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Gleanings - The Death of Sarah
The Editors
Sarah died at Kitiath-arba (that is Hebron) in the land of Canaan; and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Gen. 23:2
For three years Isaac had mourned for his mother, and he could not find consolation in the academy of Shem and Eber, his abiding place during that period. But Rebekah comforted him after his mother's death1 for she was the counterpart of Sarah in person and in spirit.2 Sarah appeared to Isaac after her death in the tent formerly occupied by her.3
See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil.
Deut. 30:15
The Death of Moses
When Moses died . . . Israel were not the only mourners for (him).
God himself wept for Moses, saying,
"Who will rise up for Me against the evildoers? . . . I weep not for Moses' sake, but for the loss Israel suffered through his death. How often had they angered Me, but he prayed for them and appeased My wrath."
(Moses' time was at an end but his soul did not want to leave him. The following dialogue then ensued: ) Soul: Let me remain where I am.
Moses: Is this because the Angel of Death wishes to show his power over thee?
Soul: Nay, God cloth not wish to deliver me into the hands of death.
Moses: Wilt thou, perchance, weep when the others will weep at my departure?
Soul: The Lord 'hath delivered mine eyes from tears'. Moses: Wilt thou, perchance, go into Hell when I am dead?
Soul: will walk before the Lord in the land of the
living.'
When Moses heard these words, he permitted his soul to leave him:
Moses: 'Return unto thy rest, 0 my soul; for the Lord bath dealt bountifully with thee.'
God thereupon took Moses' soul by kissing him upon the mouth.5
An All-Pervasive Presence
Death is not a moment in time . . .
It co-exists with man and is his life-long companion. It is an all-pervasive presence, the obvious end of all things.
Space and time, moments which vanish and distances which hold people apart, are all so many separations, so many little deaths.
Every farewell, forgetting and change, the fact that nothing can ever be exactly the same again, each one echoes the whisper of death at the very heart of life and throws us into an agony.
The departure of a loved one, the end of an affair, traces of aging on a face, the last glimpse of a city at a countryside one will never see again, or simply a faded flower, all can give rise to a profound sadness, a very immediate experience of anticipated death.
Paul Evdokimov: Feuillets Orthodoxes 6
Several years before Abraham Joshua Heschel's death in 1972, he suffered a near-fatal heart attack. He said to his friend, Sam:
"When I regained consciousness, my first feelings were not of despair or anger. I felt only gratitude to God for my life, for every moment I had lived. I was ready to depart. 'Take me, 0 Lord,' I thought, have seen so many miracles in my lifetime.' That is what I meant when I wrote:
did not ask for success; I asked for wonder. And You gave it to me.'"
He died on the Sabbath Eve, in his sleep, peacefully, with a "kiss", as the ancient rabbis describe the death of those who die on that day.7
1. Pirke Eliezer Amsterdam 1709 or Warsaw 1852.
2. Zohar I, 133a.
3. ibid., 33b.
4. Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, Vol. III, pp. 473f.
5. ibid., pp. 471ff.
6. Revue Prier, no. 16, Nov. 1979.
7. Cf. Conservative Judaism, Vol. XXXVI No. 2, pp. 4f., ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL: TEN YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH. Samuel H. Dresner (His friend Sam).
