Life & Death

[Yehudiya]

We come down into this world to fulfill a purpose and we dont know what the specific purpose for our neshama is so we try to do our best and improve ourselves continuously.
However our Neshama doesnt want to come down into this world and It yearns to go back to its source.
We as human beings - want to live and keep on living .
When someone is sick we pray that he get better , When someone dies especially as a result of a tragedy (young age etc..)
We all cry and it upsets us.
Isnt it a kind of condradiction?
Isnt Our Neshama better off up in its source next to G-D?
I hope my confusion here is understood!

[Jude]

I had a teacher (German, not Chasidic) who once told us that we cry for ourselves and not for the departed, because we'll miss them.

On the other hand, Chasidicly speaking, we know that the ultimate goal is the dira ba'tachtonim - right here in the physical world. This is why techiyas ha'meisim is the ultimate attainment. For if spiritual worlds were IT, why would souls need to come back to this world with the resurrection?

[noahidelaws]

BS"D As is explained at length in Tanya ch. 37, the purpose of the soul's descent into this world is to make a dira ba'tachtonim by refining and elevating three things: the body, the nefesh habehamis (animal soul) and what is known as "chelkoi bo'oilom" - the physical things which belong to the person or with which he comes into contact. Each person is given his or her own particular nefesh habehamis, which no matter how coarse it may be, Hashem tells us to work at refining. He is put by Hashem in the country, city, community and family that he is to refine.

Furthermore, everyone has a special job which NOBODY else can accomplish. Some people are destined to spend more time in a holy environment. The lot of others is to live amongst coarse, dangerous influences. But they complement one another, and the avoidah (spiritual labour) of all is needed to complete the Jewish people as a whole.

So this is also the reason that according to Torah, the individual and the group are complementary, for the perfection of the Jewish people depends on the combination of all of the efforts of each and every individual, on his or her level.

The all important rule: everyone is endowed with suficient strength to overcome the particular challenges he/she will inevitably face. But still, we daven that Hashem have rachmonus and go easy on us! :) Ve'al teviainu lidai nisayon - we ask Hashem in Birkos HaShachar not to bring us to be tested.

[masbir]

<<(German, not Chasidic>>

German??? you mean Yekka?

[Jude]

yes!

[ChachChach]

isnt that the reason why were not supposed to go into hysterics when someon passes away? we know that their neshama is going to a place of purity, and is going to be near Gd.

btw, its funny, but some ppl's tachlis in this world is to just live a few years. there are numerous stories about ppl who go to tzadikim after their children pass away, and the tzadikim tell them a story that shows how a neshama needed to come into this world for only a certain amount of time, and then leave. i remember hearing that that's the reason why one of the sons of the Rabbeim lived for only a few years (seven or eight, i think). ppl said that those corresponded to the years that the Alter Rebbe lost out on, bc he passed away early when the wagon took a wrong turn when he was fleeing from Napoleon.

[noahidelaws]

BS”D The Rambam writes: (Mishneh Torah, Laws of A Mourner, 13:12) “anyone who does not mourn as the Sages commanded is cruel,” and on the other hand, “one should not grieve for one’s departed excessively…for this is the way of the world, and he who grieves [excessively] at the way of the world is a fool. Rather, one should weep for three days, eulogise for seven days and refrain from cutting one’s hair for a month,” (Ibid. 13:11) until the customs kept for twelve months, (Ibid. 6:7, 13:10) but afterwards G-d instilled [in human nature] that “the departed is forgotten from the heart.” (Talmud Bavli, Berachos 58b)

[WanderingJew]

This all sounds good in theory, but obviously, the loss of a human life is a terrible blow.
"They are in a better place now"...-true-but how does that help the grieving loved one, who must go on without their _____????

[noahidelaws]

BS"D <<but how does that help the grieving loved one>>

In the secular world, lehavdil, very little time is granted to a mourner by his employer. A mourner is simply unable to function like others, but in the secular world, this is not recognised. The Torah instituted the laws of mourning in order to legitimate the mourner's need to grief. It also explained that there are stages: 3 days, 7 days, a month and a year, as outlined above. In each of these times, it is only proper to mourn to the degree that Torah prescribes, and any more is considered excessive.

So although Torah says <<"they are in a better place now">> it does not mean by that to say that the mourner's feelings of grief are childish and sentimental, Heaven forbid. On the contrary - the Torah says that grief is the appropriate and dignified response to a bereavement. It demonstrated that the surviving relative truly loved the departed. NOT to grieve would be improper. It would be a sign of heartlessness and indifference.

[Yehudiya]

You must have heard people say when they hear of someone who passed away :
Oh poor thing or nebach.
Arent we the poor things or the nebach in this case?

[Jude]

I posted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating here.

R' Paltiel was discussing yisurim and said that the difference between a person who emerges bitter and a person who emerges b'simcha is in appreciating the value of the experience. The Fr. Rebbe said he wouldn't choose to experience Spalerko again, but he wouldn't trade away the experience he had for anything.

A woman asked R' Paltiel a question. She said she had lost a child and felt there must be a middle ground between anger and joy.

R' Paltiel (after saying that he too had lost a child, and asking her whether she really wanted him to respond) said:

"You've said how YOU feel. Have you thought about how the TORAH wants you to feel?
People think Torah only tells them what to DO and not what to FEEL. This is wrong. Torah does tell us what to do with these feelings. Mourning has its limits. Yes, mourn. Then move on. The pain over the loss will always be there, but in the present, one needs to be b'simcha.
When it comes to yisurim people tend to say - 'You don't know how I feel, and you have no right to tell me what to do!'
This is NOT Torah!
And therapy, which is supposedly to help you deal with the pain, allows you to wallow in it.
There were parents of a 40 year old woman and mother of 10 who died. The father said to the mother: redt nit, un tracht nit (don't talk about it and don't think about it). I.e. Get on with life."

(all the above was from R' Paltiel. May we only have reason to rejoice!)

[ChachChach]

oh, i'm sorry. i guess i should stick to words that cant be miinterpreted. i didnt mean funny as in "hohoho," i meant funny as in interesting. now do you understand?

btw
if you dont understand a specific phrase, maybe you should privately ask for an explanation?

[Jude]

On Sunday, chol ha'moed, there was a levaya for R' Biegeleisen, one of the men incinerated in the World Trade Center. His wife and family had been told to sit shiva as early as before Rosh Ha'Shana, since he had called them to say good-bye and let them know there was no way out of the building for him.

What's amazing is, as somebody said at the levaya, that the U.S. government is spending millions of dollars months later, to carefully sift through all the debris. They could just toss it all, but instead there are refrigerated trucks (btw, frum people are sitting shemira shifts near it) and forensic experts examine every shred and match it to dental records, and DNA tests. He said we should be grateful to America for the respect they have for the dead.

In stark contrast to this, I read the following excerpt from an article entitled: Displaying Corpses, Resisting Decadence

by Michael Medved

<<To recognize what's right with America, it sometimes helps to look at what's wrong with the rotting civilization on the other side of the Atlantic. Unlike our cousins in Western Europe, most citizens of the United States maintain the ability to feel shocked, even outraged, at grotesque displays of degradation and decadence in the name of high culture.

Consider the new exhibition, "Body Worlds," which opened at a prestigious London gallery on March 23. Arranged by Professor Gunther von Hagens, the show has already enjoyed a triumphant tour of Germany, Japan, Switzerland and Belgium. It features 25 actual corpses, along with 175 body parts, all neatly preserved by a patented process called "plastination" and artistically arranged by the professor. One skinned male body crouches over a chessboard, with his skull split open to reveal his brain. Another figure, "The Horseman," holds a whip in one hand and his actual brain in the other, as he sits astride the cadaver of a leaping horse. Both man and beast have been totally flayed to reveal the underlying musculature.

As if this weren't enough to thrill even the most jaded patrons of cutting-edge art, the climax of the exhibition offers the bisected corpse of a woman who was eight months pregnant, with her womb slit open to display her skinned fetus.

Explaining his ground-breaking and critically acclaimed work, Professor von Hagens told the Guardian newspaper: "I want to bring the life back to anatomy. I am making the dead lifeful again. This exhibition is a place where the dead and the living mix." Promoted as "edutainment," the gallery invites the participation of children and offers teaching materials – video, catalogue, posters and so forth – free of charge to schools.

Amazingly, the "Body Worlds" show has brought in more than $75 million for Professor von Hagens and his Institute of Plastination. He plans to use the money for further "research" and to build a permanent Museum of Man, filled with literally hundreds of preserved corpses and body parts. Various celebrities have toured the exhibit in its various venues and written grateful letters ...

... If one accepts the conventional wisdom of contemporary secularism that a human being is nothing more than a collection of chemicals, no more sacred than a tree or a rock, what's wrong with the professor's logic? If our life is purely physical and totally temporary, why not entertain gawkers with your nude form after death? Surely, the cleverly arranged, mostly skinned bodies displayed by von Hagens feel neither pain nor embarrassment.

Fortunately, that logic hasn't yet captured America. The public reacted with rage and horror to the disgusting story of the Georgia crematorium that carelessly discarded hundreds of bodies that it had promised to burn. The anger went beyond indignation over a breached business agreement: Americans instinctively understood that dead bodies might not feel or think, but still deserved respect as the physical remains of sacred human beings.>>

and here's something interesting from a Dr. Dobson:

<<We also know, and you know, there is almost a total disregard for the value of human life in some post-modern circles. Dr. Peter Singer is a bioethicist – of all things – at Princeton University. He is a tenured professor. Let me read you what he wrote. "Very often, it is not wrong at all to kill a child once it has left the womb." He said, and watch the words now, "Simply killing an infant is never equivalent to killing a person."

That is a bioethicist at Princeton University. He was granted tenure after he made these statements. Do you know that it is a $25,000 fine to kill an eagle's egg and there's no law at all against killing a child in the latter stages of development in utero?>>

[ChachChach]

that story about the exhibition is DISGUSTING. i cant believe ppl would pay money to see things like that. forget about respect for the dead-what kind of school would let their young impressionable children see such things...and then they wonder why the younger generation is getting so messed up.... :rolleyes:

[iamachassid]

what about a musuem having fetuses that were aborted or misscarried?