Page 3 - The Jewish Voice - January '20

The Jewish Voice, Page 3
Can Our Lost Loved Ones
Still Hear Us?
By Rabbi Dovid Vigler
Losing a loved one
is a most painful and
traumatic experience, and
the void that’s left behind
is often more than we can
handle. While most of us
feel comfortable dealing
with empirical evidence,
mortality forces us to
grapple with that which we
cannot feel nor sense. Is
there anything we can do to connect with our loved ones?
Can they hear me now?
You are
connecting
her
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From the rabbis
of our Matriarch Sarah, yet its name is Chayei Sarah — the with them. Suddenly the Rebbe asked them: “If your son
In the Torah portion Chayei Sarah, it deals with the death
would have moved out of state, where you could no longer
life of Sarah. The Torah does the same with the portion that see him, would you be able to handle it?” “Of course,” they
speaks of Jacob’s passing. It seems apparent that the Torah replied, “it would be hard, but we could manage for sure!”
demands that we turn death into life. But how? “And if you were given the opportunity to send him care
This question is so important that we decided to deal packages and you were assured that he was receiving them,
with this issue in a three-part series of essays. would you send them?” the Rebbe asked. “Certainly,” they
When a young child tragically passed away in N.Y., said, “we’re his parents after all!” “If so,” he replied, “know
the bereaved parents were inconsolable. They went from that your son has moved to Heaven and the care packages
rabbi to rabbi seeking solace but nothing seemed to help. you send to him — like Kaddish, kiddush meals, tzedakah,
One rabbi told them that the boy’s death was an atonement and Torah study in his memory will definitely reach him
for the failings of our People; another spoke of his being a and elevate his soul.”
reincarnation who had to return to this world to finish up a For the first time, they felt encouraged. They now
mission from a previous life; and yet a third told them his understood that death is not the end, but a new kind of
death was a test of their faith. communication. We don’t just pass away, we pass on to the
The parents were desperate and struggled to find the next world.
strength to continue. A close friend advised them to turn When Man was first created, G-d formed his body
to the Rebbe. They cried before him and he cried together from the Earth and only afterwards did he “blow into his
nostrils a spirit of life.” And just as our bodies were formed
completely separately from our souls at the beginning of
life, they also go their separate ways at the end of life.
Like clothing on a person, when the clothing is changed
the person still remains. Like electricity in your refrigerator,
when the fridge breaks down, the electricity is still there.
Indeed it was the wise King Solomon who observed in
Ecclesiastes: “The earth shall return to the ground from which
it came and the spirit shall return to G-d who gave it.”
Though it speaks of her death, the Torah portion is aptly
named The Life of Sarah because our lives don’t suddenly
end just because our body ran out of juice. Death is not the
end of life; it marks the transition to another form, a spiritual
form, of existence.
Modern science will agree. The law of conservation of
energy states that the total energy of an isolated system
remains constant; it is said to be conserved over time. This
law means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed;
rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one
form to another. If this is true of everything in the universe,
how much more so should it be true of life itself!
Hence the Rebbe points out that afterlife is really not a
term we should be using since there is no such thing as an
end to life!
When Abraham proceeds to buy a burial plot for Sarah
in Hebron, he declares that he needs to bury his dead from
before him. He openly declares that only the visible part of
Sarah — her body — needs to be buried. That which cannot
to be alive and well.
be seen — her soul — needs no help at all as it continues
In a profound letter to a bereaved Israeli widow whose
husband died in a terror attack, the Rebbe expressed deep
with Jewish has nothing to do with one’s flesh and bones, because it is
empathy, compassion, and blessings. He then pointed out
that the love between people and certainly in a marriage
a connection between souls, which are our personality and
character.
While a weapon or bullet can damage the body, it is
powerless over the soul within. The terrorist can terminate
her
the life of the body but the soul continues to live on
unaffected. Even after the death of the body, the soul
identity
continues to care for and love all those that it loved before
without any change, celebrating in their joys, and feeling the
her loved ones stuck in their grief and it experiences great
pleasure from seeing them adjust to the new relationship it
has with them.
Like energy, our souls live forever, just in another form.
pain of their sorrows. Needless to say, it pains the soul to see
But in the new relationship, they need our help in ways that
they didn’t before.
Rabbi Dovid Vigler is spiritual leader at Chabad of Palm
Beach Gardens and host of the Jewish Schmooze Radio
Show. Email him at gardensrabbi@gmail.com.
Joseph the Gay Tzadik
By Rabbi Paul Arberman
A few years back, my
mother came from her weekly
Torah study and shared with
me her thoughts from the
class. “Joseph was gay,”
she told me. “Oh really?” I
replied. “Is that what your
teacher told you?” “No, it’s
just obvious to me.” I paused.
02.10.20 Did I want to get into this?
featuring Michael Solomonov James Beard Award-Winning Chef And this is what she said.
“Ok, why is Joseph gay?”
“First of all, he’s very verbal, gossiping about his brothers,
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talking about dreams all the time. And he is emotional and
From the Rabbis on page 4