Preparing to say goodbye

Earlier this week Tzohar put together an online program titled "Preparing to Say Goodbye" and subtitled "A personal, medical and ethical discussion on confronting end-of-life issues".

I was a little surprised to see this event advertised in the OU's Torah Tidbits magazine, where the advertisements tend to focus on catered holiday programs for the Jewish holidays and high-end property sales. However, the subject of "saying goodbye" is an important one, albeit one that has to be handled sensitively since many people are uncomfortable with it.

Israel has one of the longest life-expectancies in the world, which rather suggests that its inhabitants are in no hurry to say their fond farewells, and the lovely Jerusalem inner-city paradise that is Rechavia might almost be described as a senior citizens' residential campus.

What does Pirkei Avot have to say on the subject? It recognises that age is an issue and that, once people hit their nineties, we really shouldn't expect too much of them; one we hit the hundred mark, it's as though we're just not there any more (Avot 5:25). This curious mishnah is the subject of numerous commentaries that downplay the position of the seriously old, but none of them suggest that we should treat centenarians and near-centenarians with anything other than the utmost personal respect.

There is teaching that has something more practical about preparing for death. This is where Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (Avot 2:15) urges everyone to repent today since they might be dead tomorrow. That proposition applies across the board, not only to the old, and therefore to people who have no expectation of imminent death at all, as well as those who do.

But that is not all. Taken across all six chapters, Avot contains over 20 mishnayot and baraitot that allude to death and the world to come in one way or another. That's around 15% of the tractate's total content. Such prosaic, if painful, issues as that of how to say farewell to family, friends and loved ones are not explicitly tackled; these are topics that are generally too personal to be subject to quick and convenient verbal formulae.

Though we do not know the details, we are taught to believe that there is a life to follow the one we now live and a world to follow this one. The significance of an after-world, whatever form it may take, does not lie solely in the area of rewarding the good and punishing the wicked. It also encourages us to recognise that, as we exit one world for another, for every goodbye, there is a corresponding hello. We should prepare ourselves for that too.