Being Honest About Death - Kol Nidre Sermon Sermon
When I tell people that I wrote a book a few years back, and it was on the topic of loneliness, many people ask me why I wrote it in the first place. I almost always lie to them about the answer.
Sometimes I tell them it is meant as a resource for those who are struggling in isolation. Other times I say it was a way for me to process the many emotions I had around my divorce a number of years back. I even explain that I wanted to do a deep dive into an often-under-discussed topic or that there is no better way to learn about something than to write about it.
But the truth is, I wrote the book, mainly for one reason: I’m afraid to die. I am tormented by the idea that one day, I will run out of time and will never again have a hand in shaping this world. I write because I want something to outlive me. Maybe in a future era someone will pick up one of my books and I will once again matter. I am haunted by my own mortality.
And this year, perhaps as much as it ever has, I imagine your mortality has haunted you too. There is nothing like a pandemic to remind us of our someday death. In the spring of 2020, I did more funerals in a month than I would typically do in a season. Most of us know someone or of someone who was a victim of this pandemic. Standing at those graves, I couldn’t help but imagine myself in their position.
Pandemics, though an acute reminder of death, are the not the only trigger for thinking of it. Most of us, think about it all the time even if unconsciously. If Ernest Becker, the famed phycologist and author of The Denial of Death, is correct, reminders of our own demise appear everywhere. Becker observed that the reason we are tormented by our mortality is that everything reminds us of it. Every time we use our bodies, be it eating meal, taking a nap, a trip to the bathroom, or going for a run or walk, we are reminded of our limits. Eating reminds us we will die without food. Sleep reminds us that our brains can one day fail. I’m sure Becker was a hoot to have at a dinner party.
If Becker is right, and even the most mundane things can remind us of our mortality, how much the more-so the world we will live in, when simply opening the newspaper and seeing a COVID themed headline remind us constantly of our frailty, our ephemerality, our death.
The tragedy of our world is though we think about death often we do not discuss it. It’s one of the final taboo subjects in our society. And we keep silent at our peril.
I once found myself in a conversation with a congregant who was headed toward hospice. News was spreading fast in her circle of family and friends and a number of loved ones began reaching out. One particular relative had been someone estranged from this congregant and soon after he heard, he gave her a call. The two spoke about their children, updated each other on babies born, moves made, on the saga of an even more distant relative, but they never once talked about the real reason for the call. It was a pleasant conversation but unsating. At no point did they bring up anything about this person’s impending death.
Imagine what it could have looked like, the caller they had said simply, “I know you are going to die soon.” Think about the doors that might have been opened. Not only would this have given urgency to repair the relationship faster, but it would have allowed them to talk about the most salient thing in at least one of their lives. My congregant could have been vulnerable about fears she was having, about how she imagined her legacy, it could spurred a more global conversation about what the two have meant to one another. But instead, they stayed away from the topic and sadly, their reticence to discuss death added a veneer of restraint to the whole conversation.
The thing about our fears, especially around death, is that if we don’t let them out knowingly, they will come out somewhere in unhealthy ways. Some of us, like me, will work to create a lasting legacy as a way to best death, though that approach can be injurious in a different way, causing us to work so hard that our fleeting life passes us by. This, by the way, is one way to read the tower of Babel story. Faced with the trauma of a worldwide flood only a few generations before theirs, the generaion of Babel build a tower, a lasting reminder of their presence on earth. Noah’s generation would be forgotten but theirs would not be.
Others of us, perhaps unknowingly, will seek to control death by living a too careful life. Rather than take risks at face value, we avoid anything we associate with danger be it flying in airplanes, visiting top-floor apartments, or swimming in the ocean during shark season. For some this attitude spills into their religious life. How many stopped visiting synagogues in the months after Pittsburgh? The chance of injury in any of these scenarios is rare, but their tragic nature implants the risk in our psyche and makes us irrationally afraid. We say we have a fear of flying or a fear of heights, but few of us will admit that the real fear comes when we think about dying from those activities. And until we can admit that, we cannot adequately address these anxieties.
The final group will go to the other extreme. They will pretend that death does not touch them. They are the daredevils, the risk takers. Admitting that the world is dangerous can be a scary enterprise. It means that that we are vulnerable, that we lack true control. So we push the idea of our death so far down that it seems insignificant and then prove to ourselves again and again, though unsafe behavior, be it jumping out of planes or doing drugs, that we can conquer mortality.
In the COVID era, each of us have seen these three categories of behavior manifest. Faced with the danger outside, some of us, like the first group, have thrown ourselves into our work and hobbies. We know that something may happen to us, and if it does, we want to make the time beforehand the most productive as possible.
Others of us, function like the second group I mentioned. Life is full of calculated risks and COVID is no exception. But some of us have lived in such fear that it has crippled us. We barely leave the house or and we have let relationships slide because it’s too scary to engage with the outside. Interestingly the need to zero out risks is one reason that some people are refusing to get vaccinated.
Though this is not the only reason that some refuse the vaccine. This third group will not admit that COVID is a risk at all because if they do, it means that they are less powerful than the virus. They refuse to wear masks, balk at social distancing, and will not get their shot because they want to prove to everyone that they are unstoppable. Death has no power over them.
None of these approaches are healthy. Death is a reality for us, and we must face it head on.
Judaism has a unique approach to fear. Our goal should not be to run from it or distract from it, but deal with it, directly and honestly.
There is an amazing Hasidic story I learned from my mentor Rachel Timoner about a rabbi who came home to a house overflowing with demons. Afraid of them, he stood outside, wondering what to do. He knew that the minute he opened the door they would attack. Eventually, he entered, but instead of cowering, he bowed low and welcomed them. Suddenly, half of them disappeared. The remaining ones were the largest, scariest ones of the bunch, but he invited them to dine with him and one by one they too vanished until there was only one left, the largest, most grotesque of the bunch. But as this one opened his mouth to devour the rabbi, he put his head in the demon’s maw, positioned over his sharpest teeth and just like that he too disappeared and the rabbi was able to reclaim his house.
Fear wins when we run. Fear wins when we cower. But when we meet fear with bravery, it has no space to dwell. There is a famous metaphor about fear that our Midrash uses. A person surrounded by a pack of hungry dogs may choose to run away, but they are faster and will usually catch him. Only when he sits down in their midst, when he befriends them, when he shows them he is not afraid, will the dogs no longer be dangerous.
In practice, this means that we need to talk about death more.
And the High Holy Days are a meaningful place to start. One of the purposes of Yom Kippur is to hammer home the notion that we are mortal. Not only do we mention it in prayers, speaking for example about who shall live and who shall die, but its customary to wear a kittle, as I am, which matches a burial shroud. Tonight we removed the Torahs from the ark during the Kol Nidre prayer so we have the experience of staring into an empty grave.
All of this is intentional. If we are reminded time and again that we will one day die, it will change how we live. Rather than run from our mortality we will learn to meet it head on. For one day a year, it will surround us and we will grow used to it. Then, we can take our newfound comfort with death into the year ahead, and it will inform our actions in a healthy way.
To use one example, our tradition teaches that we should repent the day of our death. It then goes on to say that since we don’t know when we will die, it’s not a bad idea to repent each and every day.
Imagine what it would look like if we actually had a healthy relationship with our mortality. If death triggers us, if it haunts us, we could not ever take this teaching seriously. We would ignore it or obsess over it. But if we lean into the fear, we can find the kind of balance we need to do what our sages proscribe: to consistently tie up loose ends, to live life without regrets, to not procrastinate when we must fix an error.
There is a powerful folk teaching in our tradition that when God created humanity, no one ever died of disease. When it came time for death, you would sneeze and that was it. It was only when our patriarch Jacob wanted a warning of his own demise, that he prayed to God for the “gift” of sickness. If he grew infirmed, he could gather his children around his bed, bless them, and say a proper goodbye. And he did. The first instance of true closure to a life lived in the Torah appears with Jacob at the end of the book of Genesis.
The reason Jacob was successful, the reason he found peace at the end was because he could utter a simple but profound truth: “I will die.”
We have to learn to say the same.
There is a profound loneliness in not being able to talk about death. Loneliness is exacerbated by secrecy. If you are feeling something and you cannot share it with others it creates a gulf between the two of you. Think about how many friendships have faded away because there was one particular topic that you just couldn’t discuss.
How many of us are keeping our own feeling about our mortality to ourselves?
It may be strange at first, but allowing yourself to share your discomfort with death, will not only give you a necessary outlet to explore your fears, it will create avenues of intimacy with others. How many deep friendships have begun with the observation, “I just told him or her something that I share with nobody.”
I remember the first time I ever observed this. I was in rabbinical school and was learning to be a hospital chaplain. My supervisor pushed me to be brave and to ask the question of a recent heart attack survivor, “were you scared you were going to die?” He looked at me, first incredulous, then releaved. “Yes,” he said. “I thought this was the end.” Thirty minutes passed and he had processed perhaps the most frightening experience of his life. If I hadn’t asked him in a way that gave him an opening to talk about it, I’m not sure he ever would have discussed his own death. I visited him a few more times and it was clear that this simple question had opened doors for him. From then on, I always asked if it felt right.
You don’t have to be a rabbi to do what I did. If you think that a person is thinking about their mortality, ask them. And if you spend time thinking about it, then find a person who you can talk to that will go there with you. Secrets eat you up. They cause shame. I promise, many of us feel scared, and we have to learn to let it out.
We’ll do our part. Whether its sermons like this, our support groups led by our congregational Nurse Karen Frank, or other programming we will foster the conversation. Roger Segal and I have joked that we would like to get everyone together who has a plot reserved in our congregational cemetery as a sort of “above ground club” so you can get to know those you will be spending eternity with. We are going to do that this year, because although it seems arbitrary, having a shared experience around your own death, even if just the happenstance of where you will be buried, will open up avenues for connection and communication.
Yom Kippur is upon us. And today we recognize our own mortality. As our prayerbook teaches, it is indeed a day of “awesome and full of dread.” But it’s also a day of opportunity, a day not to run from the discomfort, but to lean into it. At some point today take some time to acknowledge any fears you have about death. Open the dialogue. It won’t fix it for you. You may always feel a degree of anxiety. But you will have started the conversation. And in doing so, you will have a semblance of control over the uncontrollable. And that, will make you more free.
