Daf Ditty Moed Katan 28:‫ֵאֶבל‬-‫ֵבּית‬-‫טוֹב ָלֶלֶכת ֶאל‬

Saskia Serle

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning

‫ ְוֵלב ְכִּסיִלים ְבֵּבית ִשְׂמָחה‬,‫ֵלב ֲחָכִמים ְבֵּבית ֵאֶבל‬.

Eccl 7:4

Yehudah Amichai, The Great Tranquility; Questions and Answers

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MISHNA: On the intermediate days of a Festival women may wail in grief over the deceased,
but they may not clap [metapeḥot] their hands in mourning. Rabbi Yishmael says: Those who
are close to the bier may clap.

On New Moons, Hanukkah and Purim, which are not Festivals by Torah law, the women may
both wail and clap their hands in mourning. On both the intermediate days of a Festival and on
New Moons, Hanukkah and Purim they may not lament. After the deceased has been buried
they may neither wail nor clap.

The mishna explains: What is considered wailing? This is when they all wail together
simultaneously. And what is considered a lament? This is when one speaks and they all answer
after her with a repeated refrain, as it is stated:

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 ,‫ ְיהָוה‬-‫ְשַׁמְﬠָנה ָנִשׁים ְדַּבר‬-‫יט ִכּי‬ 19 Yea, hear the word of the LORD, O ye women, and let
‫ִפּיו; ְוַלֵמְּדָנה‬-‫ְוִתַקּח ָאְז ְנֶכם ְדַּבר‬ your ear receive the word of His mouth, and teach your
.‫שּׁה ְרעוָּתהּ ִקיָנה‬ ָ ‫ ְוִא‬,‫ְבנוֵֹתיֶכם ֶנִהי‬ daughters wailing, and everyone her neighbour
lamentation:
Jer 9:19

“And teach your daughters wailing and everyone her neighbor lamentation”

In order to conclude on a positive note, the mishna says: But with regard to the future, the verse
states:

‫ וָּמָחה ֲאֹדָני‬,‫ח ִבַּלּע ַהָמֶּות ָלֶנַצח‬ 8 He will swallow up death for ever; and the Lord GOD
‫ָפּ ִנים; ְוֶח ְרַפּת‬-‫ְיה ִוה ִדְּמָﬠה ֵמַﬠל ָכּל‬ will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach
,‫ִכּי ְיהָוה‬--‫ָהָא ֶרץ‬-‫ ָיִסיר ֵמַﬠל ָכּל‬,‫ַﬠמּוֹ‬ of His people will He take away from off all the earth; for
{‫ }פ‬.‫ִדֵּבּר‬ the LORD hath spoken it. {P}
Isa 25:8

“He will destroy death forever; and the Lord, God, will wipe away tears from off all faces and
the reproach of His people He will take away from off all the earth”

It is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Meir would say with regard to the verse

-‫ ִמֶלֶּכת ֶאל‬,‫ֵאֶבל‬-‫ֵבּית‬-‫ב טוֹב ָלֶלֶכת ֶאל‬ 2 It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to
-‫ הוּא סוֹף ָכּל‬,‫ַבֲּאֶשׁר‬--‫ֵבּית ִמְשֶׁתּה‬ the house of feasting; for that is the end of all men, and the
.‫ִלבּוֹ‬-‫ ִיֵתּן ֶאל‬,‫ָהָאָדם; ְוַהַחי‬ living will lay it to his heart.
Eccl 7:2

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 “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end
of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart”

What should the living lay to his heart? Matters relating to death. And these matters are as
follows: He that eulogizes will be eulogized by others. He that buries others will be buried by
others. He that loads many words of praise and tribute into the eulogies that he delivers for others
will be similarly treated by others. He that raises his voice in weeping over others will have
others raise their voices over him.

And some say: One who does not raise himself with pride, but chooses his place among the
lowly, will be raised by others, as it is written:

‫ֶמֶל‹; וִּבְמקוֹם‬-‫ִתְּתַהַדּר ִלְפֵני‬-‫ ו ַאל‬6 Glorify not thyself in the presence of the king, and stand
.‫ַתֲּﬠֹמד‬-‫ ַאל‬,‫ְגֹּדִלים‬ not in the place of great men;

-‫ֲﬠֵלה‬ ,Ž‫ְל‬-‫ֲאָמר‬ ‫טוֹב‬ ‫ ז ִכּי‬7 For better is it that it be said unto thee: 'Come up
‫ֲאֶשׁר‬--‫ ִלְפֵני ָנִדיב‬,Ž‫ֵמַהְשִׁפּיְל‬ :‫ ֵהָנּה‬hither', than that thou shouldest be put lower in the
.Ž‫ָראוּ ֵﬠיֶני‬ presence of the prince, whom thine eyes have seen.
Prov 25:6-7

“Do not exalt yourself in the king’s presence, and stand not in the place of great men. For it is
better to be told, step up here, than to be degraded in the presence of the great”

Summary

On Rosh Hodesh, on Hannukah and on Purim they may wail and clap [their hands in grief].
Neither on the former nor on the latter occasions may they offer a lamentation.
After the dead has been buried they neither wail nor clap [their hands in grief].1

What is meant by wailing? When all wail in unison.

What is meant by a lament? When one speaks and all respond after her, as it is said: “And
teach your daughters wailing and one another [each] lamentation” (Jeremiah 9:19).

But as to the future, it says: “He will destroy death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away
the tears from all faces” (Isaiah 25:9).

1
https://www.sefaria.org/Moed_Katan.28b.1?lang=bi&p2=Mishnah_Moed_Katan.3.9&lang2=bi&w2=English%20Explanation%
20of%20Mishnah&lang3=en

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The last mishnah in Moed Katan continues to discuss womens’ mourning practices during the
festival. It concludes with a note of hope for the future, for a messianic age when God will conquer
death.

Section one: Rosh Hodesh, Hannukah and Purim are semi-holidays. There are special prayers and
Torah readings for all three of them, but work is not prohibited. Two of them (Hannukah and
Purim) are not mentioned in the Torah and hence, their importance is less than that of the other
holidays. Due to their diminished status, the women may even clap their hands in grief at a funeral.
This was prohibited during the festival.

Section two: Lamenting (explained below) is forbidden on all holidays, both those mentioned in
section one of this mishnah and the festivals discussed in yesterday’s mishnah.

Section three: The women are permitted to wail or clap only as long as the dead body has not
been buried. Once the body is buried, both practices become forbidden.

Section four: The mishnah now defines, at least partially, wailing and lamenting. Wailing is done
by all of the women simultaneously. Lamenting is done responsively, one woman speaking and
the others answering after her. This is hinted at in Jeremiah who says that one woman teaches
another lamentation, interpreted to mean that one woman recites the lamentation and the others
repeat after her.

Section five: All of this talk about death can be depressing and scary. Indeed, it was often
considered forbidden for young men to learn the third chapter of Moed Katan because all of this
talk about death could bring on bad luck (the evil eye). To alleviate this distress, the tractate ends
on a positive note. The current stage of humanity, where we must face the distressing possibility
of mourning in the middle of the joy of a festival, will be alleviated in the messianic period, when
God will conquer death.

[You probably already know what I’m going to say but I’ll say it anyway].
It is a tradition at this point to thank God for helping us finish learning the tractate and to commit
ourselves to going back and relearning it, so that we may not forget it and so that its lessons will
stay with us for all of our lives.

Most of Moed Katan was about the laws of the festival. These laws are fascinating (at least to me)
because they are grayer, more ambiguous, than the prohibitions in effect on Shabbat and Yom Tov.
Some activities are generally prohibited but are allowed under extenuating circumstances, unlike
Shabbat where any given labor is basically always prohibited.

When I think of the laws of the Moed (the festival), I think of a sort of mathematical equation
which we would need to perform before determining whether a labor is permitted or forbidden.
There are several factors that might lead to something being permitted/forbidden. For instance,
will not doing the work cause a significant financial loss?

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Could the work have been done before the festival? Is it strenuous? Did the person plan on working
on the festival? Is it being done in the normal fashion? Only when we know the answers to these
questions can we decide whether the work is permitted.

Today, many of these laws are neglected. In our busy modern economies it is hard enough to take
off of work for Yom Tov (the first and last days of the festival), let alone for the rest of the festival.
Many of these halakhot are basically no longer observed because any cessation of work causes a
“grave financial loss.” While this may be to a certain extent true, I think we should keep in mind
that the rabbis wanted to preserve the character of the festival by turning it into a celebratory
vacation. Rejoicing is one of the main obligations on the festival and it’s much easier to party when
you’re not working.

When We Die2

We are diving deep today, digging into the topic of death. Beginning with women's deaths in
childbirth and their appropriate burials, we are told that Miriam, like Moses, was killed with a
Divine kiss. A note explains that this image would be inappropriate, and thus we have to find
proof texts to understand that Miriam died either like Moses or like Aaron. Once discussing the
death of our ancestors, the rabbis immerse themselves in this topic.

First, they look at the meanings of deaths at different ages. A ripe age is 60, as that was the age
described in a proof text. Seventy is old age, and 80 requires strength. The rabbis try to understand
when we can attribute death to the punishment called karet, or death at the hand of Heaven. Karet
is one of the most severe consequences that a Jew can suffer.

Some of our Sages believe that the age of death is due to fate - nothing more and nothing less. The
deaths of Rabbi Chisda and Rabba are used as an example. Both were great scholars. When each
of them prayed for rain, we are told, it rained. And yet Rabbi Chisda saw sixty marriages in his
family, lived with sustenance even for the animals and with great wealth until the age of
82. Rabba, on the other hand, saw sixty calamities over the course of his life. All of his children
died, and his family did not have enough of the simple food that they ate. How could this be G-
d's will? Instead, fate controls the lifespan of our Sages.

This opinion is very much in line with modern philosophies regarding G-d's involvement in our
lives. These rabbis would have understood the Holocaust as acts of human depravity rather than
acts of G-d's will. And though we think of the Holocaust as a major defining moment in Jewish

2
http://dafyomibeginner.blogspot.com/2014/09/

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understandings of G-d, certainly the Jewish people were subject to similar tragedies (perhaps
without the means of the 20th century) by the time that this Gemara was spoken.

The Angel of Death is the next topic that intrigues our rabbis. They discuss the stories of different
rabbis and their interactions with the Angel of Death. It seems that the Angel of Death can be
delayed but not cancelled. One story tells of Rabbi Chisda, who lived so long because his mouth
never ceased speaking words of Torah; the Angel of Death was unable to interrupt him. Finally,
the Angel of Death sat on the ceiling of the study hall, causing the wood to creak. At that moment,
Rabbi Chisda looked up and stopped speaking. This was enough of a pause for the Angel of Death
to take Rabbi Chisda.

A new Mishna, the last of Masechet Moed Katan, tells us how and when women should wail,
lament, and clap their hands in mourning. We learn that on Chanukah, Purim and Rosh Chodesh,
women can wail and clap their hands. On intermediate days, Rosh Chodesh, Chanukah and Purim,
they may clap their hands and wail but not lament. Wailing is when all women cry out
together. Lamenting is when one person speaks and the others answer together. Jeremiah (9:10)
tells us that Jews were told to teach our daughters to wail and lament. Finally, the Mishna teaches
that G-d will destroy death forever, wiping away tears from all faces (Isaiah 25:8).

Women from different communities would cry out different things. The women of Shekhantziv
are said to be very wise; they often spoke in riddles. The rabbis tell us that they would say the
following things:

• woe over him who is departing

• woe over the pledge
• woe over him who is departing, woe over the pledge
• the bone has been removed from the jaw and the water returns to the kettle
• wrap and cover the mountains as the son of the high and distinguished
• lend a cloak fine wool for a free man whose sustenance has been depleted
• runs and tumbles at the ford and he borrows
• our brothers, the merchants, will be examined at their places
• death is like death, and suffering is like interest

The rabbis tell us many different ways that we "do unto others as we would have done to us" with
regard to eulogizing, burying, praising, wailing, and being humble.

A baraita is shared about eulogies for the sons of Rabbi Yishmael. Four great Sages came to

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comfort him. Each one spoke without interrupting the other, speaking of proofs that Rabbi
Yishmael's sons will be honored and that they were important and special people. Although this
seems comforting, it also has an air of competition about it. Hopefully Rabbi Yishmael was
comforted by their words.

At the end of our daf, we learn that the prooftext for waiting until a mourner to speak until one
responds is in Job. Job spoke first; only then was he spoken to. This custom continues today. The
rabbis continue in this vein and speak about who sits at the head of the table in different
circumstances. They also speak of who has the honour of reciting Grace over Meals following the
supper.

Rav Avrohom Adler writes:3

The Mishna had stated: They never set down the biers of women in the street out of respect (blood
might flow from them and it would be embarrassing). They said in Nehardea: This halachah applies
only to a woman who dies in childbirth, but other women who die may be set down. Rabbi Elozar
says: It applies to all women since it is written: And Miriam died there and was buried there.

[It is derived from Scripture that women should be buried immediately after they die, even though
she did not die at childbirth.]

Rabbi Elozar said: Moshe, Aharon and Miriam earned the merit to die by “a kiss of G-d.” When
Miriam died, the Torah does not use that expression, since it is not respectful to Hashem to write
such a thing. Nevertheless, Chazal derive from a gezeirah shavah (one of the thirteen principles of
Biblical hermeneutics - Gezeirah shavah links two similar words from dissimilar verses in the
Torah) that Miriam died in the same way as her brother Moshe.

Rabbi Ami said: The Torah informs us of Miriam's death immediately after enumerating the laws
of the "Parah Adumah", the red heifer whose ashes were used for purification. Why is the death of
Miriam juxtaposed to the laws of the Parah Adumah? This teaches that just as the Parah Adumah
brings atonement, so too, the death of the righteous brings atonement. Rabbi Elozar said: Why is
the death of Aaron juxtaposed to the mentioning of the priestly clothes? This teaches that just as
the priestly clothes bring atonement, so too, the death of the righteous brings atonement. (28a) The
Gemora cites a braisa: One who dies suddenly, he is said to have died an abrupt death; if the death
was preceded by one day's sickness, it is a hastened death.

Rabbi Chanania ben Gamliel said: The latter case is termed death by a plague, as it is written
[Yechezkel 24:16]: Son of man, behold, I will take away from you the darling of your eyes in a
plague; and it is stated again [ibid: 18]: I told this to the people in the morning, and my wife died
at evening. The Tanna Kamma continues: If it was preceded by a two days' sickness, it is a hurried
death; if by a three days', it is a rebuke; if by a four days', a scorn; but if preceded by a five days'
sickness, it is an ordinary death. Rabbi Chanin said: What is the Scriptural source for this? It is
written: Behold your days are approaching that you must die. ‘Behold’ accounts for one;

3
http://dafnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Moed_Katan_28.pdf

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‘approaching’ accounts for two (more); ‘your days’ gives us two (more), which makes five. The
Gemora notes: ‘Behold’ makes one because the word for ‘one’ in Greek is ‘hein.’

The braisa continues: Death at the age of fifty is kares (cut off); at fifty-two, the age at which
Shmuel the Ramathite died; at sixty, a death by the hands of Heaven. Mar Zutra said: What is the
Scriptural source for this? It is written: You will go to the grave (vechelach) at a mature age. The
numerical value of vechelach is sixty.

The braisa continues: Death at the age of seventy (or older) is (regarded as death in) old age; eighty
(or older) is strength, as it is written: The days of our years among them are seventy years, and if
with strength, eighty years. Rabbah said: If one dies from fifty to sixty, it is also regarded as kares;
the reason why this is not stated in the braisa is because of the honor of Shmuel the Ramathite
(who died at fifty-two).

The Gemora relates: When Rav Yosef reached the age of sixty, he made a celebration for the
students. He said: I have passed the age of kares. Abaye said to him: It is true that the Master has
passed the age of kares, but has the Master already passed the day of kares (referring to one who
dies without being sick for five days)?

Rav Yosef replied: Be content with at least half. The Gemora records another incident: Rav Huna
died suddenly, which caused the students great worry. A pair of scholars from Hadayab taught
them the following braisa: Sudden death can be regarded as kares only when the deceased has not
reached the age of eighty; but if he has, it is, on the contrary, considered a death by a kiss.

Rava said: The length of one’s life, the amount of his children, and his sustenance are not
dependent on merit, but rather on mazal (fate). He cites proof to this from Rabbah and Rav Chisda
who were both righteous rabbis as can be proven from the fact that one prayed and it began to rain
and the other prayed and it began to rain.

Rav Chisda lived ninety-two years, and yet, Rabbah lived only forty. Rav Chisda’s house had sixty
weddings, and yet, Rabbah’s house had sixty deaths. Rav Chisda’s house gave fine-flour bread to
their dogs because they had so much; whereas Rabbah’s house gave barley flour to people and
there wasn’t enough. Rava said: Three things I prayed that Heaven should grant me. Two were
granted, the third one not. I asked for the wisdom of Rav Huna and the wealth of Rav Chisda and
both were granted to me, but I asked also for the humility of Rabbah bar Rav Huna and that was
not given to me.

Rav Seorim, the brother of Rava, was sitting at the bedside of Rava when Rava was deathly ill. As
Rava was about to die, he said: Let the Master tell him (the Angel of Death) not to pain me. He
answered him: Is, then, the Master himself not a friend of him? Rava replied: As my fate was
already delivered to him, he will not listen to me anymore.

Rav Seorim said to Rava: I would like that the Master should appear before me after he dies. After
Rava died, he came to Rav Seorim and Rav Seorim asked him: Did the Master feel any pain? He
answered: It resembled a puncture from a bloodletter’s lancet (there was very little pain). Rava
was sitting at the bedside of Rav Nachman when Rav Nachman was deathly ill. As Rav Nachman

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was about to die, he said: Let the Master tell him (the Angel of Death) not to pain me. Rava
answered him: Isn’t the Master a prominent person? Rav Nachman replied: Who is esteemed, or
awesome, or exalted? Rava said to Rav Nachman: I would like that the Master should appear
before me after he dies.

After Rav Nachman died, he came to Rava and Rava asked him: Did the Master feel any pain? He
answered: It resembled the removal of hair from milk (it didn’t cause any pain); and yet, if the
Holy One, blessed be He, would command me to return to the world, I would not be interested,
for the fear of the Angel of Death is too great.

Rabbi Elozar was eating terumah when the Angel of Death appeared before him. Rabbi Elozar
said to him: I am now eating terumah, is it not sacred? The moment passed and he was spared. The
Angel of Death presented himself to Rav Sheishes in the marketplace. Rav Sheishes said to him:
Do you wish to take me when I am in the market, as if I were an animal? Come to my house. The
Angel of Death presented himself to Rav Ashi in the marketplace.

Rav Ashi said to him: Wait thirty days in order that I will be able to review my studies, as it is
said: Fortunate is the person who comes here with his studies in his hand. On the thirtieth day he
appeared again, and Rav Ashi said to him: What is the rush? He answered him: You are interfering
with (Rav Huna) Bar Nassan (as his time has come to take over your position), and the reign of
one ruler may not impinge upon another, even as much as a hair.

Rav Chisda could not be overpowered (by the Angel of Death) since his mouth never ceased from
studying Torah. The Angel of Death climbed up and sat on a cedar in front of Rav Chisda’s house
of study. When the cedar broke down, Rav Chisda interrupted his study for a moment and the
Angel of Death overpowered him at that moment. Rabbi Chiya could not be overpowered (by the
Angel of Death).

One day he disguised himself as a pauper, and went and knocked on the door of Rabbi Chiya, and
asked for a slice of bread. The household members gave him some bread. The Angel of Death said
to him: Doesn’t the Master have mercy with a poor man? Why doesn’t the Master have mercy with
me (and let me fulfill my mission)? He revealed himself to Rabbi Chiya, showing him a rod of fire
and Rabbi Chiya surrendered his soul to him.

The Mishna states: Women may chant a funeral song during Chol Hamoed but they may not clap
(hitting one hand against the other, demonstrating grief). Rabbi Yishmael says: Those that are near
the coffin, they are permitted. On Rosh Chodesh, Chanukah and Purim, they are permitted to chant
a funeral song and clap. During Chol Hamoed, Rosh Chodesh, Chanukah and Purim, they are
forbidden to respond in lamentation.

Once the deceased has been buried, it is forbidden to chant a funeral song or to clap. The Mishna
asks: What is innuy? When they all chant together. What is kinah (lamentation)? When one speaks
and the others respond after her. The Mishna concludes: But regarding the future to come it is
written in Yeshaye [25:8]: He will eliminate death forever, and Hashem the Lord will erase tears
from all faces. (28b) Rav said: They (the eulogizers) said: Woe over the journey, woe over the
security.

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Rava cites seven funeral songs that were sung by the women of Shechantziv. They said: Woe over
the journey, woe over the security. They said: Cut bone from tooth; bring water to the kettle. They
said: Wrap and cover yourselves, o mountains, for he was a man of distinction and greatness. They
said: The coffin is a robe of fine silk to a free man whose provisions are depleted. They said: He
runs and falls; he borrows at the crossing. They said: Our brothers are merchants, whose nests will
be searched. They said: This death or that death; suffering is the interest payment.

The Gemora cites a braisa: Rabbi Meir used to say: It is written [Koheles 7:2]: It is better to go to
the house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for that is the end of all man, and the living
should take it to heart. The living should take to heart matters connected with death.

The Gemora explains the reward for those who eulogize the dead:

One who eulogizes over the dead, others will eulogize over him.
One who buries the dead, others will bury him.
One who carries the dead, others will carry him.
One who raises himself for the dead, others will raise themselves for him.

Others say: One who is modest, and troubles himself with burying the dead quietly, he will be
elevated by Heaven.

The Gemora cites a braisa: When the sons of Rabbi Yishmael died, four elder sages came to
comfort him: Rabbi Tarfon, Rabbi Yosi Hagelili, Rabbi Elozar ben Azaryah and Rabbi Akiva.
Rabbi Tarfon said to the other three: You must know that he (Rabbi Yishmael) is extremely wise
and he is well versed in Agados, and therefore none of you should repeat what the other has said.

Rabbi Akiva said: I will be the last speaker. Rabbi Yishmael began: His sins are many (referring
to himself), his mournings have succeeded one another (one son died soon after the other), and he
has inconvenienced his teachers once and twice. Rabbi Tarfon said: It is written [Vayikra 10:6]:
And your brethren, the whole house of Israel, may bewail the burning (of Nadav and Avihu, the
two sons of Aharon HaKohen). If Nadav and Avihu, who observed only one commandment,
nevertheless were accorded the honor that the entire congregation mourned over them; then the
sons of Rabbi Yishmael who observed many mitzvos, are certainly deserving of a similar honor.

Rabbi Yosi Hagelili said: "It is written [Melachim I 14:13]: And all Israel shall mourn for him,
and bury him. If this was done for Aviyah the son of Yerovam, who performed only one good
deed, then the sons of Rabbi Yishmael who performed many good deeds, are certainly deserving
of a similar honor.

The Gemora asks: What was the good thing? Rabbi Zeira and Rabbi Chinana bar Papa offer
opinions: One says that he deserted his position (his father appointed him to prevent the people
from traveling to the Beis Hamikdosh during the festival) and made a pilgrimage to Yerushalayim
on the festival. The other says: He had abolished the guards which were established by his father
to prevent the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

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Rabbi Elozar ben Azaryah began: It is written [Yirmiya 34:5]: In peace you shall die; and with the
burnings performed for your forefathers, the former kings that were before you, so shall they make
a burning for you; and they shall lament for you: “Woe, master!” If this was done for Tzidkiyahu
the king of Yehudah, who performed only one mitzva (near the end of his life, thus meriting
honorable treatment by his death), namely, that he instructed to raise Jeremiah from the pit filled
with mud, then the sons of Rabbi Yishmael who observed many mitzvos, are certainly deserving
of a similar honor.

Rabbi Akiva began: It is written: On that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the
mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon, and Rav Yosef (commenting on this) said:
Were it not for the Targum of this verse, we would not know what it means (for such an incident
is not recorded anywhere). The Targum explains: ‘On that day shall there be great mourning in
Jerusalem - like the mourning of Ahab son of Omri who was killed by Hadadrimmon son of
Tavrimmon in Ramos Gilad, and like the mourning of Yoshiyah son of Ammon who was killed
by Pharaoh the Lame in the valley of Megiddo.’

Rabbi Akiva continued: If there was a great mourning over the death of Achab the king of Israel,
who has done only one good thing, then the sons of Rabbi Yishmael who observed many mitzvos,
are certainly deserving of a similar honor. Rava asked Rabbah bar Mari: Tzidkiyahu was promised
that he will be die in peace and yet we have learned that Nevuchadnetzzar blinded his eyes? Rabbah
bar Mari answered: Rabbi Yochanan answered that the promise that he will die in peace was
referring to the fact that Nevuchadnezzar will die in Tzidkiyahu’s lifetime.

Rava asked Rabbah bar Mari: Yoshiyahu was promised that he will be buried in peace and yet we
have learned that Yoshiyahu was shot by archers and so many arrows pierced his body that it
resembled a sieve? Rabbah bar Mari answered: Rabbi Yochanan answered that the promise of
being buried in peace was referring to the fact that the Beis Hamikdosh was not destroyed during
his lifetime.

MAZAL

The Gemara says that children, length of life, and livelihood are dependent on the Mazal. Tosfos
asks that the Gemara says elsewhere that Klal Yisrael is not dependent on the Mazal. Tosfos
answers that although Mazal does apply to Klal Yisrael, a person with great merit can circumvent
the Mazal with it.

The Maharsha says that a person can circumvent the Mazal with prayer and that is why Rava
prayed for wisdom and wealth even though these attributes are dependent on the Mazal. The
Rashba says that Klal Yisrael as a nation is not dependent on the Mazal but each individual is.4

4
By: Revach

12
 A NORMAL DEATH

Rav Mordechai Kornfeld writes:5

The Beraisa discusses different levels of suddenness of death. It says that one who dies after being
ill for five days is considered to have died a normal death. This is derived from the death of Moshe
Rabeinu, who Hash-m informed five days before he died that his death was imminent (Devarim
31:14).

How does the Gemara learn from the death of Moshe Rabeinu that when a person dies after being
ill for five days, his death is considered a normal death? The Torah explicitly states that Moshe
Rabeinu died when he was in full health (Devarim 34:7)! (TOSFOS DH Hen)

(a) The TOSFOS HA'ROSH answers that Hash-m told Moshe that had he not merited to die
"b'Neshikah" (through the "kiss" of Hash-m), he would have become sick at that time and died
five days later, since his allotted lifespan was finished. (The MAHARSHA gives a similar
answer.)

(b) The RITVA adds that the reason why Hash-m created man such that he should become ill five
days before he dies is so that the person will have an opportunity to conclude his worldly affairs
before he leaves this world. The Gemara proves from Moshe Rabeinu that five days is an
appropriate amount of time to conclude one's affairs, for Hash-m warned Moshe Rabeinu five days
before his death to take leave of the Jewish people.

THE CELEBRATION OF A BIRTHDAY

The Gemara quotes Rabah who says that death between the ages of fifty and sixty is the death of
Kares. The Gemara relates that when Rav Yosef reached his sixtieth birthday, he celebrated that
he had passed the period of Kares.

Should a person follow the conduct of Rav Yosef and make a celebration when he reaches his
sixtieth birthday? Is it appropriate to celebrate any birthday?

(a) A number of authorities (as cited in MINHAG YISRAEL TORAH by Rav Yosef Lewy, OC
225) write that there is reason to make some sort of celebration upon reaching a certain age, as
Rav Yosef did when he reached the age of sixty.

The CHAVOS YA'IR (#70), cited by the CHASAM SOFER (to Shulchan Aruch OC 225:10),
writes that when one reaches his seventieth birthday, he should make a Se'udah and recite the
blessing of "Shehecheyanu," since he has reached a full lifespan. The Chasam Sofer adds that he
should recite the blessing without the name of Hash-m.

5
https://www.dafyomi.co.il/mkatan/insites/mo-dt-028.htm

13
The KAF HA'CHAYIM (223:29) writes that upon reaching one's sixtieth birthday, he should
recite the blessing of "Shehecheyanu" upon a new fruit and have in mind to thank Hash-m that he
was saved from the punishment of Kares. The LEKET YOSHER relates that whenever
the TERUMAS HA'DESHEN would make a Siyum on a Maseches, he would invite men who
had reached their sixtieth birthday and have them participate in his Se'udah in order to enable them
to fulfill their obligation to give thanks for reaching the age of sixty.

The BEIS YISRAEL (#32) writes that it is proper to make a Se'udah on one's eightieth birthday,
since that is the age at which one has not only passed the age of Kares as it relates to the years of
one's life, but he has also passed the age of Kares as it relates to shortening one's lifespan (as Abaye
asked Rav Yosef in the Gemara here). He says that the reason people do not make such celebrations
is probably because they are afraid of an "Ayin ha'Ra" and therefore they do not reveal their age.
Some authorities encourage celebrating one's birthday every year.

The BEN ISH CHAI (Re'eh #17) writes that it is a commendable practice to celebrate one's
birthday, "and so is the practice in our homes." Similarly, RAV YOSEF HA'KOHEN
SCHWARTZ in GINZEI YOSEF (#4) writes that men of piety recite the blessing of
"Shehecheyanu" on a new fruit or a new garment each year on their birthday. The KESAV
SOFER (YD 148) writes that it was his practice to make a Siyum on a Maseches on his birthday.

(It is said that the CHAFETZ CHAIM celebrated his birthday every year during his later years,
to demonstrate publicly that those who guard their tongue are rewarded with long life.)

(b) There are those, however, who discourage such celebrations.

The ARUGAS HA'BOSEM (#215) writes that it is improper to make a celebration upon reaching
a certain age, such as seventy, because that is the "practice of boors who walk in the ways of the
other nations." The reason, he says, is because the Mishnah in Avos (3:1) states that one should
realize where his eventual end will be and that he will have to give a reckoning of all of his deeds
before Hash-m. When one reaches the age of seventy and approaches that frightful moment of
truth, it is not an occasion to rejoice but to tremble in fear.

It is cited in the name of the MUNKATCHER REBBE (DIVREI TORAH 5:88) that it is not the
practice of Jews to make birthday celebrations. The reason he gives is that the Gemara in Eruvin
(13b) concludes that it would have been better had man not been created. There are so many
Mitzvos for him to do and so many Aveiros to avoid that it is very difficult to successfully return
his soul to his Maker in a pure and unstained state. Therefore, it is inappropriate to celebrate the
day on which one was born. This applies, however, only to Jews, who have the responsibility to
observe all of the Mitzvos. Non-Jews certainly may celebrate their birthdays, since they were
entrusted with only the Seven Mitzvos of Bnei Noach, and thus their creation in this world is not
such a liability for them.

Indeed, the Torah relates that Pharaoh celebrated his birthday (Bereishis 40:20), while Avraham
Avinu celebrated only the day on which he performed the Mitzvah of Milah for his son Yitzchak
(CHASAM SOFER to Bereishis 21:9).

14
It is important to note that even these opinions (which maintain that there is no basis for making a
special celebration on one's birthday) agree that there is something special about that day, and,
therefore, one should increase his Torah learning and enhance his Tefilah on that day, as well as
increase his acts of charity (RAV CHAIM PALAGI in TZEDAKAH L'CHAIM). One's Mazal
is empowered on his birthday (as the CHIDA in Chomas Anach (to Iyov 3) and KORBAN
HA'EDAH on the Yerushalmi (Rosh Hashanah 3:8) write).

Conversely, the opinions which permit celebrating one's birthday agree that it should not be
celebrated in a frivolous, light-hearted manner, but that one should concentrate on expressing
gratitude to Hash-m for keeping him alive.

LIFE, CHILDREN, AND LIVELIHOOD

The Gemara quotes Rava who says that one's lifespan, children, and livelihood do not depend on
his merit (Zechus) but on Mazal.

(a) Why does Rava say that these things depend on Mazal? The Gemara in Shabbos (156a) clearly
states, "Ein Mazal l'Yisrael" -- Mazal has no influence over the destiny of the Jewish people.

(b) The Torah states explicitly that when the Jewish people follow the will of Hash-m, He will
grant them life, children, and a livelihood (see, for example, Vayikra 26:4, Devarim 11:13, and
Devarim 30:16). Why does Rava say that these things do not depend on merit but on Mazal, when
the Torah clearly states that they depend on merit?

(a) The Rishonim address the first question in several different ways.

TOSFOS in Shabbos (156a, DH Ein) and the RITVA here explain that when the Gemara in
Shabbos says that "Ein Mazal l'Yisrael," it means that although some things do depend on Mazal
(as Rava says), those things nevertheless can be influenced by a person's merit if it is great enough.
"Ein Mazal l'Yisrael" means that merit can override Mazal. (The other nations, in contrast, have
no way to change their Mazal.)

The Gemara in Ta'anis (25a) says that even the great merit of the holy Tana, Rebbi Elazar ben
Pedas, did not suffice to override his Mazal.

The RASHBA (Teshuvos 1:409) adds that one person's merit is able to change another person's
Mazal, but one's merit cannot change his own Mazal. (See Berachos 5b: "a captive cannot free
himself from jail.")

In another Teshuvah (5:48), the Rashba proposes a different answer to this question, but one which
is also based on the premise that the Jewish people are not subject to the "forces of Mazal" like
other nations. Although he speaks in vague terms, he apparently means that even when a Tzadik
(who is not perfect in all ways) does not have an easy life, it is not due purely to his "Mazal."
Rather, other considerations may necessitate that he suffer.

15
The Rashba may mean what the Zohar and Vilna Ga'on teach, as cited by the HAGAHOS BEN
ARYEH here: it is the Thirteen Attributes of Hash-m which determine whether or not a Tzadik's
merits make him worthy of having an easy life. Even if he has many merits, the Thirteen Attributes
may determine that he must suffer in order to rectify the harmful effects of sin (his own sins or
those of others).

(b) With regard to the promises mentioned in the Torah, it is clear that an exceptional merit is not
required to cause them to materialize. The Torah simply says that "if you keep My commands, you
will be rewarded...." The RASHBA (Teshuvos 1:148, 409; see also RAMBAN to Vayikra 26:11)
explains that those verses refer to the Jewish nation as a whole. When all of the Jewish people do
the will of Hash-m, Hash-m grants them life, children, and sustenance in reward for their deeds,
despite their Mazal. An individual, however, is subject to his Mazal in these areas (unless he has
exceptional merits).

THE GREAT FUNERAL IN TIMES TO COME

Rebbi Akiva comforted Rebbi Yishmael upon the death of his sons. He said that if the evil king,
Achav, who did only one good thing in his life, merited to have such a great funeral as depicted in
Zecharyah (12:1), then certainly the sons of Rebbi Yishmael are worthy of great praise and
eulogies.

The Gemara describes Achav's great funeral by citing the verse, "On that day, the mourning will
be great in Yerushalayim, like the mourning of Hadadrimon at the valley of Megidon" (Zecharyah
12:1).

Although the verse makes no mention of Achav, the Targum Yonasan explains that the verse
means, "On that day, the mourning will be great in Yerushalayim, like [the two great funerals
combined,] the mourning of [Achav bar Omri, who was killed by] Hadadrimon [ben Tavrimon in
Ramos Gil'ad, and like the mourning of Yoshiyah bar Amon, who was killed by Pharaoh Chagira]
in the valley of Megido."

Why does the verse compare the great mourning in times to come specifically to the mourning at
these two funerals? (See also Insights to Megilah 3:1.)

To answer this question, it is necessary to first examine for whom this great funeral will be held in
the times of Mashi'ach.

The Gemara in Sukah (52a) records an argument about this funeral. One opinion says that the
funeral will be for Mashi'ach ben Yosef, while another opinion says that it will be for the Yetzer
ha'Ra which will be killed at that time. The Gemara there explains that in the future Hash-m will
slaughter the Yetzer ha'Ra, and the Tzadikim and the Resha'im will cry. The Tzadikim will cry
because they will see the huge mountain that stood before them in their service of Hash-m. The
Resha'im will cry because they will see that they failed to conquer such a small thread which stood
in their way.

16
The VILNA GA'ON (in KOL ELIYAHU) explains that this is what the Targum Yonasan means.
The Targum follows the opinion that says that the great funeral in the future will be for the Yetzer
ha'Ra. Normally, if the deceased was a Tzadik, only the Tzadikim cry at the funeral. If the deceased
was a Rasha, only the Resha'im cry. At the funeral of the Yetzer ha'Ra, however, both groups will
cry, as the Gemara in Sukah says. Thus, it will be like the funeral of Achav, the great Rasha, at
which all of the Resha'im cried, and like the funeral of Yoshiyah, the great Tzadik, at which all of
the Tzadikim cried.

The Age of Karet

Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:6

One of the more severe punishments meted out by the Torah for certain misdeeds is the punishment
of karet. A person who eats on Yom Kippur, for example, would be liable for that punishment. It
is interesting that the Torah never chooses to define what exactly karet entails, and the baraita in
our Gemara distinguishes between karet and mita be-yedei shamayim (a death penalty as carried
out by the heavenly court) by saying that someone who dies at age 50 has received karet,
while mita be-yedei shamayim is when someone dies at age 60. Rabba argues that karet actually
is defined by death between the ages of 50 and 60, but the baraita does not emphasize that because
it wants to honor the prophet Shmu’el who passed away when he was 52.

To emphasize this point, the Gemara relates that Rav Yosef threw a party for the Sages when he
turned 60, celebrating the fact that he has succeeded in living beyond the stage in life that would
have indicated the punishment of karet.

The Talmud Yerushalmi brings a proof-text for the idea that karet is indicated by death at the age
of 50 from the passage (Bamidbar 4:18) where the Torah expresses concern for the lives of
the levi’im, who work in close proximity with the mishkan and its utensils – a closeness that can
potentially bring death to the person who comes into contact with those things inappropriately. In
expressing this concern, the Torah uses the expression al takhritu – do not allow them to
suffer karet. Given that the work of the levi’im in the mishkan ends at age 50, the implication is
that anyone who dies before that age may have succumbed to the punishment of karet.

The Ran suggests that the underlying reason for this is that we assume that a normal life-span is
80 years (see, for example, Tehillim 90:10). For the first 20 years, heaven does not hold an
individual liable for his actions. A person who does not live past 50 has not succeeded in living
even half of the remaining 60 years, which indicates that he is in the category of those evil people
described in Tehillim 55:24.

6
https://steinsaltz.org/daf/moed28/

17
The Torah teaches us that the loss of Nadav and Avihu caused grief and mourning for the entire
nation. “The entire House of Israel shall bewail the conflagration that Hashem ignited.” (Vayikra
10:6)7

Rashi, based upon our Gemara, explains that the entire community must share in the distress over
the loss of Torah scholars. Another perspective on this issue is based upon the verse (Devarim
32:4): “[Hashem is] the Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice.”

The commentators there explain that a mortal judge of flesh and blood passes judgment upon a
criminal without being able to take into full consideration the impact his punishment will have
upon the other members of the family and of the community who will be affected by the verdict.
For example, if a person is sent to prison, why must his wife and children now suffer? If a person
is put to death, how is this fair to his wife, his children, and his parents?

Even the community is affected by the judgment. Nevertheless, a mortal judge cannot fully
consider all this in his ruling. Hashem, however, “is perfect in His work, and all His ways are
justice.” This means that Hashem's judgment in any situation incorporates everyone who is even
remotely going to be affected. Each person must be deserving of his element of the incidental
outcome of the punishment meted out to the criminal. This can even work to save the offender
from his fate, for he may be spared his deserved retribution if his family is not fit to suffer the
second-hand outcome of his condition.

When Rav Yosef arrived at the age of sixty years, he made a festive day for the rabbis. He
explained: “I have left the range of Kares (extirpation)”.

It is recorded (1) that the author of the Terumas Hadeshen made a siyum upon reaching the age of
sixty and invited two scholars to fulfill the “age of sixty meal.” (2)

Some authorities (3) state that one should make a celebratory dinner upon reaching the age of sixty.
Interestingly, more commonly, great Rabbis (4) celebrated upon arriving at the 70 year milestone.

7
https://www.dafdigest.org/masechtos/MoedKatan%20028.pdf

18
Beyond the obvious advantage of an additional ten years, this practice is explained (5) because
upon reaching 60 one passes the period of kares, yet one who passes away after 60 may still be
subject to Death in the hands of Heaven (‫ שמים בידי מיתה‬.(However, when one arrives at seventy,
he has arrived at the measure of man’s days as the verse6 states: “the days of our lives are seventy
years”.

Thus, one who passes away after seventy years has passed the punishments of death at the hands
of Heaven. It is questioned whether such a celebration is considered a Meal of Mitzvah (‫מצוה סעודת‬
(on its own virtue without sharing words of Torah (7).

As well, there is disagreement if one may make a blessing upon reaching such a milestone.
The Chavos Yair (8) indicates to recite the blessing. However, many authorities (9)
disagree. Others (10) advise that one should wear a new garment or eat a new fruit with the
intention of including the age milestone as well.

Someone once shared a concept about comforting mourners with the Rosh Yeshiva of Chevron,
Rav Simcha Zissel Broide, zt”l, that surprised him. “Rav Shmuel Salant, zt”l, said that although
the Shulchan Aruch rules that visitors may not speak before the mourner does, if a mourner groans
it is also considering speaking.”

19
When Rav Shmuel Salant would visit a mourner who would not speak, he would say, “The
halachah is that the mourners speak first.” If the mourner as much as sighed, he would say, “A
sigh is also like speech!” and start to comfort the mourner.

The Rosh Yeshiva was perplexed at this. “Rav Shmuel Salant’s statement seems confusing in light
of what we find in Moed Katan 28b. There we see that the mourner speaks first, and we learn it
from Iyov. The verse says that Iyov’s friends didn’t speak to him and also that Iyov only spoke
after his seven days of mourning were completed. How can we understand the Gemara if groaning
is like speaking? Could it be that they refrained from comforting him because he didn’t even groan
the entire seven days?

That seems impossible!” Perhaps the answer to Rav Broide’s question is to be found in the opinion
of the Chazon Ish, zt”l. “If you see that the mourners want to talk but it is difficult for them, you
can take the initiative and speak first.”

If the visitors can sense that the mourner wishes to speak but it is too difficult for him to do more
than groan, they should initiate conversation. Perhaps Iyov’s companions were not able to sense
from his sighs that he was ready to accept comfort.”

The Chofetz Chaim, zt”l, would say, “Although a comforter discharges his obligation by saying
it is better to speak to the mourner’s heart and relieve his pain with soothing words.
This is the main meaning of comforting mourners.”

Similarly, Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, said, “The main point of comforting the mourners is not the
blessing but the words of encouragement that relieve the mourner’s inner pain!”

Fooling the Angel of Death

R. Heather Miller writes:8

It’s probably a given that most of us would like to avoid death — not only because we enjoy life,
but because we worry that dying itself will be painful. The rabbis worried about that too. On
today’s daf we read two descriptions of what death might feel like, and six cases of rabbis
encountering death. We can’t cover it all in-depth here, so feel free to dive into the page for a
deeper look.

If you want to know what it feels like to die, you have to ask a dead person. That’s exactly what
Rav Seorim asks his dead brother, Rava, who visits him in a dream. Rava answers that death feels:

Like the prick of the knife when letting blood.

Presumably letting blood was a common enough practice that it was not feared, even if it hurt a
bit. This is as if to say: pain of death hurts, but not a lot.
8
Mytalmudiclearning.com

20
Next, we get an even more soothing answer. We learn that, before he died, Rava had harbored the
same question, and asked it of Rav Nahman who predeceased him and also appeared to him in a
dream. Rav Nahman told him that death felt:

Like the removal of hair from milk.

It’s a comforting image — the idea that removing the soul from the body is akin to gently
skimming a hair from the surface of a glass of milk. This suggests a practically painless experience.
And what’s even more reassuring is Rav Nahman’s insistence that the fear of death is far worse
than the actual experience, as he tells Rava:

Were the Holy One, Blessed be He, to say to me: “Go back to the physical world,” I would not
want to go, for the fear of the Angel of Death is great.

Rava assures us that though fear of death is great, actually dying and being dead is not so bad.

Still, life-loving humans — including the rabbis — would rather avoid it. Next the Gemara details
six cases of rabbis actively trying to avoid death. First, Rabbi Elazar admonishes the Angel of
Death who comes to take him as he’s eating the holy food of terumah. To the Angel of Death, he
says:

I am eating terumah; is it not called sacred?

By scolding the Angel of Death for coming at such an inopportune time, the Angel of Death is put
off and, the Gemara reports, Rabbi Elazar escapes death in that moment.

Rabbi Elazar lived to see another day — and he wasn’t the only one. Rav Sheshet also shamed the
Angel of Death by scolding:

In the market like an animal?! Come to my house!

Rav Ashi likewise bought himself more time on earth. Also approached by the Angel of Death
while in the marketplace, he asks for 30 days to review his learning. The Angel of Death acquiesces
and, 30 days later, Rav Ashi meets him again. Once again, Rav Ashi asks for an extension, at
which point the Angel of Death responds:

The foot of Rav Huna bar Natan is pushing you, as he is ready to succeed you as the leader of
the generation, and one sovereignty does not overlap with its counterpart, even by one
hairbreadth.

With Rav Huna bar Natan ready to take over leadership, Rav Ashi’s time has come. This is a theme
we have encountered elsewhere in the Talmud — the notion that older rabbinic leaders must pass
away to make room for younger leaders (see Megillah 28).

21
Rav Hisda avoided the angel of death by studying constantly — similar to the technique that Rav
Ashi employed. On today’s page, we read that “his mouth was never silent from study.” That is,
until one day when a cedar column of the study hall cracked and, for just a moment, Rav Hisda
was silent, and the Angel of Death was able to take him.

This collection of stories of rabbis temporarily getting the better of the Angel of Death are then
contrasted by the story of Rabbi Hiyya who was so righteous that death couldn’t come for him. So
how did he die?

The Angel of Death could not come near Rabbi Hiyya (to take him). One day, the Angel of Death
appeared to him as a poor person. He came and knocked on the door and said to Rabbi Hiyya:
“Bring out bread for me.” And he took out bread for him.

The Angel of Death then said to Rabbi Hiyya: “Master, do you not have mercy on a poor person?
Why, then, do you not have mercy on me, and give me what I want?” The Angel of Death then
revealed his identity to him, and showed him a fiery rod. Rabbi Hiyya surrendered himself to
him.

Rabbi Hiyya was so righteous that he didn’t need to do anything special to ward of death — his
greatness was such that the Angel of Death needed his cooperation. And perhaps because he was
so great, when the Angel of Death told him it was time, he submitted.

Fear of death and avoidance of death can be, as today’s page readily acknowledges, utterly
exhausting. And ultimately, as we all know, futile. No wonder Rabbi Elazar said that even if he
could come back to life, he wouldn’t — if only to avoid the constant fear of death.

Rabbi Johnny Solomon writes:9

This Shabbat we will be reading Parshat Tetzaveh, which teaches us about the various ‫בגדי כהונה‬
(priestly clothes), and it is noteworthy that many of the classic commentaries on Parshat Tetzaveh
quote a teaching about the ‫ בגדי כהונה‬that is found in our daf (Moed Katan 28a).

To explain this teaching we first need to leap further forward in the Torah where, immediately
before Aharon dies, Moshe removes the ‫ בגדי כהונה‬worn by his brother and places them on his
nephew Elazar (see Bemidbar 20:28). And it is given this association between the death of the
righteous Aharon, and the ‫ בגדי כהונה‬that he was wearing, that we are taught in our daf that ‘just as
the ‫ בגדי כהונה‬provide atonement, so too does the death of the righteous provide atonement.’

However, notwithstanding the frequency of this teaching being cited by so many of our
commentaries, it is nevertheless a challenging idea: how can clothes – notwithstanding their
splendour and beauty – serve to achieve atonement? In response to this question, I would like to
share three original insights which I hope speak to you as they speak to me:

9
www.rabbijohnnysolomon.com

22
Firstly, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polonne (1710-1784) explains in his ‘Toldot Yaakov Yosef’ (on
Parshat Shemini) that just as the ‫ בגדי כהונה‬only atone when worn by, and when attached to, the
Kohen (see Yoma 7b), so too, the righteous only atone if they are connected to, and if they work
together with, others. What this suggests is that the teaching that ‘the ‫ בגדי כהונה‬provide atonement’
helps teach us that atonement comes from attachment, as opposed to detachment – which is why
the source of this teaching relates to the detaching of the ‫ בגדי כהונה‬from Aharon, and their
attachment to Elazar.

Secondly, Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Ferber (1879-1966) explains in his ‘Chamudei Tzvi’ (p. 104) –
quoting an idea that he heard elsewhere – that just as the ‫ בגדי כהונה‬only atone due to the ‫עבודה‬
(priestly service) performed by the ‫( כהן‬priest), so too, the righteous only atone if they repent, and
perform good deeds, and do whatever they can do to assist, repair and improve whatever needs
assistance, repairing and improvement. What this teaches us is that atonement and transformation
only occur when actions are done that help others.

Finally, Rabbi Uri (Ira) Langer (1896-1970) explains in his ‘Or HaDe’ah’ (on Moed Katan) that
just as the priestly clothes worn by Aharon reminded the people of his positive character traits
(such as how he was a ‘lover of peace and a pursuer of peace’), so too, when a righteous person
dies and we, having been inspired by their good deeds, make the choice to ‘wear’ some of the good
deeds that they were renowned for, then their death, and the inspiration that we have drawn from
their life, helps us achieve greater atonement from the deeds we do having been inspired by their
example.

The Burial by William De Hartburn Washington

23
 Honor for the dead
Mark Kerzner writes:10

Out of respect for the dead, they are buried as soon as possible, and moreover, the biers of women
are not set down, but rather proceed directly to the grave. The source for this law is the phrase,
"Miriam died there and was buried there" - right away.

Incidentally, why is Miriam's death mentioned next to the story of red heifer? - To compare the
two: just as red heifer provides atonement, so the death of the righteous provides atonement. In the
same vein, the death of Aharon is mentioned next to the priestly garments, which also provided
atonement - each for a specific wrongdoing.

Rav said: "The length of one's life, his material success and the number of his children does not
depend on his merit, but rather on luck." Other say that prayer and good deeds can change one's
luck for the better.

The Talmud then recounts the stories of various Sages meeting the Angel of Death. For some it
was as easy as a puncture of the skin, for another - like a hair drawn from milk. How do we know?
They made a pack to communicate this back to their living friends. The one who died like "hair
from milk" added that if God told him to go back living, he would refuse, because of the fear of
the Angel of Death.

Beyond Our Control

Rabbi Jay Kelman writes:11

It is to be expected that, in a chapter dealing with the laws of mourning, a discussion of the
philosophical implications of death will follow. Such discussions are scattered in various places in
the Talmud and tend to present a variety of complementary, contrasting, and contradictory views.
We find our Sages disputing whether there is reward for mitzvoth in this world, or if all the reward
due awaits us in--and only in--the World to Come (Kiddushin 39b). While the simple meaning of
the Biblical text would surely seem to indicate there is such reward in this world, the realities of
the world experienced by all can easily lead one to the opposite conclusion. Of course, such
discussion is only speculative, as only the Holy One blessed be He is privy to such understanding.
Nonetheless, such discussions (in moderation) are of great significance, giving us a window into
questions that go much deeper than the law. Thirty-six of the mitzvoth of the Torah list karet as
the punishment for their violation[1], yet nowhere are we told what that punishment is. "If one dies

10
https://talmudilluminated.com/moed_katan/moed_katan28.html
11
https://torahinmotion.org/discussions-and-blogs/moed-katan-28-beyond-our-control

24
[under the age of] fifty, this is karet; fifty-two, this is the death of Shmuel from Ramah; sixty, this
is death at the hands of heaven[2]" (Moed Katan 28a).
Rabba teaches that karet actually extends from the age of fifty up to sixty, but the rabbis did not
want to teach such "out of honour to Shmuel". As this great prophet died at the age of 52, such a
teaching would have led many to assume that Shmuel was punished with karet. While karet may
cause one to die young, not all who die young die as a result of karet. It was this view of Rava that
led to "Rav Yosef, when he turned 60, he had a party for the rabbis. He said: I have passed the age
of the punishment of karet".
Yet, just as some felt there were no rewards in this world, so we have views that there are no
punishments in this world. This is world of free choice, with no immediate consequences for our
actions--we will reap what we sow only after we take leave of this world. "Rava said: [The years
of one's] life, one's children, and sustenance are not dependent on one's merit, but rather, they are
dependent on mazal, as Rabba and Rav Chisda were both pious rabbis...Rav Chisda lived to be 92
and Rabba lived to 40".
I am not sure whether these words are comforting or frightening--perhaps both--but it is hard to
dispute what Rava says. So much of what happens to us is due to factors beyond our control. Issues
with children, the struggle to make a living, cannot always be simply traced to any specific cause;
it may just be the way it is. This can make it easier to deal with our struggles yet, at the same time,
serves to reinforce the idea that much of our success is due to factors beyond our control. As our
sages note, everything is dependent on mazal, even the sefer Torah in the ark (Zohar Naso 134).
Such recognition can go a long way in developing the traits of gratitude and humility, traits that
all too often are in short supply.

[1] The penalty of karet is reserved for some of the most serious violations of Torah law; many sexual offences, practicing forms
of idolatry, eating on Yom Kippur, or eating chametz on Pesach. All but two involve violations of negative commandments. The
two positive commandments whose non-observance also entails karet are neglecting to perform a brit milah or to bring the pascal
lamb.

[2] As karet is also at the hands of heaven, this teaching would indicate that karet is given for sins more grave than "death at the
hands of heaven". An example of the latter is for a non-Kohen to eat terumah.

25
 Why is Death Bad?

Jeremy Brown writes:12

Before the death of the great Babylonian sage Ravina, there was a discussion of what would be
said at his funeral. Bar Avin, who was known as a talented eulogizer, suggested this:

‫ ב‬,‫מועד קטן כה‬

In these few words, Bar Avin hinted at a philosophical debate that has endured for millennia.
What, exactly is bad about death?

12
http://www.talmudology.com/

26
 Klopstock by Johann Caspar Füssli (1750)

WHAT BAD ABOUT DEATH?

The German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803) suggested that the badness of death
is losing your friends, which he describes in his poem Separation:

27
But the Yale philosopher Shelly Kagan believes there is much more to the badness of death than
just losing contact with your friends, sad as that is. In his terrific book death (small d), Kagan
suggests that we cannot think about the badness of death by thinking of the survivors.

Instead “ we have to think about how it could be true that death is bad for the person that
dies…what is it about being dead that is bad for me?”

And this is harder to do than you might have thought. The Greek philosopher Epicurus (341- 270
BCE) outlined the problem in his Letter to Menoeceus:

So according to Epicurus, death is not bad, and by extension we have no reason to fear it. (A)
something can be bad for you only if you exist; (B) when you’re dead you don’t exist; so (C) death
can’t be bad for you.

Here is Kagan (p.210) explaining the Epicurean problem:

Isn’t it clear that nonexistence is bad for me? Pretty quickly, however, that answer can come to
seem pretty unsatisfactory. How could nonexistence be bad for me? After all, the whole idea
about nonexistence is that you don’t exist!

And how could anything be bad for you when you don’t exist? Isn’t there a kind of logical
requirement that for something to be bad for you, you’ve got to be around to receive that bad
thing?

A headache, for example, can be bad for you. But of course, you exist during a headache.
Headaches couldn’t be bad for people who don’t exist. They can’t experience or have or receive
headaches. How could anything be bad for you when you don’t exist? And in particular then,
how could nonexistence be bad for you when you don’t exist?

Kagan (or Shelly, as he asks his Yale students to call him), has a terrific chapter (“The Badness of
Death”) in which considers this thorny question, and focuses on this aspect, known as The
Deprivation Account.

28
Death is bad because it deprives me of something. But that cannot be right because you cannot
deprive someone who is dead of anything.

Perhaps then we should reject (A) above, which is the existence requirement. Perhaps, Kagan
suggests,

“for certain kinds of bads, you don’t even need to exist in order for those things to be bad for
you.”

29
“What’s bad about death is that when you’re dead, you’re not experiencing the good things in
life. Death is bad for you precisely because you don’t have what life would bring you if only
you hadn’t died.

Shelly Kagan. death. Yale University Press 2012. 233.

But most of us don’t consider the non-actualization of potential people to be a moral tragedy
(though we’ve discussed the attitude of the rabbis to the this question here).

We don’t think billions and billions of potential people are harmed because they were never
actualized. This leads us to tweak the existence requirement to what Kagan calls a more modest
version: “Something can be bad for you only if you exist at some time or other.” This modest
requirement doesn’t require that I exist at the same time as the bad thing, and so this allows us to
say that death is bad for me. And it is bad for me because I am being deprived of the good things
in life, however those are measured.

According to Bar Avin, death is not actually bad for the deceased (in this specific case, Ravina),
for he was “at rest.” One might have expected him to say that although Ravina was being deprived
of the good things in life had he lived longer, this was more than made up for by the rewards that
he is getting in the afterlife.

But he didn’t, and his phrasing reminds us that in both ancient and modern philosophy, there is an
interesting argument that death cannot be bad for the person who died. Indeed, Bar Avin’s eulogy
reminds us that the greatest pain is felt by those who are left behind with nothing but their sighs.

30
 Mirth and Mourning
David Curzon writes:13

The Book of Ecclesiastes (in Hebrew, “Kohelet,” the Assembler or Preacher) is a compilation of
proverbs traditionally attributed to and worthy of Solomon. Its opening in the King James
translation is instantly memorable:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity

As the Oxford Jewish Study Bible puts it, “the one thing that is clear for Kohelet is death.”

How can we construct positive interpretations of this no doubt realistic but unhappy view of life?
I’ll take two of Kohelet’s proverbs on death and try to put a good spin on them, in the spirit of
rabbinic midrash, which insists that dark biblical sayings must be understood in a manner
compatible with the positive disposition of Judaism toward life before death.
As the literary instrument of my interpretations I’ll use a shortened version of the rondeau, an old
French poetic form in which the first line is repeated in subsequent stanzas. The meaning is hinted
at initially, and fully revealed only in the iterations. Consequently, the rondeau is an excellent
means of forcing a writer to think through the meaning of a proverb. My first selection of a proverb
on death is Kohelet 7:4:

13
https://forward.com/articles/4899/mirth-and-mourning/

31
 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of the fool is in the house of
mirth.

So following my plan, I will take the unpalatable thought of this verse as the opening of a rondeau
and, using the form and the demands and suggestions of rhyme, try to force it into an interpretation
I can live with, which of course must also be an understanding of the text compatible with its literal
meaning. The biblical verse is in italics in its first appearance because it is a quote, but is not in
italics in the iterations because it has, through interpretation, become my own thought:

THE HOUSES OF MIRTH AND MOURNING

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning but the heart of the fool is in the house of mirth.
Wisdom is in you as a joke is dawning. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning where it
dawns on them it’s death that wit is scorning. Wit must contain its rue to have true worth. The
heart of the wise is in the house of mourning but the heart of the fool is in the house of mirth.

We all have heard jokes containing no hint of what Yeats called “the desolation of reality,” told
by people who have no trace of the melancholy necessary to a good clown.

My second proverb is Kohelet 7:8

Better is the end of a thing than its beginning and the patient in spirit is better than the proud.

The rabbis of the collection of midrashim in Kohelet Rabbah had several explanations of the first
line, strung together by a phrase that is one of the glories of the rabbinic mind, “another
interpretation.” Anonymous rabbis are quoted as providing the following illustrations of our line,
among others: A man can commit evil deeds in his youth but in his old age can perform good
deeds. A man can learn Torah in his youth and forget it, but in his old age can return to it.

These interpretations, while perfectly reasonable in their way, are too pious for me, and too
incompatible with my sense of the mordant disposition of Kohelet himself. Playing around with
the first line and the demands of rhyme, I got something I consider more in the spirit of Kohelet:

Better is the end of a thing than its beginning. It’s only at the end our skull is always grinning.

But what about the enigmatic second line of our proverb? To help me think, I made use of an old
rabbinic interpretative technique, the pun. The word “patient” can mean both a quality of
forbearance and a person in the care of a physician, which patient is better off exhibiting
forbearance than being too proud, particularly (to introduce a biographical note) if he’s not as
young as he used to be. And so,

THE END AND THE BEGINNING

Better is the end of a thing than its beginning And the patient in spirit is better than the proud. It’s
only at the end our skull is always grinning. Better is the end of a thing than its beginning: memento

32
mori is our underpinning; pride makes the patient still in spirit laugh aloud. Better is the end of a
thing than its beginning and the patient in spirit is better than the proud.

After all, we shouldn’t always be grinning if it’s death that wit is scorning and we still have enough
spirit in us to enjoy life, even if we accept what’s coming without the interference of pride. As it
is said,

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning.

First – listen. Then – entertain heresy

White Americans must learn what Black Americans have always known, that America is not
only the promised land, it is also Egypt

Jason Rubenstein writes:14

In recent weeks Black Jewish thinkers have produced the latest chapter of a powerful body of
writing that combines first-person narrative and Jewish thought in mutually revelatory ways.
These essays, at turns inspiring and challenging, provide a powerful starting-place for non-Black
Jews like myself to assess American race relations in light of Judaism, and Judaism in light of

14
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/first-listen-then-entertain-heresy/

33
American race relations. In the following, I want to begin with a poignant suggestion made by
Shekhiynah Larks in her essay Black Jews Are Grieving, and We Need You to Help Us Mourn:
non-Black Jews should take the act of comforting mourners as the framework for responding to
and participating in the national reckoning in the wake of George Floyd’s murder:

Now more than ever, we should be using the traditional etiquette of shiva to reach out in love to
Black people in our personal networks and communities…
It is so hard to be safe and to feel safe as a Black person in the United States. I feel like I’m
always on guard. Always mindful of how I speak, how I hold my body, when to give or avoid eye
contact, how much public space I’m allowed to occupy because I want you to feel safe around
me.
Larks’s profound insight is that the Jewish practice of comforting mourners is a technique for
members of a broader community to effectively convey their care, concern, and support to a
smaller group more directly affected by a life-shaping loss. Perhaps the most salient implication
of Larks’s framing is the application of Rabbi Yohanan’s norm (unevenly followed) that any
conversation must be initiated and guided by the bereaved (Moed Katan 28b), “Those who come
to offer comfort may not utter a word until the mourner opens her mouth, as it says (Job 3:1) ‘Then
Job opened his mouth’ and only afterwards (4:1) ‘And Eliphaz the Yemenite answered.’”

Ceding the authority to define a conversation is not mere etiquette. It is an intentional disruption
of default roles, and of authority – it is, in other words, about power. This gracious practice of
comforting mourners enshrines a pair of truths: those most immediately affected by a loss are in
need of the loving attention of those more distantly affected (that everyone is somehow affected
by every death is a bedrock tenet of Jewish belief and practice), and those who are mourning also
possess an expertise (which garners them authority) about what to discuss and how. Translated
into our moment, shiva is a call for those of us who are not Black to lead with caring attention to,
and careful learning from, the Black community, including the Black Jewish community.

34
Listening is easy – until it isn’t. After all, Job’s “friends” begin well enough, waiting for Job to
speak – but then respond in a twenty-chapter torrent of counterargument. The ‘friends’ can handle
Job’s sadness but not his anger – which is, after all, a stage of mourning. Job does not shy away
from asserting his own innocence or impugning God’s justice – and thereby threatens the pious
orthodoxies that his friends rely on for their daily psychic support. In a harrowingly contemporary
moment, Job hurls an accusation of unaccountability at God, claiming that an independent and fair
judge would find God guilty of abuse of power and enforce a judgment against God, (9:33) “There
is no arbiter between us, who may lay his hand upon us both.” But since God is subject to no
outside oversight, Job has no hopes of redress – and he is therefore oppressed by God.

These are hard words, and many of Rabbi Yohanan’s colleagues continue the legacy of Job’s
friends, charging Job with heresy. Regarding Job’s criticism of God’s never facing account, Rav
says (Bava Batra 16a) “Dust should be put in Job’s mouth for saying this! Does a servant rebuke
his master?” Rav’s linking of a victim’s inability to prosecute an abuser on the one hand, and roles
of master and slave on the other, echoes and even anticipates present-day linkings of meagre police
accountability to the legacy of American slavery. Rav is not alone in decrying Job’s heresies: Rava
claims that Job has been denied the resurrection of the dead; Rabbah thinks that Job has impiously
suggested that God confused him for a different person whom God meant to punish (!). (To be
clear, other Rabbinic voices express unqualified praise of Job, though they are more marginal to
the tradition.) These rabbis, overwhelmed by the radical conclusions Job draws from his
recognition of the undeserved, and therefore unjust, nature of his pain and degradation demand
that Job measure his tone, pull his punches, and not disturb their cherished beliefs. But Job’s
translation of his pain into philosophy threatens their theologies and their theodicies: the rabbis
know that they cannot both faithfully listen to Job’s account and remain unmoved in their loyalty
to God – and they choose God, framing Job and his protest as the problem.

What is strangest about the Rabbinic condemnation of Job is that God agrees with Job, not the
friends who thought they were defending God’s honor! In a blistering and shocking rebuke, God

35
demands an offering of atonement from the friends because “you have not spoken of Me what is
right, as My servant Job has.”(42:7) God’s deus ex machina is on one level a criticism of the friends
for engaging in the wrong language-game with Job: they were there not to engage in philosophical
disputes, but to comfort a heartbroken man. The friends forgot that, putting their own spiritual and
emotional needs front and center and demanding Job measure his words so as not to sadden them –
an abdication, even a perverse reversal, of their role.

On a second level, God reveals that the philosophical insights attained through the recognition and
rejection of injustice by its victims of injustice have a privileged status. A devastated mourner who
hurls insults at God is closer to God, and better understands who God is, than a collected and
traditional adherent of time-honored, pious doctrine.

A story like this one recurred in the American public sphere last week: in her emotional speech at
George Floyd’s funeral, Brooke Williams, Mr. Floyd’s niece, said, “Someone said, ‘Make
America great again.’ But, when has America ever been great?” Like Job, Ms. Williams translated
the tragedy of irreparable, senseless loss at the hands of the very entities who had sworn to protect
her family into a sharp and fundamental critique of the justice of that entity. In Job’s case it was
God, in Ms. Williams’s case, America. And, like Job, Ms. Williams’s conclusion was criticized as
American heresy: when Yamiche Alcindor tweeted Ms. Williams’s words (and the applause with
which her fellow mourners received them), the top reply was simply “Disgusting” and many others
(though by no means all) echoed that sentiment.

It may be the case that right now, the hardest and most important thing that is asked of the non-
Black Jewish community is to recognize, as Shira Telushkin did in a moving piece this week, that
compared to Black communities, the non-Black Jewish community “live[s] in a different America,
one that offered us a haven. We fled to America and away from the lands of our greatest horrors,
while the Black community was forced to overcome their greatest horrors among the people who
wrought them…”

36
It is not merely to acknowledge the suffering of individuals, but to take seriously, and to learn
from, their perspective on the world. It is to realize that, paradoxically, the real heresy is decrying
their visions of justice and God as heretical. It is to refuse the easy path of Job’s friends, and of
some of our rabbis in favor of the insights of innocent victims of oppression and in favor of God.
For families like mine it is impossible to not feel a profound personal, intergenerational gratitude
for the prosperity, freedom, and peace America has afforded us as Jews. Honoring that gratitude
is an ethical obligation of the first order. For a long time now – and especially today – we face
another challenge as well: to learn what Black Americans have always known, that America is not
only the promised land, it is also Egypt. This is what it means to answer the calls of our Black
Jewish leaders, it is what it means to comfort those around us in mourning and grief, and it is what
it means to be open to the possibility of real revelations – new horizons of hope, justice, and
solidarity.

Women and Mourning

After Sarah's death comes the first biblical account of mourning

37
M A E E R A S C H R E I B E R W R I T E S : 15

“And Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her” ( Genesis 23:2 ).

With this verse, our parashah invites us to consider the history of a significant yet often obscured
tradition in women’s discourse, namely, mourning.

In this parashah we have the first account of mourning (even though death has figured prominently
earlier). Here a woman, Sarah, is mourned, and the mourner is a man, Abraham her husband. Yet
sources disclose that in the ancient world the act of mourning was typically associated with women.
Margaret Alexiou’s landmark study, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (1974), calls attention
to the gendered characteristics of mourning practices and language. Throughout antiquity, in both
Greek and Middle Eastern cultures, the lament–a standard feature of ritual life–belonged largely
to women who gathered to lead the community in the rites of grief in the Bible, just as in the
Classical tradition, the lament was associated with the feminine.

The book of Jeremiah lets us hear the bitter weeping of Rachel, mourning over her absent
children ( Jeremiah 31:15 ). That book also conspicuously presents songs of communal loss as a
maternal legacy; because of disaster, the prophet instructs the women thus: “Teach your daughters
wailing, and one another lamentation” ( Jeremiah 9:19 ). When the world splits open, when history
fails, the feminine voice is made audible.

The Bible does not preserve actual descriptions of mourning rituals or women’s laments. What we
do have is the book of Lamentations, a national lament, in which–as is common in laments–the
poet repeatedly appropriates a female persona, singing as if a woman: “My children are forlorn, /
For the foe has prevailed” (1:16). Composed in response to the destruction of Jerusalem (586
B.C.E.) at the hands of the Neo-Babylonian army, Lamentations chronicles a nation’s effort to
know itself in the aftermath of a profound severing of its relation to God–the divine principle that
confers meaning upon the social order. And in this book, catastrophe is repeatedly gendered.

The female is the subject reciting the lament; she is also the object of exploitation, since to the poet
the feminine body represents the site of social disrepair. In this way, Lamentations provides yet
another textual example of the widespread symbol of nation-as-woman, ever vulnerable to foreign
invasion. Women are cast as the ideal speakers of loss and rupture, for that is a condition which
they embody.

Lamentations opens with a cluster of images figuring Jerusalem as an abandoned woman; she is
variously to a slave, a fallen princess, and a widow–an almanah, a term Alan Mintz points out
“designates so much a woman who has lost her husband as the social status of a woman who has
no legal protector and who may thus be abused with impunity” (Reading Hebrew Literature, 2002,
p. 24). Indeed, almanah may etymologically linked to the Hebrew verb that to be mute or dumb

15
The Torah: A Women’s Commentary edited by Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea L. Weiss (New York: URJ Press and
Women of Reform Judaism, 2008). https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/women-and-mourning/

38
(with the letters aleph, lamed, mem). This association deepens our sense of the widow as one who
cannot speak on her own behalf. Focusing on the structures of meaning in the Hebrew Bible, Elaine
Scarry identifies a crucial division between God manifested as a voice and humanity as embodied:
“To have a body is to be creatable, … and woundable. To have no body, to have only a voice, is
to be none of these things; it is to be the wounder but not woundable” (The Body in Pain, 1985, p.
206). The distinction is central to Lamentations, where “daughter Zion” is represented, especially
in the first chapters, as virtually all body, broken and disabled.

Adrienne Rich.

Turning to the post-biblical period, women continue to dominate in the mention of laments.
Rabbinic tractates include a few such references. For example, in Mishnah Ketubot (4:4),
Rabbi Yehuda rules that even the poorest husband must provide one lament-singing woman for
his wife’s funeral, as a minimum display of honor. In the Talmud, we find a suite of poetic
fragments which suggest that the lament, as a standard feature of ritual life, belonged largely to
the women who gathered to lead the community in the fires. Attributed to the sage Raba, we read:
“The women of Shkanziv say: ‘Woe for his leaving / woe for our grieving'” our daf ( BT Moed
Katan 28b ).

To this day, Yemenite and Kurdistani women living in Israel continue to assume a large role in
mourning the dead in their communiries. 16

In Western culture, meanwhile, the genre of lament has become a useful frame for women
poets. Dahlia Ravikovitch, who emerged as an important Israeli poet during the 1950s, has been
described as a “lamenting poetess in the ancient biblical tradition”.17 A particularly beautiful and
haunting example of Ravikovitch’s contribution to the genre may be found in her poem “They
Required a Song of Us.” The poem begins with a line from another well-known Israeli poet, Lea
Goldberg, who asks: “How shall we sing a song of Zion / when we have not even begun to hear?”

16
See Susan Sered, Women as Ritual Experts, 1992.
17
Shirley Kaufinan et al., eds., Hebrew Feminist Poems, 1999, p. 13

39
Like Goldberg’s query, Ravikovitch’s poem meditates on Psalm 137 , a famous expression of
exilic despair in the Bible, where the speaker asks: “How can we sing a song of God on alien
soil?” Ravikovitch answers this ancient query by recognizing the need for a new kind of utterance:
“Sing intimate songs / that the soul shies away from singing … ” 18

Turning to twentieth-century Jewish American poetry, we find new variations on the lament in the
work of Adrienne Rich. Wrestling with the expressive limitations of other forms of poetic
mourning, Rich writes of her frustration in “A Woman Dead In Her Forties.”

Here the speaker first confronts the genre of lament’s potential inadequacy, feeling “half-afraid”
to write a lament for one who did not “read it much”–and then gropes for an alternative: “from
here on I want,” she writes, “more crazy mourning, more howl, more keening”.19

This discontent compels Rich to reactivate the lament in her 1991 volume An Atlas of the Difficult
World. In a later collection, written in the aftermath of the Gulf War crisis (1991-92), Rich longs
to convey what she knows to be true: that poetry can be a powerful, socially constructive force for
reconfiguring community (What is Found There, 1993, p. xiv).

Poets such as Merle Feld, Esther Broner, and Penina Adelman also explore the power of mourning.
Their versions of lament, along with Rich’s, alert us to the reconstructive possibilities of an ancient
biblical form.

18
Tal Nizan, ed., With an Iron Pen: Hebrew Protest Poetry 1984-2004, 2005
19
Facts on a Doorframe, 2002, p. 255

40
 With an Iron Pen
Hebrew Protest Poetry 1984-2004
Tal Nizan (editor)

Seven Laments For The War-Dead

1
Mr. Beringer, whose son
fell at the Canal that strangers dug
so ships could cross the desert,
crosses my path at Jaffa Gate.

He has grown very thin, has lost

the weight of his son.

41
That's why he floats so lightly in the alleys
and gets caught in my heart like little twigs
that drift away.

2
As a child he would mash his potatoes
to a golden mush.
And then you die.

A living child must be cleaned

when he comes home from playing.
But for a dead man
earth and sand are clear water, in which
his body goes on being bathed and purified
forever.

3
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
across there. On the enemy's side. A good landmark
for gunners of the future.

Or the war monument in London

at Hyde Park Corner, decorated
like a magnificent cake: yet another soldier
lifting head and rifle,
another cannon, another eagle, another
stone angel.

And the whipped cream of a huge marble flag

poured over it all
with an expert hand.

But the candied, much-too-red cherries

were already gobbled up
by the glutton of hearts. Amen.

4
I came upon an old zoology textbook,
Brehm, Volume II, Birds:
in sweet phrases, an account of the life of the starling,
swallow, and thrush. Full of mistakes in antiquated
Gothic typeface, but full of love, too. "Our feathered
friends." "Migrate from us to warmer climes."
Nest, speckled egg, soft plumage, nightingale,
stork. "The harbirngers of spring." The robin,
red-breasted.

42
Year of publication: 1913, Germany,
on the eve of the war that was to be
the eve of all my wars.
My good friend who died in my arms, in
his blood,
on the sands of Ashdod. 1948, June.

Oh my-friend,
red-breasted.

5
Dicky was hit.
Like the water tower at Yad Mordekhai.
Hit. A hole in the belly. Everything
came flooding out.

But he has remained standing like that

in the landscape of my memory
like the water tower at Yad Mordekhai.

He fell not far from there,

a little to the north, near Houlayqat.

6
Is all of this
sorrow? I don't know.
I stood in the cemetery dressed in
the camouflage clothes of a living man: brown pants
and a shirt yellow as the sun.

Cemeteries are cheap; they don't ask for much.

Even the wastebaskets are small, made for holding
tissue paper
that wrapped flowers from the store.
Cemeteries are a polite and disciplined thing.
"I Shall never forget you," in French
on a little ceramic plaque.
I don't know who it is that won't ever forget:
he's more anonymous than the one who died.

Is all of this sorrow? I guess so.

"May ye find consolation in the building
of the homeland." But how long
can you go on building the homeland
and not fall behind in the terrible

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three-sided race
between consolation and building and death?

Yes, all of this is sorrow. But leave

a little love burining always
like the small bulb in the room of a sleeping baby
that gives him a bit of security and quiet love
though he doesn't know what the light is
or where it comes from.

7
Memorial Day for the war-dead: go tack on
the grief of all your losses--
including a woman who left you--
to the grief of losing them; go mix
one sorrow with another, like history,
that in its economical way
heaps pain and feast and sacrifice
onto a single day for easy reference.

Oh sweet world, soaked like bread

in sweet milk for the terrible
toothless God. "Behind all this,
some great happiness is hiding." No use
crying inside and screaming outside.
Behind all this, some great happiness may
be hiding.

Memorial day. Bitter salt, dressed up as

a little girl with flowers.
Ropes are strung out the whole length of the route
for a joing parade: the living and the dead together.
Children move with the footsteps of someone else's grief
as if picking their way through broken glass.

The flautist's mouth will stay pursed for many days.

A dead soldier swims among the small heads
with the swimming motions of the dead,
with the ancient error the dead have
about the place of the living water.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies away

A store window decked out with beautiful dresses for women
in blue and white. And everything
in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic and Death.

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A great royal beast has been dying all night long
under the jasmine,
with a fixed stare at the world.
A man whose son died in the war
walks up the street
like a woman with a dead fetus inside her womb.
"Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding."

From Postmemory to Coping with Holocaust Remembrance

YAEL SELIGER writes:20

I do not know of a more eloquent poem that communicates the meaning of being close but not
close enough to the Holocaust than “I Wasn’t One of the Six Million” by Yehuda Amichai.

The poem appears in Amichai’s last poetry collection, Open Closed Open (2000).

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file:///Users/julianungar-sargon/Desktop/After_Postmemory_Coping_with_Holocaust_R.pdf

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For people who were not “there” – like the poet – the Holocaust is forever hovering beneath the
skies.54 People who were not “there” do not quite know how to face those who were. People who
were not “there” carry a heavy memory baggage. For a Jewish person like the poet it means to be
“in perpetual motion” between “weakness and hope” but sometimes sinking “all the way down.”

It is this notion of perpetual motion, of repeated, never-stopping, ever-flowing changes in the

dynamics of Holocaust remembrance which I draw out of Amichai’s poem, and seize upon when
reflecting on what in my estimation is missing or not present enough in the conceptualization of
postmemory.

As articulated in the introduction to my thesis, the crux of my theoretical claim is that with shifting
trends in cultural memory, such as postmodern deconstruction of language of remembrance – a
topic I pursue in the next chapter – the present and future call for more yielding and inclusive
conceptualizations of Holocaust remembrance.

As argued by Wolfgang Müller-Funk (2003) in reference to German cultural and collective

memory, it is hardly possible in a postmodern era to “conserve a culture by a monumentalized
collective memory” (219). In fact, as Müller-Funk contends, what happens in a postmodern age is
that “memory itself, for a long time a guarantor of constancy, becomes dynamic” (219-220).
Furthermore, it is precisely memory as active and shifting that prevents the Holocaust from being
forgotten or becoming irrelevant.

More so than the Jewish Museum of Daniel Libeskind in Berlin and/or Eisenmann’s Holocaust
project next to the Reichstag, it is the tension between the two structures – Eisenmann being far
more traditional than Libeskind – that according to Müller-Funk propels the continued relevance

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of Holocaust remembrance. In terms of my appraisal of the conceptual model of postmemory, I
contend that it lags behind in its capacity to set in motion future-oriented trends of remembrance,
which, as I will show, are necessary if we are to break through cultural constraints which thwart
political justice.

In advocating for greater fluidity and a more future oriented approach to Holocaust remembrance,
I am echoing a motif articulated by Geoffrey Hartman in a preface to Jeffrey Alexander’s (2009)
debate on remembering the Holocaust. In part, Hartman reveals that he is driven by a fear of the
wound [Holocaust] becoming an identity.

Zygmunt Bauman’s (2000) type of conjuring up a ghost in relation to Holocaust remembrance

seems to exacerbate Hartman’s fear. In Bauman’s mindset, the Jewish people epitomize victims
who lost the ability to practice self-defense. Self-defense entails an ability to extrapolate a lesson
from the past. The Holocaust, Bauman argues, is far too terrifying and overwhelming to serve as
a lesson. Suggesting “a two-pronged legacy of the Holocaust,” Bauman claims that on the one
hand, Auschwitz assigned Jewish survival a supreme value.

On the other hand, survival has evolved into “a site of conflict between incompatible interests in
which the success of some depends on the nonsurvival of others” (9). Unlike, say, the military
plans of the Allied forces which called for unconditional surrender by Nazi Germany, but did not
require, and hence did not result in the complete annihilation of the German nation, the racial and
totalistic nature of the Nazi war against the Jewish people did entail the killing of every living Jew.

This is essentially what Bauman has in mind when speaking of a “self-perpetuating and
selfproducing […] ghost of the Holocaust” (14); an uncompromising ghost incarnated in the notion
of total destruction. I do not believe in ghosts. More to the point, I am convinced that a new
paradigmatic thinking in terms of coping with Holocaust remembrance can go a long way in
disempowering Bauman’s ghost of the Holocaust.

I regard Art Spiegelman’s demythologizing Holocaust survivors through a true to-life portrayal of
Vladek, his father, as an invaluable artistic contribution toward the disempowerment of the ghostly
presence of the Holocaust in our collective memory. Having said that, demythologizing does not
necessarily mean that knowledge acquired about surviving the Holocaust translates into real
understanding.

This is what Geoffrey Hartman (1994) has in mind when referring to Spiegelman’s generation as
members of a generation that acquired knowledge without any real understanding of it. Acquiring
factual knowledge about what a concentration camp and a crematorium means in terms of
construction, location, and layout is one thing; understanding what its real function was, and what
it meant to actually be in the vicinity of the flames of a crematoria is an entirely different matter.

As depicted in Nightfather by Carl Friedman (1994), the dissonance between what children picked
up from what they were told by their father who experienced a Nazi concentration camp, and what
they actually understood or could imagine, is exemplified in the children’s habit of associating the
word “camp” with “a condition” (1), not a place. “I’ve had camp,” their father says. “That makes
him different from us. We’ve had chicken pox and German measles” but never “camp” (2).

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In fact, as far as the children can tell, father “still has camp, especially in his face. Not so much in
his nose or his ears, although they’re big enough, but in his eyes” (2). They think they know the
meaning of the word “hungry” except that their father always insists that they have no idea what
hunger means. The children are spellbound by their father’s past but somehow they need to process
their father’s planet of gas and starvation into an everyday life of school, food, clothing, and play.
It is a type of processing that can be done by knowing but not really understanding.

Demythologizing the Holocaust also pertains to experiences encountered in the homes of children
born to Holocaust survivors. Helen Epstein (1988) conversed with sons and daughters of Holocaust
survivors who recall growing up “acutely aware of how our parents were driven by an impetus
toward life as well as death” (203).

As in reference to Spiegelman, here, too, demythologizing does not mean the type of understanding
we generally associate with a level of cognition attained through a mental psychological process
that facilitates comprehension of something from information received. Rather, as Epstein
explains, demythologizing means knowing that one has developed an acute awareness of an
existential phenomenon linked to the home life of Holocaust survivors. Epstein identifies Dr.
Vivian Rakoff’s 1966 publication in Viewpoints, a Canadian-Jewish journal, as the first medical-
psychological write-up on children of survivors.

Conversing with generational brothers and sisters whose family trees were “burnt to a stump” (11),
Epstein concludes that “our parents’ wartime experiences had not given rise to a handful of
clinically categorized symptoms but to a particular world view” (220). Epstein cites Rakoff
surmising that this world view consists of appreciating life not simply as a given “but an almost
unexpected gift” (207). As such, life is not merely to be lived.

Life becomes a mission. Often this sense of life as-a-mission bore a heavy load of expectation on
children of survivors. Rakoff explained that “by virtue of their concentration experiences,” parents
became almost sacred figures to be obeyed and not to disappoint. Invariably, children of survivors
“could not express towards their parents the aggression that is part of the usual process of growing
up” (207). Epstein adds that children of Holocaust survivors are torn between conflicting emotions
of being in awe of their parents and their will to live, and ashamed in imagining their parents
reduced to starving animals. Eli, a child of survivors, tells Epstein: “I am in awe of my parents”
but “I’m also uneasy; I can’t feel too secure” (31).

Delineated by Marianne Hirsh (2012) in her studies of the generation of post memory, and visual
culture after the Holocaust, children of survivors are often imbued with guilt for not having gone
through the horrors experienced by the parent generation. Guilt transforms into compulsive
digging into family ruins and can also manifest itself in phantom physical symptoms. Raised in
small families that had no grandparents and only few relatives, Amir Gutfreund’s fictional
protagonists in Our Holocaust (2006), are in the habit of “adopting” acquaintances as family
relatives and referring to them as uncle-aunt (doddoda).

Jewish children born to survivors are often named after grandparents and relatives who perished
in the Holocaust. Epstein’s counterparts in North America, Europe and Israel are presumed by

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Henri Raczymow to be impelled by “memory shot through with holes (une mémoire trouée)”
(1994). His books, he said, do not attempt “to fill in empty memory” nor are they “simply part of
the struggle against forgetfulness.” Rather, he presents memory as empty: non-memory which
cannot be filled. Raczymow argues that there are too many holes in Jewish remembrance of the
Holocaust.

Specifically, there are holes in Jewish genealogy. “We have no family trees. At the most, we can
go back to our grandparents. There is no trace of anyone before” (104).

Opening and Closing with Qohelet: The Late Work of Yehuda

Amichai:

A Discussion of Patuaḥ Sagur Patuaḥ ( Open Closed Open )

Eric Berk, William Cutter write:21

21
Hebrew Studies, Volume 51, 2010, pp. 175-201
https://www.academia.edu/67454946/Opening_and_Closing_with_Qohelet_The_Late_Work_of_Yehuda_Amichai_A_Discussio
n_of_Patuah_Sagur_Patuah_Open_Closed_Open_

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 The Heart of the Wise Is in the House of Mourning
The most Jewish emotion, Naches, belongs in the language of exile.

Lynne Peskoe-Yang writes:22

In the small, suburban, Conservative Ashkenazi community where I grew up, Yiddish warmed
social interactions like background radiation. Words that had penetrated mainstream American
English—putz, klutz, chutzpah, and kvetch—glowed in sitcom dialogue and newspaper print,
where friends and relatives could point them out proudly, then complain about their embarrassing
misuse. The untranslatable phrases would be used for comedic effect, and to occlude bits of gossip.
But though my grandparents understood a great deal of the language, their children reached
adulthood armed only with what they’d gleaned from private conversations: English for school,
Hebrew for synagogue, they insisted; Yiddish was a distraction, a vice for those who refused to
assimilate.

Only Mommy-Anna, my oddly nicknamed great-grandmother, ever finished a sentence in Yiddish

in my presence. Perhaps, at the end of a long and linguistically promiscuous life, she could no
longer restrict her thoughts to a single language.

The words I grew up knowing were peasant words, unfit for school and work, but used with family
and close friends to communicate ideas too intimate for English formality: embarrassing social
mishaps, sexual proclivities, casual racism. With my non-Jewish friends, I struggled with their
English equivalents; crucial cultural contexts evaporated with every attempt at translation or
explanation. Shonde could be translated as shame, for example, but my grandmother’s a shonde
far di goyem was a vast and terrible malediction; she saved it for the Jewish travesties that put all
of us at risk, the Roy Cohns, Bernie Madoffs, and Henry Kissingers, whose betrayals to the causes
of Jewish safety, moral integrity, or cultural reputation were unspeakable in any other language.
“A shame before the Gentiles” was flattened, sterilized; the results were useless.

Other terms were so rarified, so specific, that they weren’t mine until I experienced what they
described. To shep naches means something like “derive gratification,” though it’s reserved for
pride in another’s accomplishment. It can be applied as broadly as its cousin kvell; you can see
people tweeting naches for births, scholarships, graduations, Jewish-adjacent TV shows, good
publicity, even a crispy donut. But when I ask my elders to explain the Yiddish word to me, they
speak of something more specific: naches fun kinder, joy from children; my childless uncle
gestures to my infant daughter, explaining that one can shep naches from the children of others, if
necessary, and when I think of her gummy grin, her chubby, pink hands trying to clap, I start to
understand.

After pride in children, strangers on the Internet exult most in shepn naches from the existence of
the state of Israel. I push back, believing, as I have since adolescence, that Israel suffers for its role
as a diasporic fantasy; that an ethnostate has no divine right to its deep commitment to injustice;

22
https://popula.com/2018/12/06/the-heart-of-the-wise-is-in-the-house-of-mourning/

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that Zion is a feeling, not a place, and that we deserve better than the psychic burden of defending
a shonde like Netanyahu. But telling Jews to let go of the image of Israel as Zion can be like telling
a prisoner to forget the world exists. It is an ancient, inherited coping mechanism, rooted in an
abstract hope that sustained us for millennia; once concrete, that hope became a weapon.

But both the word naches and the concept it names are bigger, stranger, and more beautiful than
their modern incarnations can evoke. What naches names could not exist without the Diaspora and
the exile from ancient Palestine that set it in motion. It is a prayer to something removed from
oneself, whether generationally or geographically; like all Jewish languages after exile, it is made
of wandering and alienation, synthesized by creativity and illuminated by survival.

Naches was born in ancient Judea. An elderly apostate who wrote under the pseudonym Qohelet—
meaning either “teacher” or “preacher,” known in Greek as Ecclesiastes—first recorded the
concept in one of the most famously nihilistic poems in the Jewish canon, in which a version
of naches appears in a kind of existential insult:

[Qohelet 6]

In the last verse, nakhát is the “gratification” of which the ill-fated man is deprived, the ancient
Hebrew ancestor of naches. For all his prosperity, that man who “beget one hundred” fails to
appreciate his good fortune. As the scholar Étan Levine argues, he is therefore a “normative fool”:
he has attained the norms of happiness, the earthly successes and achievements, without absorbing
the happiness itself. Such a man is worse off than “a stillborn child,” for a child who has no worldly
experiences cannot covet material pleasures; this child has more nakhát than the fool.

Nakhát’s phonological journey to naches might be unremarkable to a historical linguist. The

distinctive Semitic ending softened to a sibilant and the syllabic emphasis jumped from second to
first. But the uvular fricative, a sound that recalls to English speakers a theatrical throat-clearing
as in or the Scots-English loch and which is a staple of Semitic languages like Hebrew, Arabic,
and Aramaic, remains steadfast.

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Despite their shared origins in Palestine, Jewish languages other than the reconstructed Hebrew
are not Semitic in structure. After the fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Hebrew- and Aramaic-
speaking Jews fled in every direction in search of safety, into Europe, South Asia, and North
Africa. The speakers of proto-Yiddish trudged on winding paths through Central and Western
Europe, and the prevailing scholarship has the language first developing in medieval Bavaria.
Over those first few hundreds of years of interfaith coexistence, Jewish migrants absorbed the
surrounding Germanic grammar and infused it with Semitic vocabulary. When the Black Plague’s
attendant spike in anti-Semitic violence scattered the community in all directions, a majority of
Yiddish speakers wound up in the “Pale of Settlement,” a desolate, open-air ghetto grudgingly
offered by Imperial Russia. There, a nascent Yiddish adopted a slew of Slavic words, though it
held on to its Bavarian syntax.

When languages come in contact with one another, “the direction and extent of [linguistic]
interference, as well as the kinds of features transferred, are socially determined,” as the linguist
Shana Poplack observes; the way speaker groups coexist—or don’t—helps shape the way their
languages interact and evolve. Jewish languages are like Diaspora Jews themselves: fluid, isolated,
codependent, and always under threat. As Chaim Rabin puts it, it’s the “special atmosphere” of
their usage that defines Jewish languages, the unusual traits of Jewish diglossia, or community-
level bilingualism. It was the Germanic-speaking native country of the first forms of Yiddish, for
example, that turned nakhát into naches.

But it was the geographical journey, with its cycles of uncertain peace and certain persecution, that
transformed Qohelet’s religious imperative into a cultural artifact.

It might seem facile to say that naches became a one-word mantra for Jewish survival in a hostile
environment, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Indeed, if we translate the word that Qohelet used
into English—or try to explain the shep naches on Twitter—it’s too easy to come up with the same
sentiment for both, the same flattened and sterilized sense of “derive gratification.” For one thing,
both nakhát and naches allude to joy derived from a specific and culturally-determined source: joy
that sustains, supports, and distracts from pain. For another, and more importantly, naches has
evolved enormously over the long centuries of diaspora; it doesn’t, and can’t, mean the same thing
as a nakhát in Judea.

Today’s naches is a Jewish pleasure located somewhere between gratification and pride, between
present-day nihilism and the vague and glorious future in a place we tell one another is reserved
for us. And the conflation of contentment with pride in one’s children makes sense if you think
about the image of a free life for one’s children which sustained the culture through inconceivable
persecution, through two thousand years of fleeing and fighting. The fantasy of that promised
future—that was transplanted over time into the physical space of Palestine and Israel—eventually
fused into the closest Jewish equivalent to the Christian concept of Heaven. It was something to
keep moving towards. For Jews of the Diaspora, our progeny is the afterlife.

Naches is faith that one’s children will someday have a safe home, a faith that the whole narrative
of Jewish survival is greater than the suffering of the present. On the holiest days of the Jewish
year, we recite L’shanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim, “Next year in Jerusalem.” The invocation of
that future in Jerusalem—a place or an idea—was first recorded roughly six hundred years ago.

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It’s a long timeline if you’re planning the coming year; if you’re imagining a better life for your
descendants, however, it’s just about right.

For most Jews, the better life remains elsewhere. Somewhere between half and two-thirds of us
live outside of Israel and Palestine, where the anti-Semitism is mounting in ferocity once again.
For us, Israel’s existence still offers an emergency refuge. The thought of a future in which our
children can have normal worries is so powerful that it can blind us to what has become of our
symbol when it became a nation-state. The modern nation that occupies that land contains real
people susceptible to the weaknesses of mortal politics, with the expected waves of racism and
authoritarianism. What Israel defends with warfare and political suppression is not—and cannot
be—the source of our naches. Our children deserve better than survival at such a high moral cost.
We can derive joy from their future somewhere else—geographically, metaphysically, spiritually.

The rest of Qohelet is a bitter lament on men’s vanity, women’s empty-headedness, and the futility
of all forms of quotidian pleasure; throughout his verses, the Teacher returns to the ephemeral
nature of all things and the unpredictable cruelty of the will of G-d.

“The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,”

writes the sage in 7:4; in dwelling on his death and its aftermath (including the fate of his children),
the wise man wards off the fear of death that plagues the fool. He imbues his living days with
awareness of his mortality. The wise man’s thoughts are holy because he knows they cannot last:
the experience of his good fortune keeps him anchored in the present.

Qohelet was writing before Jewishness became synonymous with a life of uncertainty, but his
insistence that all pleasure turns to ashes remains a powerful force in Jewish thought. No matter
the circumstances of the present, the future is untouchable.

Since the Holocaust, there’s been a (possibly apocryphal) story about a group of Jewish
prisoners in Lublin, a city in Poland where no more than a few hundred Jews survived from a
prewar population of 42,000. In the story, the prisoners are taken to a field by Nazis where
they’re ordered to sing and dance for their captors’ amusement. One weak voice intones the first
line of a Yiddish folk song, Lomr zich iberbetn (“Let’s get along”), but the refrain doesn’t catch
on, or is silenced. Then another voice offers a different set of lyrics, igniting a defiant
chorus: Mir veln zey iberlebn. “We shall outlive them.”

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1048334151994210

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 “We Shall Overcome” sung in Yiddish

Jordan Kutzik writes:23

While the wave of demonstrations sweeping the world in the wake of George Floyd’s murder will
undoubtedly inspire a new generation of protest music, it has also led many to revisit older songs.
Some feel that the anthem most associated with the Civil Rights Movement, “We Shall
Overcome,” is too passive for our moment. Others see in it a source of strength. Bernice King,
daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, wrote on Facebook last month that the song’s
refrain is neither passive nor naïve but a “conscious commitment to courageous work.”

That “commitment to courage” is, doubly present, I feel, in its recent Yiddish adaptation, which
combines the original with lyrics spontaneously created during a mass execution in the opening
days of the Holocaust.

In the fall of 1939 Nazi officers rounded up a group of Hasidic men in Lublin and ordered them at
gunpoint to sing. The group began singing the Yiddish folksong “Lomir Zikh Iberbetn” (Let’s
Make Up), but soon one man changed the words to “Mir veln zey iberlebn, avinu shebashaymim”
(We will outlive them, our father in heaven!). What started as an individual’s small act of resistance

23
https://forward.com/yiddish/448636/we-shall-overcome-sung-in-yiddish/

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spread, and soon dozens of men took up the song. Even when the Germans attacked them with
whips and clubs the song still resounded until a volley of gunfire was heard.

This act of spiritual resistance was not particularly well known until activist Jenny Romaine
adopted the words “mir veln zey iberlebn” as a slogan for political protests in New York in the
wake of President Trump’s election. The Klezmer group “Tsibele” subsequently popularized it as
a song.

Two summers ago, at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, Yiddish folksinger Michael Alpert,
alongside trumpet player and composer Frank London, clarinetist David Krakuer, and a group of
local musicians, performed a stirring trilingual Yiddish, Polish, and English rendition of “We Shall
Overcome.”

Instead of translating the English words literally, Alpert adapted the refrain those doomed men had
sung in Lublin some 78 years earlier as his version’s new Yiddish chorus. The resulting Yiddish
song retains the spirit of the original but takes a less passive tone, a “commitment to courage” as
Beatrice King put it, that is more directly stated than in the original.

The lyrics translate to:

We’re going to outlive them

We’re going to outlive them
We shall fight together till the end
I feel in my heart that there will be justice in my country
Let’s fight till the end.

While the recent translation of “We Shall Overcome” is a moving addition to the Yiddish protest
cannon, it is not the only Yiddish song associated with the American Civil Rights movement.

In 1965 folksinger and Broadway star Theodore Bikel performed for Martin Luther King and
several hundred demonstrators in Selma, Alabama. The song he chose to sing for them was the
Yiddish worker’s anthem “Un Du Akerst” (And You Plow).

Although written by the Yiddishist political theorist and philosopher Chaim Zhitlovsky, it has a
much longer history of transcultural adaptation. It was closely based on a poem by the German
revolutionary Georges Herwegh, which was in turn based on a poem by Percy Shelley.

According to Bikel, the song, performed bilingually, was a hit with King and his fellow marchers.

https://forward.com/yiddish/448636/we-shall-overcome-sung-in-yiddish/

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