According to today’s daf TB Berachot 18 a mourner and
those attending the deceased before burial are freed from the obligation from
the recitation of the Shema, the Amidah, tefillin, and all other positive time
bound commandments exactly for the same reason a groom on the night of his
wedding is free from all those mitzvot. The mourner and the groom are so involved
in those mitzvot, they cannot concentrate appropriately on their prayers.
The rabbis want to know do the dead know was happening
on earth after they pass away. The Gemara tells several stories of people
talking to the deceased or overhearing the dead talk amongst themselves to
prove that dead know what’s going on. One
story reminded me of the scene from the 1990 movie Ghost starring Patrick
Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopie Goldberg. Goldberg plays the psychic Oda Mae who
after meeting Swayze’s character Sam can actually see and talk to ghosts. A
woman named Ortisha wants Oda Mae to contact her husband Orlando to find out
where he left the missing insurance policy. Perhaps the screenwriter got the
idea for this scene from today’s daf.
The Gemara cites another proof: Come and hear,
as it is told: They would deposit the money of orphans with Shmuel’s father
for safekeeping. When Shmuel’s father died, Shmuel was not with him, and
did not learn from him the location of the money. Since he did not return it,
Shmuel was called: Son of him who consumes the money of orphans.
Shmuel went after his father to the cemetery and said to the
dead: I want Abba. The dead said to him: There are many Abbas here.
He told them: I want Abba bar Abba. They said to him: There are also
many people named Abba bar Abba here. He told them: I want Abba bar Abba, the
father of Shmuel. Where is he? They replied: Ascend to the yeshiva on
high. Meanwhile, he saw his friend Levi sitting outside the yeshiva,
away from the rest of the deceased. He asked him: Why do you sit outside?
Why did you not ascend to the yeshiva? He replied: Because they tell me
that for all those years that you didn’t enter the yeshiva of Rabbi
Afes, and thereby upset him, we will not grant you entry to the yeshiva
on high.
Meanwhile, Shmuel’s father came and Shmuel saw
that he was crying and laughing. Shmuel said to his father: Why
are you crying? His father replied: Because you will come here
soon. Shmuel continued and asked: Why are you laughing? His father
replied: Because you are extremely important in this world. Shmuel said
to him: If I am important, then let them grant Levi entry to the yeshiva. And
so it was that they granted Levi entry to the yeshiva.
Shmuel said to his father: Where is the orphans’
money? He said to him: Go and retrieve it from the millhouse, where
you will find the uppermost and the lowermost money is ours, and
the money in the middle belongs to the orphans. Shmuel said to
him: Why did you do that? He replied: If thieves stole, they would steal from
our money on top, which the thief would see first. If the earth
swallowed up any of it, it would swallow from our money, on the
bottom. (Sefaria translation)
Even though you
might not believe in ghosts, our tradition teaches us that we must treat the
dead with dignity. Today’s Gemara relates that Rabbi Ḥiyya and Rabbi
Yonatan were walking in a cemetery and the sky-blue string of Rabbi
Yonatan’s ritual fringes was cast to the ground and dragging across
the graves. Rabbi Ḥiyya said to him: Lift it, so the dead will
not say: Tomorrow, when their day comes, they will come to be buried
with us, and now they are insulting us. (Sefaria.com) if we treated the dead with great respect, how much more so
should we treat the living with great respect!
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