Papers for Rabbinic School...The Dead

Note: The assignment here was to write this without any research. We were allowed to use the texts for the class by Kushner and Hillman as well as in-class notes. Anything else had to come from memory. This paper was written for Rabbi Finley.





The Dead


Preface

My late husband’s eleventh yartzeit is in two days. This is how he died. We were moving to Los Angeles from Washington DC. It was job related. He had been founder of the Magic Theater of San Francisco then a producer/director at the Kennedy Center. Now he was starting a new job at Cal State LA as Theater and Dance Chair. He needed to go to Toronto first for a convention so we planned to meet at the LA airport.

On that day, July 31st 1999, I flew in with our four and three year old (the other two were at camp) and found the gate to greet him. We waited. I was hassled and worried. John had pneumonia. He had been diagnosed before flying to Toronto but had insisted on going anyway. Something to do with awards and goodbyes. Recognition. Friends.

Now, we watched people get off the plane. Business men,. Kids. Couples. Adam and Lilly were jumping up and down. We wanted to see the whole of him: The amused green eyes, the beard, a hat, 5’7”, loaded with carry-on bags. Could that be him? No. Over there? Too tall. Too young. Too old. John would walk funny. Nobody was walking funny like John.

When the stream of passengers had waned I frowned. No sign of him. This was before I owned a cell phone so I called my mother from the airport. He called, she said. He missed his connection in Chicago. He sounded bad. He wasn’t speaking well. He wants you to go to the hotel. He’ll be on the next plane.

I made the decision to stay. We greeted three more flights, each from Chicago. We raced from gate to gate thinking…. Maybe that’s him, holding a book. Maybe he’s behind that tall woman… The kids started screaming and crying. I wouldn’t give up. He was sick. I wanted to be there for him. It was 9 pm, midnight east coast time. Then, I gave up. It was the look of confusion on Adam’s face that did it to me.

Switch to the hotel. The kids are watching TV. They won’t sleep. John walks in. He doesn’t look good. His fever is down though. He’s normal 98.6. I figure he’s all right. I figure wrong. He says he’s all right. I say he needs to go to the hospital. He says he’ll go after we move into the rental house. John keeps taking showers. When he can’t find a pen he tries to take notes about the next day with my make-up pencil. He’s wheezing. I don’t know what I’m doing. Watching the kids. Wishing I was in San Francisco. No offense to anyone from LA but I really wanted to be back in San Francisco.

The next morning John dents the car. I don’t know why. He won’t say. He’s better than the previous night, he says. Still, I don’t understand the dent. No matter. He drives the three of us to the house to meet the moving truck. He tells me he loves me, looks at me, smiles and says see ya. See ya. Then he goes to the hotel to rest.

I remember a moment when I am unpacking. I’ve taken a break from the truckers and the kids and all the boxes. I’ve gone out to the back patio. It’s a nice place. Lots of flowers. There’s this feeling of eternity in my gut for a second. A knowledge of something greater. The feeling of wide open space. Like the moment is suspended washed in love. Only love.

It is around noon and when I go to look for the kids they are gone. The truckers tell me they had taken off on their tricycles. Up the street somewhere. I call them. The movers call them. We run around the streets. Finally, I ask a neighbor to drive me to the hotel. This way, I figure I can check up on John and get the car and find the kids.

When we arrive at the hotel two police cars are in front. I walk in. What room are you in, the woman asks. I give the room number. Looking down, she gives me the key. I run up the steps. The door is open, two cops in the doorway. I say I want to go in. I give my name.

Your husband is dead, they say. It’s like that. That simple. No fanfare, trumpets blowing, sad music like in the films.

My children, I say, they’ve taken off on tricycles near this house. I give the address. I can’t find them. Please find them.

Then my heart collapses and I start shaking. I don’t know how loud I cry or if I’m screaming. I sit huddled in the end of the hallway. Curled up. I’m wearing a blue jean dress and high heels. I used to wear high heels. Then I go in to see him.

The body is on the bed, one shoe off. This isn’t John, I think. The body has a sad smile on its face, like he had really messed up, like he knew he was dying, like he had this realization last minute that he wouldn’t be watching his kids grow up or feeling the sun on his face or directing a play or eating popcorn or smelling a skunk or drinking lemonade ever again. The green eyes are dim. I think many things when I look at him. I kiss him. His body is still warm. He had been found dead by the porter at around noon, I am told.

Theater professionals from the San Francisco Bay Area tend to die young, John had once said. The founder of the Berkely Rep died of alcoholism and he wasn’t even 50. The founder of ACT hung himself. And now John Lion, age 55, founder of the Magic Theater had died from grinding himself into the earth with his bare hands, working way too hard for his young wife and four beautiful children. I feel so sad.

But this isn’t John anymore, I think. John might be here but this isn’t him.





Introduction

Who are the dead? Eleven years later it’s as if I’m still sitting on that bed trying to piece it all together. That’s because a piece of me is still there, dead with him. This is not a bad thing. It just is what it is. This is what I think. We die in certain places, voluntarily or not. During a powerful meditation or a tragic experience we release sparks as we die. We offer the sparks up in sacrifice, voluntarily or not, and suddenly we’ve created an opening for God. As Hillman says …it is mainly through the wounds in human life that the Gods enter. The dead therefore are more than the literal dead. They are the most downward we can get (Hillman). They can take on many images in our minds. The word itself has many connotations They are us. They are others. They are the people we love, the people we don’t know. They are those who have experienced transformation, rebirth (Kushner). As I’ve learned from rabbis and teachers, the dead can infer the soul-dead with the body-alive. Kushner in his book River of Light says this… Both bible and dream are multi-layered. Intelligible as the manifest p’shat simple shell of the fruit. And yet, upon closer observation, concealing a myriad of deeper layers. Each one somehow protecting the latent sod secret seed within.

All of the above shows how important it is to make distinctions. What we need is a frame. As discussed in class, it’s important to know the box of the myth, the boundaries of the box. This way it is not blocked. As Heschel says, God is seeking us but we’re blocking the way. Therefore, we need to create that opening. It is up to us. And we can do this by defining the boundaries and once again, creating the four sides of the frame. This is important to me because while I appreciate chaotic waves of thought and feelings, exact definitions of the image (knowledge of the exact frame) can create the opening in which there can be both clarity and magnification of the dead and therefore, of God.

First Boundary: The Vessel and the Vessel
The first distinction I want to make is that of the physical dead. If we can see our bodies as vessels, this is the vessel-view of the vessel-dead. Here, we’re in the world of the p’shat. Here, the dead is the name we give to the vessels that no longer have the divine sparks of God. When Abraham begs God to spare the people of Sodom and Gemorrah, on this level he is referring to people and lives and the physical dead. The dead at this border is the image of the soldier shot in war, that of the woman being taken away in a stretcher as you drive past the accident. On this border of the frame, the dead is Jacob on his death-bed. The dead means no heart beat. No pulse. Brain functions are gone. Kushner tells a story about the two sets of commandments. According to one legend, when God gave the commandments, everyone died. The people, he explains, couldn’t handle the power of God and that’s why God, with grace, took the commandments back. Then the people came back to life. This legend refers (on one level) to physical death.

In any case, for the living, this perspective of the dead is a shock. It has a negative connotation. There are billions of people on this earth and every day we speak with them, eat with them, laugh or cry with them. We are one of them. To see one that can’t speak, hear, see…to see one that looks like us but isn’t us…this is frightening. Knowing that we will one day be just like that…this can be even more frightening. So no matter how much we want to peel ourselves away from the p’shat view of the dead, it is there and it is ours to own.

Here’s a story. Recently, another rabbinic student at AJR said this to me: Wow, Chava, since you meditate I guess you aren’t scared of being dead. We were walking down the street (quickly, we didn’t want to be late for class after lunch) and I looked at the trees lining the road, the cars, thought of John.

I’m not that spiritual, I responded. She was surprised. It was the true response for the moment. Nothing could have been more true. I was walking, eating, studying, being alive. Vessels were all around me. Vessels doing their vessel-business. I was just one like them. I had a memory of my divine spark, an intimate knowledge. I’ll get to that soon. But I’d be lying if I was to say that at that moment I was simply a ray of light and nothing more. Even talking was reminding me of my physicality. So, wanderer-of-the-forest or not, that moment I was flung into the beautiful and atrocious hum of society with all its pitfalls and rewards. I was admittedly checked in with my soul and acting as close to it as possible. My feelings though were mine. And I was scared.

And that’s what our bodies can do to us. They can take things over and sometimes they must. After all there’s a lot to get done in this world. It happens most when the body doesn’t give itself a break or a breath or is moving real fast. My father used to say ashes to ashes. My father was a vessel-man. I can’t blame people for being this way. I wish though that I could get out of that space (sooner) when I’m stuck there. I wish others could give other places a try. I think the most pain we experience is when we can’t move beyond the physicality of our bodies. Pain isn’t about the dead. It’s about our inability to get beyond the brutal basic image of the dead. My one problem with Kushner’s writing (though I really relate to it) is that he gets beyond it (very well) but he doesn’t seem to have much of a jumping off board. He flies straight to the mystical without standing long on the ground. (As some friends of mine might say to me, it takes one to know one).

In any case, now that this border of the frame is set, I want to move on to the next, the memory of the dead.

Second Boundary: The Vessel and the Memory of the Vessel

The memory of the dead (in my set of distinctions) can be seen as memory-of-vessels by other vessels. This is what we, as bodies, remember of the bodies of the people who are now dead. This would include the brown hair, the green eyes, the height, the words said, the smell, the tone of voice, the smile, the vacation, the favorite book.

This boundary is different from the previous simply through the idea of memory. Kushner describes the lack of memory in this way: We have forgotten the eternal life of the garden because we chose to. We freely traded it for a lifetime in this world. Therefore (I believe) given what’s at stake, memory intuitively becomes something we claw at. We go for the memory with sharp nails because we want to break through our own forgetfulness and return to Eden. The taking of photographs is often a sign of this yearning. All of the arts display it in some shape or form. It isn’t easy though. Reaching for memory is painful. Time has passed. One year. Ten. Eleven. In the parsha (named) Chayay Sarah Sarah dies in the second line. Still, the parsha is named the Life of Sarah not the Death of Sarah. It could be explained that the reason for this is because all that Abraham has left is the memory of her in all her various parcels (when she was one hundred years, when she was twenty years and when she was seven years). He weeps. The whole community weeps with her in mind. They want to clinch the memory, regain the knowledge of her, grasp it. But they can’t. They are in grueling loving pain.

This brings us to investigate deeper the connection that memory has with imagery. Memory is imagery. And imagery (as discussed in class) is the love-language of God. We only need to look at Shir Hashirim to see the importance of imagery in expressing divine love. According to Arthur Green, Shir Hashirim leads us from image to image to the merge of the Shechinah with the God-head. Pope, after a long analysis of festivals of the dead in ancient mid-eastern culture, makes the claim that Shir Hasnhirim could easily be seen as having been recited and written for one of these same festivals. Here, we have a very vibrant connection leading us from the dead to memory to imagery to love (erotic and spiritual) to the dead. Memory of the dead by the living vessels therefore is cyclic, reclaiming its power on a continual basis, growing exponentially, morphing, merging, and then cycling around again.

This power of the memory of the dead is well described in a short story by James Joyce. In it, a man is devoted to his wife. After the description of a beautiful party with family and friends (Christmas in Ireland) and the demonstration of this man’s love for his wife, all she can talk about is a boy she once loved who had died young. This memory, for her, this image, has flowered in the passage of time until it can be stronger than the actual physical smells, smiles touches and vibrant tastes and colors of the present reality. Imagery of the dead left to run free (we learn from Joyce) will charge through the strongest walls and leap over the highest ramparts leaving our present day world in a state of emotional and spiritual chaos.

As for my own experience, after John died I moved back east and then to Ashland Oregon. I didn’t have a reason or a want to return to Los Angeles. However, on a trip to Mexico about two years ago my friend and I had a stop at the LA airport. I got off the plane and I could see it all once again. The search for John. I started shaking, almost fainted.

Since then I’ve been through this airport many times (on my way back and forth from AJR). I sit there for hours writing and reading. The airport itself has taken on more images. The old ones though are there, concealed, and I know they can show their ugly face any time. For example, sometimes I see myself, a part of me, running and looking for John. I see her objectively as an image, a shadow. She’s outside of me. She isn’t my body since I am in my body. But she is there. She’s a part of me that died in the LA airport, while I was searching for a husband now dead. She is a divine spark that is imprisoned and dead and in great need of radiance and rebirth.

That moment, I bring her back into myself carefully, lovingly and go back to my reading.



Third Boundary: The Vessel and the Divine Spark

This leads us to the next boundary of the frame. This boundary can have two sides. It is the vessel-view of the divine spark. This spark is either still living while the body is dead or it itself is dead. The dead, in other words, is not only the vessel that is gone. It is much more than that.
What is a divine spark? From what I’ve learned, within the construct of Lurianic Kabbalah, these are the pieces of God-light held captive in the shattered fragments (husks).

Kushner refers to these sparks and fragments in describing the broken tablets. The first try at fathoming our own awareness fails. There is some dying or shattering in between. And then the second set is given and received without much fuss at all. Which leads us to suspect that (since death and brokenness are still so frequent) that the second set has not yet been given at all…that all we possess are the broken fragments of the first set…carried in the ark.

The way I see it, perhaps at a given time of tragedy or meditation a husk will break open and a spark will be released. Just as Hillman refers to the reality of many gods, it would therefore be plausible (since we are in God’s image) that we each have many divine sparks, some that stay radiant and get released, and others that die within us.

As for my own experience, during times of meditation I sometimes get to a certain place of light and I want to seal it. So I will feel the frame of the spark (that I have set free) and literally, with my body, walk out of it. I leave it there, this divine spark (on a mountain or by a creek) to continue to funnel that same light to the world. Because honestly, my body has places to go to, papers to write, classes to teach, friends to see. This divine spark can continue the work while other sparks in my body can work on more of an earthly realm.

One thing I’ve learned though. This recognition of one’s own divine spark by the vessel causes the vessel to want to feel and to be in touch with divine sparks of others, both living and dead. Love for oneself (we might say) enables one to love others beyond the idea of life or death. We see this in Torah. Kushner writes that scripture is the result of the attempt to bring to the lifelight of consciousness the latent irresolvable dialectic of unconsciousness. He then quotes Heschel: (a holy story) is an occasion when the heart surprises the mind. Every year we read about Abraham and Isaac. Commentators have said that Abraham has already killed Isaac in his mind as he is walking up the mountain. In other words (the way I see it and perhaps there is some rabbinic teaching around this of which I am unaware)) the action is already so known within him that he has released his own divine spark in the power of the tragic moment. Because he makes this self-offering, the divine spark of Isaac is no longer necessary as an offering.

As for myself, when John first died I would wander off to the hills to find him. I wasn’t looking for the beard. the wild laugh or the darting green eyes. I was seeking his essence which I knew I could find if I could release my own. And there he would be. I would still be very much in my vessel but I would sense him and even dance with him. I would feel his hand holding mine, feel the energy of his body, so unique to him. Then, I would be aware of a more consolidated and radiant spark, the light left here on earth to watch over his family. For me, these experiences are more powerful than memories. They are certainly images as I am experiencing all of this in my mind. But they are images run wild that do not dominate the real world. They fit into it, adapt.

Moving on, the dead (as I’ve mentioned) is also a metaphor for the dead divine spark. The best place where we can see this in terms of everyday prayers is in the Amidah. There, we pray to a God who m’chayay hamatim….who brings life to the dead. Clearly, we aren’t imagining corpses rising out of graveyards (though perhaps Ezekiel does). I believe that what we are seeing is a divine spark so enclosed and imprisoned by the lower sefirot that it loses its radiance. God helps this spark to break free from the husk and to once again rise and be renewed with light. We as humans help this to happen through prayer. It’s a continual process, a necessary one. We all suffer with dead or dying sparks. We all forget the mitzvoth for a moment, make mistakes, cling to what seems to be material necessities. This is part of being human. Prayer, I think, is the most powerful way we can release and bring life back to the dying or dead sparks within our souls. That’s because prayer brings us to a place of being the divine spark rather than being the vessel seeing the spark. Just as memory of the dead by a vessel creates a continuum (as discussed before), so does this action of bringing life to a dead spark through prayer. There’s a heightening that happens, an exponential merging and morphing with God.

And this leads us to the fourth and final boundary in which the divine spark greets the divine spark.


The Fourth Boundary: The Divine Spark and the Divine Spark

This boundary of the frame of the dead is one of repair. It’s when we can focus on the divine spark within us and through that focus bring all others into the state of oneness and merging. Our holy work on this plane after all is to repair the breakage. So, this boundary defines the dead from the perspective of the spiritual towards the spiritual. It brings healing to God. The dead here is all. The living is all. This is the higher self, the place of upper tiferet. The veil between the living and the dead here is extremely thin. I think this is the place where we go to on Yom Kippur.

When I stopped for a moment when I was moving to LA and went outside and smelled the flowers and felt that place of love…that was John’s divine spark merging with my own. When we feel and know we are being blessed by a friend even if the friend is far away…this is the merging of divine sparks.

What we realize is that the spark of the physical dead is not necessarily more heightened than that of the living. It simply is in another manifestation. Therefore, connection with the spark of the dead no longer feels so difficult. It feels smooth, easy. The pain is replaced by joy. Kushner quotes Rabbi Nachman in his explanation of Deut. 5:4. Face to face the Lord spoke to you. Rabbi Nachman says this: When they received Torah Israel had a shining mirror like countenance and were thus able to receive the holy face so that the holy face would be visible in them… At the moment of revelation the One is seen in the face of the other.

What I am saying here is that when you are seeing the dead as a divine spark from your own divine spark the dead no longer exist. It’s that simple. All that exists is God. You know who you are and why you are here. As discussed in class, the Sfas Emes says that the soul has been sent down to this world to do the will of the creator… to repair the breakage. The objective therefore is knowing your mitzvah and doing it with focus and love. I really think my mitzvah here on earth (and probably my mitzvah for many incarnations) is to know God as intimately as possible and…with courage…to bring this continuum to the images of reality, to the Jewish people, to all people. And it’s the dead who continually lead me to this realization.


Conclusion
This is one thing I haven’t said. In my own experiences in looking for John, after some time I started finding him and finding other souls as well, souls who guide me. Living and not living. I have found them in deep meditation, in my classes, here in Ashland, in LA. I’ve found teachers, students, lovers and friends. Now, I go to the hills to meditate and have my own personal work to do with God. Sometimes John is there. Sometimes he isn’t. When my body misses him I allow my body to cry. When my mind needs to remember him I take out pictures or think of experiences. For the most part though, I tend to rejoice in the essence I can feel so deeply. And in that rejoicing I become the essence of myself. And quicken my own repair.

In the end, the dead are the mind-tricksters for the vessels, the lantern-holders for the souls. They are the ones who help us to think, to feel, to enable the birthing of imagery, the love language of God. They hurt. They make us work. They are a blessing.