[Avodah] Death

Lawrence Levine via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Thu May 19 07:12:44 PDT 2016


The following is from RSRH's commentary on Vayikra 21:5


They shall not make a bald spot on their head, nor shall they shaveoff the corners of their beard and they shall not make a wound in  their flesh.


Heathenism, both ancient and modern, tends to associate religion
with death. The kingdom of God begins only where man ends. Death
and dying are the main manifestations of divinity. For, in the heathen
view, the deity is a god of death, not of life; a god who kills and never
revives, who sends death and its harbingers - sickness and poverty -
so that men, mindful of his power and their own helplessness, should
fear him. For this reason heathen temples stand beside graves, and the
foremost place of heathen priests is beside a corpse. There, where the
eyes are dimmed and the heart is broken, they find fertile soil for the
dissemination of their religion. He who bears on his flesh a mark of
death - a symbol of death's power to conquer all - and thus remains
ever mindful of death, performs the religious act par excellence, and this
especially befits a priest and his office.


Not so are the priests in Judaism, because not so is the Jewish concept
of God and not so is the Jewish religion. God, Who instructs the
Kohein regarding his position in Israel, is a God of life. The most exalted
manifestation of God is not in the power of death, which crushes
strength and life. Rather, God reveals Himself in the liberating and
vitalizing power of life, which elevates man to free will and eternal life.
Judaism teaches us not how to die but how to live, so that even in life
we may overcome death, an unfree existence, enslavement to physical
things, and moral weakness. Judaism teaches us how to live every moment
of earthly life as a moment of eternal life in the service of God;
how thus to live every moment of a life marked by moral freedom, a
life of thought and will, creativity and achievement, and also pleasure.
This is the teaching to which God has dedicated His Sanctuary and for
whose service He has consecrated the Kohanim, who teach the people the
"basis and direction of life"


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Based on this may one conclude that the present day obsession with death that one finds in some Islamic circles is a reversion to heathenism?  YL

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