July 15, 2021

Like brothers that have fallen out, or sides of a family that no longer speak, religion and everyday life are often seen to be at odds. It’s not hard to find the worldliest among us calling believers cranks, or the more pious seeing life in the secular world as the source of every evil and temptation.

I once spent four years working customer service in downtown Manhattan, and I can’t think of a worse outlook on life than the one where getting ahead is all there is. At the same time, though, if there is a God, the world and life in it cannot merely be some trick or test we are meant to resist and deny. And it’s just as destructive to allow a sense of otherworldliness to become world-hatred. Religion and the world are both destroyed when one is used as an escape from the other.

It’s also too easy to say that worldly life is so chaotic and meaningless that only religion can swoop in and give us certainty and safety. While this is true in a way—recall, how, in the opening chapter of Genesis, God literally creates the necessary boundaries between things—Donald Akenson suggests that the greatest strength of Judaism isn’t in the certainty or structure it offers, but in how it reveals that religion and God are actually a reflection of the world, rather than an excuse to condemn it:

“The reason the god of the ancient Israelites is so convincing is that, as he is limned in the covenant, he is the perfect embodiment of what is: reality. Whatever controls the lives of individual human beings (and there is an infinity of philosophical debate about such matters), it is not consistently nice, benevolent, predictable, or even understandable. Yahweh personifies that ultimate reality exactly. Life is bounteous, so too is Yahweh; life is unfair, so too is Yahweh (just ask Job). Yahweh is the name for reality invented by Hebrew religious geniuses who paid attention to the way the world works.”

“The world as it is,” then, is the best and most difficult definition we have of God. Religion in general, and Judaism especially, is not a collection of certainties that eradicate the difficulties of life; it’s a way of giving those difficulties meaning. Rather than a reason to deny that morality or meaning exist, the uncertain and sometimes incoherent experience of life is best expressed in the sometimes incomprehensible nature of religion. All the permutations and versions of itself that Judaism has been forced into finding thanks to its endless diaspora is an illustration of this. Perhaps Judaism only became itself in the making of these adaptations, whether during the Babylonian Exile or just in Brooklyn.

That beauty and meaning and decency should exist in a world upheld by an unswerving tradition that hovers above historical circumstance and change, isn’t much of a miracle; but that beauty and meaning and decency should exist in a world where even our hallowed traditions are upheld by uncertainty and conflict—that is a miracle, and every day we are called to contribute to it is equally miraculous. We are called to be good and to love—and to debate what that means—not because we can safely claim we know everything, but precisely because we don’t.

We are called to be good and to love—and to debate what that means—not because we can safely claim we know everything, but precisely because we don’t.

The mathematician and historian Jacob Bronowski put it this way: “There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility. That is the human condition.” The human condition, in other words—which is synonymous with the religious condition—is not one of power or dominance or certainty, but of humility; and if of humility, then of uncertainty; and if of uncertainty, then of empathy. Only in a condition of uncertainty, diaspora, and unsettledness can we recognize others in ourselves and ourselves in others—and this is only possible when the world itself is seen as the stage on which we work out what God means for us to do.

And don’t the narratives of the Tanakh bear this out? What simple takeaways and life lessons can we glean from the lives of the patriarchs, matriarchs and prophets, from David, from Nadab and Abihu or Phineas, and especially from the life of Moses? Are there any psalms that don’t assume that struggle and suffering must preclude peace and happiness? And where does the presence of God in these stories simplify anyone’s life? In fact, the presence of God always complicates life, always appears wrapped in and around the details of daily life. God’s presence always makes life more difficult—but also more meaningful.

In fact, the presence of God always complicates life, always appears wrapped in and around the details of daily life. God’s presence always makes life more difficult—but also more meaningful.

When Bronowski was making his documentary series “The Ascent of Man” in the early 1970s, one unforgettable scene was filmed at Auschwitz. There, standing up to his ankles in a pond, he said:

“This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods … I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died at Auschwitz, to stand here by the pond as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”

We lose the ability to “touch people” when we separate religion from everyday life, when we yearn for some illusory perfection we associate with God, and conclude that worldly life—and the people associated with it—are just scum on the bottom of somebody’s shoe.

While Judaism has had its share of ascetic movements, and continues to have its isolated enclaves, for me its greatest achievement is its refusal to deny the world. Even the laws of the Torah, and their excruciating explication in the Talmud, point to a sanctification of daily life, down to every gesture; and even the wildest mystical flights of the Kabbalah are made only for the purpose of tikkun olam, repairing the world, not for escaping it. Judaism shows how it is possible for religion not to raise us above the world but to settle us down in it.

After all, when my wife says the blessing over our daughter on Friday nights, asking that she be like “Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah,” what are we hoping for but that her life be filled with meaningful and difficult choices, that she be given the opportunity to walk with God by living in the world?

Tim Miller‘s poetry and essays have appeared in Parabola, The Wisdom Daily, Jewish Literary Journal, Crannog, Southword, Londongrip, Poethead, and others across the US and UK. Two recent books include Bone Antler Stone (poetry, The High Window Press) and the long narrative poem To the House of the Sun (S4N Books). 

The Jewish ethical will is a forgotten genre of literature. Like an ordinary will, the ethical will offers a set of instructions to be followed after death; but instead of monetary directives, it offers moral advice. It is the parent’s last lecture about the right way to live life. The will’s instructions will often include exhortations about religious practice, ethics, character and marriage, mixed in with personal anecdotes, rebukes and blessings. Many of the authors go so far as to leave instructions about how often the ethical will should be reread by the children because it is also the rough equivalent of a family mission statement.

The earliest examples of formal Jewish ethical wills go back to the middle of the 11th century, but the practice is rooted in both the Talmud and Midrash. In the 19th and 20th centuries, several scholars brought attention to this genre; the great trailblazing scholar of Jewish literature, Leopold Zunz, wrote a study of Jewish ethical wills, and an in-depth study was done by Israel Abrahams of Jews College in 1891. Abrahams later published a two-volume anthology entitled “Hebrew Ethical Wills.” In recent years, Rabbi Jack Riemer has written extensively about ethical wills, in hope of reviving this practice.

The Book of Deuteronomy, Sefer Devarim, is actually an ethical will. In the final five weeks of his life, Moshe offers a series of speeches and lectures that become the final book of the Torah. Sefer Devarim contains all of the elements of a traditional ethical will, with rebuke, autobiography, advice, commands and blessings. In a series of extraordinary speeches, Moshe offers a paradigm of what a person needs to say before they die.

We are obligated to pass our wisdom onto the next generation; life’s lessons carry profound insights, even divine insights. Don Isaac Abravanel writes that the contents of Sefer Devarim were originally Moshe’s words, and only later were these speeches chosen by God to be written down and incorporated into the Torah. Abravanel’s assertion is radical in terms of traditional views of Biblical authorship. But it also offers a very different perspective of religious knowledge, and asserts that human experience and interpretations can teach divine lessons. Later, this idea becomes the foundation of the rabbinic tradition; and even though there is a received tradition, rabbis from successive generations would still offer their own insights. Ethical wills have the same rationale; they recognize that each person has unique lessons that they alone can offer their children. As the 16th-century Polish rabbi Abraham Horowitz writes in his own ethical will, a true bequest goes beyond the financial. When a parent opens their heart and shares their final thoughts, they offer their children a spiritual bequest that is invaluable.

We are obligated to pass our wisdom onto the next generation; life’s lessons carry profound insights, even divine insights.

Moshe’s determination to share his ethical will is evident from the very beginning of the Torah reading. The verse reads “these are the words that Moshe spoke to the entire people of Israel.” The Hebrew words are “eleh hadevarim“; as the Midrash notes, these words are reminiscent of the exact words Moshe says when he initially refuses God’s mission over forty years earlier. At that point, he tells God he is not ready to go to Egypt because of his stutter, and explains that “lo ish devarim anochi,” “I am not a man of words.”

The similarity of phrasing in the two verses points us to a fascinating question: How did Moshe, who stutters and is not a “man of words,” give the speeches of Sefer Devarim at the end of his life? Perhaps, as one Midrash proposes, Moshe was transformed by teaching Torah, which healed his speech impediment. But there is another possibility: Moshe might have given this speech with the same stutter and stammer he always had. The speeches would have been painstakingly slow, and required great strength and determination. Yet Moshe perseveres; and in his final days of life, he teaches day in and day out, to ensure that these lessons won’t die with him.

Ethical wills reflect this same desire and dedication. Parents open their hearts and speak honestly to their children about what is important to them. Sometimes the advice is very personal. Rabbi Yaakov Dovid Wilovsky, a Lithuanian Rabbi, (who, among other stops in his career, presided over the 1904 High Holidays at my current synagogue, Kehilath Jeshurun), exhorted his descendants not to follow in his footsteps and to avoid the rabbinate. But much of the advice is timeless. Make certain to visit shiva houses. Take your prayers and Torah study seriously. Treat your spouses with respect. Avoid losing your temper, and above all, avoid disputes. In his ethical will, Judah ibn Tibbon, the 12th-century philosopher who lived in Provence, wrote “Make thy books thy companions. Let thy cases and shelves be thy pleasure grounds and gardens.” Nachmanides, the 13th-century Spanish rabbi, writes: “accustom yourself to speak in gentleness to all men.”

Some of the most moving ethical wills are written as letters to family and friends during times of crisis. Yosef Hagar of Lesko wrote in his final letter to his children, before Rosh Hashanah in 1942: “don’t lose your temper from so much sorrow … be well and strong. I bless and kiss you. Keep this letter and remember that you once had a father in this world. I wish for you to be inscribed and sealed in the book of life, and have a blessed and good New Year.”

Eldad Pan, a soldier for the Palmach who died at age 20 in 1948, wrote the following reflections when considering he might fall in battle: “At best a man’s life is short … the years of life do not satisfy the hunger for life. What then shall we do during this time? We can reach either one of  two conclusions. The first is that life is so short, we should enjoy it as much as possible. The second is that because life is short and no one can completely enjoy it, therefore we should dedicate life to a sacred and worthy goal … it seems that I am slowly coming to the conclusion that life by itself is worth little unless it serves something greater than itself.” These words jump off the page, and leap from one world to the next. Every ethical will aspires to do the same.

I have tried to write an ethical will several times, and each time stopped before writing anything. Considering my profession, I might be called a “man of words”; but here words fail me. The task is intimidating, and it feels like there is plenty of time. It is also discomfiting to wrestle with mortality, even for a few minutes. I hope that when the time comes, Moshe’s example will help me through the hesitations and stumbles, and remind me that there are some things you need to say before you die.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.