Too Many Deaths?

You ever have one of those days, where you have so much to do, and yet you just do not feel like doing anything? This column was written under that spell. So, it took me a long time to write this column. More than three weeks. It was hard.

Michael, August 28; Howie, September 3; Bernie, September 12; Jack, September 20; Yossi, September 21. I will remember them all.

Twenty-four days. Five of my friends and colleagues disappeared. We are told their spirits live on and we still have our memories. But they are not here anymore. I don’t like that.

I try to not even think about Sergio Mendez, James Earl Jones, Maggie Smith, Kris Kristofferson, Gavin Creel, Pete Rose or Dikembe Mutombo, all people who I did not know. But each one, in a completely different way, contributed to my development. They also left us during those same 24 days. I don’t like that, either.

And I do not know the numbers, but Israeli soldiers died, and many other people, civilians as well as soldiers, died in the Middle East during that same period. And in conflicts elsewhere in the world. And the floods and the famine, killed even more. I hate that. And don’t the deaths seem to be coming at us faster than ever? Is it because we are getting older that we see more clearly the illness and death around us. Has it always been there, but now I just notice it more? Or is it actually becoming more common as we age? Is this another reason to not like getting older?

I think the last time I liked getting older was when I was 17 years old. Sometimes I still think like I am 17 (some question my maturity), but then I look in the mirror, or I walk up the stairs. Or I hear about someone else who has died or gotten sick. To make life scarier, covid seems to be ramping up again, and for us older folk, it is extremely dangerous. And my friends keep testing positive for that, too. Oh lord!

I know that death is part of life. And the longer we live, the larger part it does play. It is no longer just something we read about. It is now personal. It is my friends. But how do I accept that? Well, it is not like writing a column that I can put off. This is not something I have to think about accepting, because it just is. It will happen over my objections. So, I must decide how to deal, how to react.

On Rosh Hashanah we sang a song I had never heard before. The chorus was:

I know we are hoping for better times to come

As we make one more circle around the sun

I know we’re praying for better times to come

As we make one more circle around the sun

The song touched me. It reminded me that the Jewish New Year reminds us that time keeps going, that the cycles continue, even though we feel different this time. We actually feel different every time. And the song says that each and every year (I assert, whether the last year feels like it has been good or bad), we hope and pray that the next year will be better.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said that “to be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world seriously threatened by despair. Every ritual, every element of Jewish law, is a protest against escapism, resignation of the blind acceptance of fate. Judaism is a sustained struggle, the greatest ever known, against a world that is, in the name of the world that could be, should be, but is not yet.” (I wish I could be that articulate.) I have posted that quote. I keep reading it to myself. Because I need to keep reminding myself.

I know that in the face of horrible things, as Jews, we must live with hope. It is our tradition. But this time of the year we must remember that we need more than hope. We must do more than pray. Prayer without action is insufficient. So, in the face of so much death, what do we do?

We turn to our rituals and traditions. We visit the sick, we comfort the mourner, and we accompany the dead. We care for the needy. We support our less fortunate brothers and sisters. As my rabbi so poignantly said in one of her sermons, we keep moving. We cannot, we must not, stand still and wallow in our grief. So many of the sermons around the country during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were on grief and on hope. There is a good reason. Because times are difficult. We seem to be losing ground. And yet in our grief, we must remain hopeful, and to make that hope a reality, we must take action.

Even as we reach that age when the people around us are dying. It is sad. It is sometimes confusing. We often look for explanations. But there are none. It is part of life. And as I said before, it is becoming a more common occurrence in our lives. So, in the life we have left, let’s get out there, and leave our marks.