Rabbi Benjamin Blech - Hope, Not Fear: Changing the Way We View Death

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

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To my loving family and friends, who grant me a vision of heaven while Im still here on earth

What do you do when youre told youre going to die?

After the initial shock of receiving a death sentence from my doctor, I had to face the reality that we all seek to avoid in spite of its universal inevitability.

None of us wants to believe we are mortal. We live our lives as if we will be around forever.

We cant imagine our nonexistence and so we deny the possibility of our disappearance.

Like Woody Allen, we claim were not afraid of death, but we just dont want to be there when it happensand we stubbornly persist in believing that we will somehow be the exception to the fate of all humankind.

But life has a way of forcing us to confront bitter truth.

There are many ways in which we can be jolted into recognizing that our days are indeed numbered. It need not be a judicial verdict of execution that ensures life will be cut short. Sickness, infirmities, old ageall equally come as powerful reminders of our transient residence on earth.

My wake-up call came with the medical diagnosis that I have a fatal disease for which at present there is no cure. Like everyone else, Im going to diebut for me it will probably be sooner rather than later.

And what I discovered in the aftermath of that frightening news is that life takes on a totally different meaning when the idea of death becomes truly relevant and personal.

In some ways, acknowledging mortality is liberating. Mahatma Gandhi famously advised us to live as if you were to die tomorrow; learn as if you were to live forever. Every moment is more precious when you know it could be your last; every experience is more intense when youre aware that it might never be repeated.

But the flip side all too often is that fear of the unknown is debilitating and depressing. We have no idea what awaits us, and there is still so much here we have left undone. Will we never know what happens to our loved ones; will we never again see our mates or our children?

We wish we knew more about death. And the closer we get to that meeting with the universal mystery, the more urgent our need to define it.

Is death the end or a new beginning? With all of its discoveries, science still hasnt given us the answer. So we are left to wonder and to wait.

My personal confrontation with a fatal diagnosis inspired me to search for meaningful answers. What other avenues to truth are there when scientific criteria based on observation are unavailable? What legitimacy can we assign to the responses of faith as well as to mystical teachings such as those transmitted over thousands of years by Jewish spiritual masters of Kabbalah? What are we to make of recent anecdotal evidence offered by people with near-death experiences who were brought back to life after the cessation of brain activity and heartbeat? Are we any closer to solving the mystery of our mortality and to comprehending our final journey? And most important of allhow can our fears be replaced by a measure of hope and of trust that will allow us to live out the remainder of our days without despair or depression?

No, I havent found all the answers. But what I did discover has given me a great gift that I want to share with others. I no longer fear death. Even as I treasure every moment of life more than before, I await my end with the certainty beautifully captured by the Roman philosopher Seneca: The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.