Life After Loss

Six deaths. In the course of a year and a half, four thirty-something members of my synagogue had passed away from cancer, after a painful and slow decline.  At the same time, a nine-year-old child suddenly died from an aneurysm, and a twenty-seven-year-old newly married man died from unforeseen complications in surgery. The families were in agony. No words could describe the loss they had experienced.

I officiated at these funerals. At the time, I had been a synagogue Rabbi for about ten years. On the outside I was all professional; but inside, I was lost. Even though I was not a family member, my soul was shaken just from observing their parents’ grief. Horrible things had just happened to good people who were good friends. According to professional protocol, a rabbi should set boundaries and keep an emotional distance from his congregants; but who can actually do that?

I was hurting. Tragedies shake you up theologically, and you wonder how God could allow such suffering. But the existential impact is greater. The expected order of the universe had been turned upside down; the young were dying before their parents.

Tragedy lurks in the shadows and mocks our pretensions. In the back of our minds, we are aware of this reality; but we try desperately to repress it. We tell others about the importance of “closure” as if it can magically make things better. We try to “move on” quickly. But there are times when all of these superficial palliatives fail, and we are reminded, just as I was that year, that life is vulnerable and death is everywhere.

At that moment, the question arises: What does life after loss look like?

Parshat Parah is one of four special Torah readings that are read in the Hebrew months of Adar and Nissan. It describes the purification process for someone who comes into contact with a dead body; and this was a necessary prerequisite for anyone who wanted to bring the Passover sacrifice in the Temple.

Purification occurs after a complex ritual. A Parah Adumah, a red heifer, is sacrificed outside of the camp. Its carcass is burnt, and the ashes are mixed with water; the mixture is then sprinkled on the impure person on the third and seventh days. They then immerse in the Mikvah, and after nightfall, are considered pure.

In the Talmud and Midrash, the Parah Adumah is seen as the paradigmatic chok, a law without a clear reason. The Parah Adumah is specifically sacrificed outside of the sanctuary, while all other sacrifices must be done inside the sanctuary. Paradoxically, this sacrifice which purifies the impure renders all those involved in preparing the sacrifice and ashes impure. The Parah Adumah ritual is complicated and strange.

Actually, the mystery of the Parah Adumah is its very message. In the face of death, life becomes a bitter riddle. The Parah Adumah ritual reflects this; it acknowledges that life after loss is a struggle. Sometimes there are convoluted twists and turns before you can start over again. And even when purification is done, the residue of death remains, rendering others impure.

The road forward from tragedy is confounding. And it is precisely here that the mystery of renewal meets the mystery of faith.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik speaks about the difference between two different modes of purification: tevillah, immersion in a mikveh, and haza’ah, sprinkling water. After coming into contact with a dead body, immersion in a mikveh is not enough. Mortality is a trauma too large for one to grapple with alone; they must look to others for help. And that help, Soloveitchik explains, comes from God:  “The real cleanser of the morbid state induced by threatening death is God Himself. We have faith that He compassionately cares about us and that we will not be abandoned.”

It is a profound act of faith to meet death and continue to believe passionately in life. And that faith is truly otherworldly.

Part of this faith is to believe that your own existence is deeply meaningful, both in life and in death. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch sees the Parah Adumah as a reminder that we are more than physical beings. He explains that one might mistakenly believe that:

… The human corpse demonstrates the power of death for all to see, and the superficial observer perceives in the corpse the power of nature dominating everything, including man. If the whole man has succumbed to death; if the corpse lying before us, overwhelmed by the compelling forces of nature represents all there is to man, then man, even during his own lifetime, is no different than every other living being….

Hirsch explains that the entire Parah Adumah ritual signifies that this is not so. The young, unbroken heifer filled with the red glow of life represents our physical existence; yet even after our physical being is reduced to ashes, the soul can still connect to the fountain of life, and be brought into the sanctuary before God. He explains, “man is an amalgam of the heavenly and the earthly, the godly and the animal, the eternal and the transitory.” Death cannot extinguish what is eternal.

Humans have moral freedom, and leave behind a spiritual legacy. Our souls will live on. And so do the souls of those we love, those who are gone but never forgotten. Once we recognize this, the difficult task of living life in a tragic world becomes much more bearable.

Parshat Parah continues to be read, even though there is no Parah Adumah and no Passover sacrifice. Rabbi Yechiel Michael Epstein notes that some authorities consider the obligation to read this section to be a biblical obligation. He wonders why this should be so; Parshat Parah is a passage that no longer serves any practical purpose.

Yet we continue to read Parshat Parah today because it carries a timeless message: One can live on after profound loss. Renewal is always possible. One can laugh and love again.

And this is the story of the Jewish people. No matter what has happened, we have never stopped believing in life.

Years ago, I saw a museum display that contained an ordinary-looking Chuppah. It was blue and white with gold fringes, with the Hebrew word Zion in the center of a large Magen David, surrounded by the words of the wedding blessing: kol sasson vkol simhah, kol hatan vkol kallah, “the sound of joy and gladness; the voice of bridegroom and bride.”

But this was no ordinary Chuppah at all.

It was one of about 80 chuppot, manufactured in Mandatory Palestine, that were distributed by the Joint Distribution Committee in Displaced Persons Camps in Europe. The people who got married under those chuppot were young Holocaust survivors ready to begin a new life.

It seems impossible that these survivors could find faith in life again; and much like the Parah Adumah, how they were able to do this is a mystery. But thanks to people like them, families, communities, and the Jewish people have survived and thrived.

Keeping our faith in life, even after a profound loss, has made all of the difference.

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