Consolation: The Spiritual Journey Beyond Grief

Chapter 14: “You Have Transformed My Mourning into Dancing”

Chapter 14 “You Have Transformed My Mourning into Dancing”
A long life is not good enough; but a good life is long enough. —Rabbi Meshulem Jungreis
In unexpected ways, Judaism impels mourners to rise above pain and to re-create themselves, to go beyond survival to self-elevation, to move from passive transition to transcendence to awesome transformation . The prophet Isaiah (61:3) phrased it elegantly: To provide for the mourners in Zion— To give them a garland instead of ashes [pe’er instead of efer], The festive ointment instead of mourning, A garment of splendor instead of a drooping spirit. Surprisingly, Judaism brings about this spiritual transformation by guiding mourners through the process of personal repentance. Death is linked with the religious emotion of teshuvah (repentance, return, re235 236
Consolation generation), which is so powerful a feeling when it is sincerely undertaken that it can be life-changing, virtually creating a new individual out of the repentant mourner. We can experience this repentance in two ways: First, we might harbor regrets about our relationship with the deceased—slights, angers, and lapses of decent conversation as well as our not having paid enough attention, not having given him or her well-deserved satisfaction, and not having been considerate—lapses that we commit unthinkingly in the busyness of everyday life. As we now take our moral inventory, we not only grieve the loss of an individual, we also lament any of our own misdeeds that may have caused anyone unnecessary sadness. We repent for not having appreciated all that our loved one had to offer. A talmudic story illuminates this process. When the eminent scholar Rav died, his disciples accompanied his body to the burial site, and on their way home, stopped to eat at the Danak River. They came upon a legal problem and couldn’t resolve it. One of them, Rabbi Ada bar Ahava, rose and made a second tear on his clothing, which he had already torn as an act of grieving. For this moment he realized how dependent he had been on his teacher and felt his loss even more grievously, recognizing that he had not seized the opportunity to learn more from him when he was still alive. Thus, the rabbis all mourned once for his death and a second time for having forever lost their chance to learn more from him in his life. A second kind of repentance is spiritual. We repent for our failings in our religious commitment and in our ethical living. Both sinners and mourners suffer from losing closeness to God. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, referring to the moral shortcomings of the entire Jewish people, cites Jeremiah (31:3) tellingly: “The Lord revealed Himself to me of old. Eternal love I conceived for you then.” Once God was close, but because we have fallen short in our ethical and religious goals, have been insensitive to God’s presence, ignored God, or taken God for granted, we have grown remote from God’s love. So, too, mourners experience profound grief when they perceive their deceased relative or friend now only from afar, when they understand that their loved ones are slipping out of reach forever. The emotions of sinner and mourner are remarkably alike. That is why sitting shiva is equivalent to doing teshuvah (repentance). Both involve traumas of loss—one, human; the other, divine. Becoming a New Human Being Maimonides, when he wrote about repentance, said that when a person truly regrets a deed and decides never to repeat it, that person is transformed and becomes a new person. Spiritual regeneration sparks personality regeneration. In a poignant book on the personality transformation undergone by one who does teshuvah, Roy S. Neuberger, son of the noted financier and founder of the Neuberger-Berman investment company, described his remarkable trek from Central Park to Sinai. Despite having been raised in legendary wealth on New York’s Fifth Avenue and having attended Oxford University, Neuberger still searched for a meaning to his life. “Why when I have everything, do I feel as if I have nothing?” This son of a very privileged family tried the door to every philosophy and every major religion—East and West. He failed them and they failed him. Finally, nothing was left—not his marriage, not his education, not his society. Of course, he absolutely knew there was no God. He wrote such things as: “Nobody normal believed...