For decades a dedicated
group of women in my synagogue met every Tuesday morning to study. When I
arrived at Marathon Jewish Community Center I taught them the weekly Torah
portion the first hour and Jewish short stories the second hour. These women
were not only intelligent, but also had a wealth of life experiences they
shared with me. Slowly but surely this group of women grew older and older and
smaller and smaller as more went to their eternal home. On more than one
occasion they told me that “Growing old isn’t for sissies. “ Today’s daf TB
Shabbat 152 reinforces this lesson that the class taught me by discussing the
aging process and dying through the prism of verses from the 12th
chapter of Ecclesiastes and from the sages own life experiences. They speculated
what happens to the soul of the person after he or she dies.
“The Sages
taught with regard to the verse: “And the spirit returns to God who gave
it” (Ecclesiastes
12:7) that the words: Who gave it, mean: As it was given. In other
words, give it to Him as He gave it to you; just as He gave it to you in
purity, you too should return it to God in purity. The Gemara cites a
parable of a king of flesh and blood who distributed royal garments to his
servants. The wise ones folded them and placed them in a box [kufsa]
to protect them, whereas the foolish ones went and worked in them. After
a period of time the king requested that his garments be returned
to him. The wise ones returned them to him pressed, as they were when
the servants received them, and the foolish ones returned them dirty. The
king was happy to greet the wise ones and angry to greet the foolish ones.
“With regard to the wise ones he said: My garments
shall be given back to the storehouse, and let them go to their homes in
peace. And with regard to the foolish ones he said: My garments shall be given
to the launderer, and they, the fools, will be locked up in prison
as a punishment for degrading the king’s garments for their own purposes.
“The Holy One, Blessed be He, also acts in this
way. With regard to the bodies of the righteous, which are likened to
the royal garments that are well kept, it states: “He enters into peace,
they rest on their beds each one that walks in his uprightness” (Isaiah 57:2). And with
regard to their souls, it states: “And the soul of my lord shall be bound in
the bundle of life with the Lord your God” (I Samuel 25:29). And conversely, with
regard to the bodies of the wicked, it states: “There is no peace, says the
Lord, for the wicked” (Isaiah
57:21), and with regard to their souls, it states: “And the souls
of your enemies He shall sling out in the hollow of a sling” (I Samuel 25:29).” (Sefaria.org translation)
Every morning we recite the
blessing thanking God for the gift of her soul which alludes to what the sages
taught in the very first paragraph of our text. “The soul that You, my God, have given me is
pure. You created it, You formed it, You breathed it into me; You keep body and
soul together. One day You will take my soul from me, to restore to me in life
eternal. So long as the soul is within me I acknowledge You, Adonai my God, my
ancestors’ God, Master of all creation, Sovereign of all souls. Praised are You
Adonai, who restores the soul to the lifeless, exhausted body.” (Siddur Sim
Shalom for Shabbat and Festivals, page 63) God gives us a pure soul because He
loves us.
We do not have to despair
for soul’s fate if we are not completely righteous, for who is?! God knows that
being human and fallible means that we make mistakes, we sin, and we
transgress. By breathing in our pure soul each morning upon waking, the Holy One
has created a daily opportunity for a fresh start. “Reb Goldie Milgram writes:
‘We pray with the awareness that any shmutz that gets onto our soul is of our own doing,
that each day can be lived from the place of a refreshed pure white page in the
Torah of our lives.’ <…> [T]hat’s a pretty radical notion. The Elohai neshamah blessing
asserts that I am not broken. I may stray from the path; I may blind myself to
blessing; I may close my eyes to the All, Who permeates creation; but these are
my mistakes, and I can fix them. <…> No matter how I miss the mark in my
daily undertakings, every morning I begin again clean.” Barenblatt, Rachel, ‘Elohai N’shamah’
(https://alexandermassey.com/elohai-nshamah/)
This opportunity is something to be grateful for.
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