Bargaining with God

Passover already ranks as the favorite Jewish family observance, but can anticipation of the holiday also extend life? Apparently so, says David Phillips, a sociology professor at UC San Diego.

He believes that older people can, in effect, will themselves to postpone death in order to participate in an important occasion, be it a religious holiday, a 50th wedding anniversary or any other landmark date.

With the approach of the new millennium — of special significance to many Christians — there has been renewed interest in Phillips’ hypothesis, first tested some years ago among Jews at Passover time.

In his research project, Phillips studied over an 18-year period the mortality rates among a sample of nearly 2,000 California Jews.

He found that, overall, the death rate dipped 35 percent below normal in the week before Passover, and peaked by an equal percentage above normal in the week following the holiday. The study was published in the prestigious British medical journal “Lancet.”

“It is my hypothesis that those nearing death may feel that an extended-family gathering at Passover offers the chance of saying hello and goodbye for the last time,” says Phillips.

The sociologist, an observant Jew and native of South Africa, says that he cannot pinpoint the social, physiological or biological factors that might be at play in the Passover effect. But he has little doubt that some form of psychosomatic process is involved.

The Passover findings were similar to those in an earlier statistical study by Phillips that focused on Yom Kippur and targeted records of Jewish deaths in New York and Budapest at the turn of the century.

Popular belief has long held that people can postpone dying, either through willpower or religious faith, Phillips notes.

“It is not uncommon for people to bargain with God for an extension of life until a significant occasion has arrived,” he says.

A historical example of such “bargaining” is cited in the deaths of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Both men died on the fourth of July, precisely 50 years after they had signed the Declaration of Independence.

The Encyclopaedia Brittanica notes, “It seems certain from the accounts of friends and relatives, that each man wanted badly to live until the 50th anniversary of the day that symbolized the central endeavor and achievement of their lives.”