The Other Side: A Personal Quest to Get a Heart of Wisdom

And God saw all that God had done, and look, it was very good. And it was evening and it was morning, the sixth day.

Genesis 1:31

In the copy of Rabbi Meir’s Torah was found written: “And, behold, it was very (me’od) good: and behold death (mavet) was good.”

B’reishit Rabbah 9:5

Death Is Good

It is not known whether Rabbi Meir’s Torah actually substituted the word “death” for “very” or whether he had made a marginal note, as the traditional commentaries understand it. The traditional commentaries also understood his note to mean that the existence of death is a necessary means of evoking repentance in sinners. Without the fear of death, no one would care about their actions in this world. For Rabbi Meir, however, this was not an academic exercise. There is the well-known midrash that tells of how Rabbi Meir came home from teaching Torah one Shabbat afternoon and found that his two sons had died. His wife Beruriah broke the news to him only after Shabbat was over. Twice Meir asked her where the boys were and each time she put him off with subtle hints¹ that they had died. She eventually informed him by means of a parable in the form of a halakhic question about the return of a deposit to its original owner. When she finally showed him his dead sons he cried out, “My sons, my sons! My masters, my masters! My natural-born sons, and my masters who enlightened² me with their [learning in] Torah.” At this point Rabbi Meir’s wife said to him, “Master, did you not just now tell me that we must return a pledge to its owner?” To which he replied, “The Eternal has given, and the Eternal has taken away; blessed be the name of the Eternal One” (Job 1:21). . . .³ This story about Rabbi Meir’s wife and sons puts another perspective on what was written in Rabbi Meir’s Torah.

But was it really possible for Rabbi Meir to believe that death is good? In addition to the loss of his children, Rabbi Meir lived at the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans (132–135 c.e.) in which hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed, including his most beloved teacher, Rabbi Akiva. Another of his teachers, Elisha ben Abuyah, became a despised heretic. The story of his wife, Beruriah, and her explanation for the children’s deaths is almost unbearable to read today, especially after the deaths of 1.5 million children in the Holocaust. It is theologically unbearable to ascribe these deaths to the ultimate purposes of God.

How could Rabbi Meir have said tov mavet, that death is good? After all, Jews never say that death is good. Judaism has great wisdom in dealing with death, through the traditions and customs of mourning, but death itself is not seen in a positive way. Jews are required at a funeral to say a blessing that acknowledges God as the righteous Judge in the passing of the deceased, but we never say that the death was good.

It is widely acknowledged that the Jewish tradition does not see death as a positive and necessary force. It is the ultimate chaos, shattering lives. Death is the great change that reminds us that our own deaths will also eventually come. Death is the terrifying border to the great unknown. Even if we believe in an afterlife, the fear remains.

Rava was sitting before Rabbi Naḥman as he lay dying. . . . As he sank close to death, Rava asked Rabbi Naḥman to please reappear to him after he died. Rabbi Naḥman appeared to him in a dream, and Rava asked him, “Did you suffer pain?” He replied, “As little as in taking a hair from a cup of milk. And if the holy Blessed One were to give me the chance to come back to this world I would not, for the dread thereof.”⁴

The...