What Death Should Teach Us About Life and Living

Death is not a counterpoint or contradiction to life, but a profound teacher about the meaning of human existence.

By Abraham J. Heschel

One of the great Jewish spiritual teachers of the 20th century, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel argues that facing death gives life meaning; that life and death are both part of a greater mystery; that by virtue of being created in no less than God's image, we can imagine an afterlife for humanity--yet at the same time death itself is an antidote to human arrogance; and that in death we pay gratitude for the wonder and gift of our existence. These passages are excerpted from Heschel's essay "Death as Homecoming", published in Jewish Reflections on Death, edited by Jack Riemer (Schocken Books).

Death as a Way to Understand the Meaning of Life

Our first question is to what end and upon what right do we think about the strange and totally inaccessible subject of death? The answer is because of the supreme certainty we have about the existence of man: that it cannot endure without a sense of meaning. But existence embraces both life and death, and in a way death is the test of the meaning of life. If death is devoid of meaning, then life is absurd. Life's ultimate meaning remains obscure unless it is reflected upon in the face of death.

 

The fact of dying must be a major factor in our understand­ing of living. Yet only few of us have come face to face with death as a problem or a challenge. There is a slowness, a delay, a neglect on our part to think about it. For the subject is not exciting, but rather strange and shocking.

 

What characterizes modern man's attitude toward death is escapism, disregard of its harsh reality, even a tendency to ob­literate grief. He is entering, however, a new age of search for meaning of existence, and all cardinal issues will have to be faced.

Life as a Way to Understand the Meaning of Death

Death is grim, harsh, cruel, a source of infinite grief. Our first reaction is consternation. We are stunned and distraught. Slowly, our sense of dismay is followed by a sense of mystery. Suddenly, a whole life has veiled itself in secrecy. Our speech stops, our understanding fails. In the presence of death there is only silence, and a sense of awe.

 

Is death nothing but an obliteration, an absolute negation? The view of death is affected by our understanding of life. If life is sensed as a surprise, as a gift, defying explanation, then death ceases to be a radical, absolute negation of what life stands for. For both life and death are aspects of a greater mys­tery, the mystery of being, the mystery of creation. Over and above the preciousness of particular existence stands the mar­vel of its being related to the infinite mystery of being or creation.

 

Death, then, is not simply man's coming to an end. It is also entering a beginning.

Our Greatness: The Question of an Afterlife and the "Image of God"

There is, furthermore, the mystery of my personal exis­tence. The problem of how and whether I am going to be after I die is profoundly related to the problem of who and how I was before I was born. The mystery of an afterlife is related to the mystery of preexistence. A soul does not grow out of nothing. Does it, then, perish and dissolve in nothing?

 

Human life is on its way from a great distance; it has gone through ages of experience, of growing, suffering, insight, ac­tion. We are what we are by what we come from. There is a vast continuum preceding individual existence, and it is a legitimate surmise to assume that there is a continuum follow­ing individual existence. Human living is always being under way, and death is not the final destination.

 

In the language of the Bible to die, to be buried, is said to be "gathered to his people" (Genesis 25:8). They "were gathered to their fathers" (Judges 2:10). "When your days are fulfilled to go to be with your fathers" (I Chronicles 17:11).

 

Do souls become dust? Does spirit turn to ashes? How can souls, capable of creating immortal words, immortal works of thought and art, be completely dissolved, vanish forever?

 

Others may counter: The belief that man may have a share in eternal life is not only beyond proof; it is even presumptu­ous. Who could seriously maintain that members of the human species, a class of mammals, will attain eternity? What image of humanity is presupposed by the belief in immortality? Indeed, man's hope for eternal life presupposes that there is something about man that is worthy of eternity, that has some affinity to what is divine, that is made in the likeness of the divine…

 

[T]he likeness of God means the likeness of Him who is unlike man. The likeness of God means the likeness of Him compared with whom all else is like nothing.

 

Indeed, the words "image and likeness of God" [in the biblical creation story] conceal more than they reveal. They signify something which we can neither comprehend nor verify. For what is our image? What is our likeness? Is there anything about man that may be com­pared with God? Our eyes do not see it; our minds cannot grasp it. Taken literally, these words are absurd, if not blas­phemous. And still they hold the most important truth about the meaning of man.

 

Obscure as the meaning of these terms is, they undoubtedly denote something unearthly, something that belongs to the sphere of God. Demut [likeness]and tzelem [image]are of a higher sort of being than the things created in the six days. This, it seems, is what the verse intends to convey: Man partakes of an unearthly di­vine sort of being.

Our Smallness: Death Teaches Humility

Death is the radical refutation of man's power and a stark reminder of the necessity to relate to a meaning which lies beyond the dimension of human time. Humanity without death would be arrogance without end. Nobility has its root in hu­manity, and humanity derived much of its power from the thought of death.

 

Death refutes the deification and distorts the arrogance of man.

 

He is God; what he does is right, for all his ways are just; God of faithfulness and without wrong, just and right is he.

 

"Just art thou, O Lord, in causing death and life; thou in whose hand all living beings and kept, far be it from thee to blot out our remembrance; let thy eyes be open to us in mercy; for thine, O Lord, is mercy and forgiveness.

 

We know, O Lord, that thy judgment is just; thou art right when thou speakest, and justified when thou givest sentence; one must not find fault with thy manner of judging. Thou art righte­ous, O Lord, and thy judgment is right.

 

True and righteous judge, blessed art thou, all whose judg­ments are righteous and true.

 

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

 

-- Daily Prayer Book, from the Burial Service

Death as Gratitude for Existence

If life is a pilgrimage, death is an arrival, a celebration. The last word should be neither craving nor bitterness, but peace, gratitude.

 

We have been given so much. Why is the outcome of our lives, the sum of our achievements, so little?

 

Our embarrassment is like an abyss. Whatever we give away is so much less than what we receive. Perhaps this is the mean­ing of dying: to give one's whole self away.

 

Death is not seen as mere ruin and disaster. It is felt to be a loss of further possibilities to experience and to enhance the glory and goodness of God here and now. It is not a liquidation but a summation, the end of a prelude to a symphony of which we only have a vague inkling of hope. The prelude is infinitely rich in possibilities of either enhancing or frustrating God's pa­tient, ongoing efforts to redeem the world.

 

Death is the end of what we can do in being partners to redemption. The life that follows must be earned while we are here. It does not come out of nothing; it is an ingathering, the harvest of eternal moments achieved while on earth.

 

Unless we cultivate sensitivity to the glory while here, unless we learn how to experience a foretaste of heaven while on earth, what can there be in store for us in life to come? The seed of life eternal is planted within us here and now. But a seed is wasted when placed on stone, into souls that die while the body is still alive.

 

The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The cry for a life beyond the grave is pre­sumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior to our de­scending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but per­petual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a herenow.

 

Our greatest problem is not how to continue but how to return. "How can I repay unto the Lord all his bountiful deal­ings with m?" (Psalms 116:12). When life is an answer, death is a homecoming. "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints" (Psalms 116:14). For our greatest problem is but a resonance of God's concern: How can I repay unto man all his bountiful dealings with me? "For the mercy of God endureth forever."

 

This is the meaning of existence: to reconcile liberty with service, the passing with the lasting, to weave the threads of temporality into the fabric of eternity.

 

The deepest wisdom man can attain is to know that his des­tiny is to aid, to serve. We have to conquer in order to suc­cumb; we have to acquire in order to give away; we have to triumph in order to be overwhelmed. Man has to understand in order to believe, to know in order to accept. The aspiration is to obtain; the perfection is to dispense. This is the meaning of death: the ultimate self-dedication to the divine. Death so understood will not be distorted by the craving for immortality, for this act of giving away is reciprocity on man's part for God's gift of life. For the pious man it is a privilege to die.

 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Ph.D. (1907-1972), born in Warsaw and educated in Poland and Germany, was Professor of Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Among his many books are Man Is Not Alone, God in Search of Man, The Earth is the Lord’s, and Israel: Echo of Eternity.