each nationality separately.” (Where did Satan come from?)
When I studied Scottish literature at the University of Edinburgh many years ago, I learned that one of the most dangerous times of the year was during a pagan holiday called Samhain in Gallic, which is known today as All Saint’s Eve or Halloween. It was a time when the borders between this world and the underworld are porous and the doors are opened for the souls of the dead to enter our sphere. Without pushing the comparison too far, is it possible that the Rabbis are suggesting that when one is ill, the borders between this world and the world-to-come are indeed porous, and it is a time to revisit the value of one’s life. We are told that when a person “becomes ill they say to him: Bring proof of your virtue and exempt yourself.” We are also told that it is “preferable for a person not to be forced to prove that he merits staying alive, as he might not be able to prove it.” Afterall, we are all human.
We are also told that at the time of our reckoning an advocate angel will be assigned to our case and “If there be for him an angel, an advocate, one among a thousand, to vouch for a man’s uprightness; then He is gracious unto him, and says: Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom.” Certainly, for most of us, even if we have transgressed on a daily basis, there is one thing among a thousand that our advocate angel can point to and save us from the pit.
The Rabbis also try to conjecture why some young children die and place the blame on their parents, for failing to keep their vows, or dereliction of Torah study, or failure to place a mezuzah on their door, or to properly wear ritual fringes. Additional sins are added that would cause such grief to one’s family, including judgment, oath, vulgarity and gratuitous hatred.
This all suggests a God that can seem fairly harsh in how he hands out punishment for infractions; death due to failure to affix a mezuzah does not seem proportionate to the outcome. But today’s exploration about death is really about the Rabbis who were struggling to make sense of seemingly random events. They were seeking the reason for why so many died young of untreatable diseases or from childbirth which could be life threatening, just as we are trying to make sense of so many deaths from this marauding virus that has been let loose in our society and is killing so many innocent people. As of today, almost 75,000 deaths worldwide have been recorded from the coronavirus.
I have been a Leonard Cohen since I was a teenager. He released the song “You Want it Darker” 18 days before his death in 2016, which seems appropriate for our time: