By her own account, my mother is not a religious woman. She does not read the Bible, know Hebrew or put much stock in Jewish observance. She has been known to comment on my own degree of commitment to Judaism in anxious, hushed tones, the kind she uses when someone in our family is seriously ill.
My brother once told me she told him about the “weird tent with hanging fruit” in our backyard (our sukkah) and the cleaning frenzy I engage in before Passover as evidence that I’ve gone off the deep end and joined some bizarre cult.
So it was with both amazement and awe that I recently witnessed her response to the painful and inevitable death of her closest and oldest friend, Eleanor, from cancer. In those long six months, she met the task of loving and caring for Eleanor with instincts and behavior that are deeply Jewish.
She knew from the start how to provide comfort care, the kind that in its early stages took the form of a pot of chicken soup and a brisket big enough to feed the neighborhood but sadly ended with the stroking of a barely conscious forehead covered in sweat.
She understood intuitively that visiting the sick, or bikur cholim, often meant sitting quietly by Eleanor’s bedside, asking nothing, just giving her friend the sense that she didn’t have to bear her sickness alone.
And she helped create shalom bayit, a calm presence in the house, through her hugs and advice when Eleanor’s adult children became stressed and argumentative over what to do for their dying mother.
We talked often during this time about the questions that plagued her; theological questions that became real through the process of participating in the last stages of life of her dearest friend.
Why did Eleanor have to suffer so much? Who should be the one to determine the time of her death: the doctor, her family, Eleanor, G-d? What words of comfort could my mother speak to her dying friend about the significance of her life, about the children and grandchildren she would leave behind?
We covered much more territory than simply pondering those questions. In talking about Eleanor, my mother gave me a chance to find out more about her values, her needs and concerns, and her own fears of death. It was a gift that Eleanor gave to us, a time to talk safely in the third person about a very first person matter.
The Talmud, the sacred Jewish text that interprets the Torah, says that when a person meets his death, he will be asked these questions:
• Did you conduct yourself honestly in your business?
• Did you set aside fixed times to study Torah?
• Did you busy yourself with having children?
• Did you think about the World-to-Come?”
This text is instructive in that it establishes that the first question we are asked upon our deaths is not “Did you believe in G-d?” or “Did you perform all of the Jewish commandments?” but rather “Did you act ethically in your business life, in the way you treated your employees, in the manner in which you served your clients and patrons?”
The heart of Judaism is found in Jewish ethics, in the way we treat others in our daily lives.
While numerous qualities such as justice, mercy, righteousness, compassion and lovingkindness are highly esteemed, at the core of Jewish ethical living is the demand for human decency. It is as simple and as difficult as that.
Jewish tradition does not limit the domain of religious observance nor does it consider the performance of Jewish ritual as superior or more “religious” than the manner in which we live out each day. Praying three times a day is considered equally important to visiting a sick friend or not saying something hurtful.
My mother may not be considered a religious person by certain standards. But in loving and caring for her friend, she responded in the only way she knew how, from her heart. In this act, she confirmed her essence as a spiritual being engaged in a deeply human experience.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
