What, then, is there for poor, tempted man to do, when he comes before the king, except to justify theīut I do not wish to justify the judgment and to verify the verdict! Count me, then, among the many who will never be wise. And in His ways there are hidden secrets (as the few have agreed,įor the many will never be wise), things that are too exalted for creaturely knowledge, such as the distant future and the deep past. 'He acquits the righteous and convicts the wicked, and He makes everything right in its time. Signs do not have the power to make people die or to make people live, so do not look to them, for they will neither harm you nor help you.' No, 'it is from the Lord of All that all comes.' But the difference between theologyĪnd astrology is not only that God is powerful. Time uses 'proper weights and measures.' It 'never treats a man unfairly and never interferes with his deserts.' In the consideration of mortality, certainly, the stars have nothing to teach. He drinks with cynics.' The cynics seek 'to make the precious world tedious.' Their enigmatic discourses are 'a calumny against time.' But time, Nahmanides observes, is 'a truthful witness and a faithful judge.' The pessimist, though he is not mistaken intellectually (Nahmanides has described him as 'the wise individual'), 'is too clever, and 'The two of them have diseased their hearts.' The optimist 'errs intellectually' he does not grasp that no star always rises,įor 'the sphere is round,' and the sign that ascends today descends tomorrow. Present, and the man who refuses to live in the present. He foresees nothing but evil.' The man who lives in the He prefers weeping to happiness, and he scatters joy before sorrow and sighing. On days of delight he thinks of mourning, and of despair on days of hope. Sign that, in the words of one medieval Hebrew writer, 'rises at the end of the eastern sky every hour and minute.') And there is also 'the wise individual who rejects pleasure and recoils from his time and from every precious He puts tomorrow out of mind, and drinks to forget his misery and his toil.' (The 'rising star' refers to the astrological He rejoices in the fullness of his sufficiency, in his rising star. Yet there are many ways to interpret human vicissitudes. 'Every individual knows melancholy and joy,' Nahmanides declares. Written largely in a rhyming (and somewhat maddening) pastiche of Biblical and rabbinical phrases. It is a philosophical reflection on mortality, But I begin at the beginning, with the introduction to the work. On eschatology called 'The Gate of Recompense,' a detailed explication of the system of rewards and punishments. Is a vast compilation of laws and customs, drawn from ancient and medieval sources, and its treatment of the practices of mourning served as the model for the great medieval and early modern codes of law. It is known as Torat Ha'Adam, or The Law of Man. The most influential work on dying and mourning in the Jewish tradition was composed by Nahmanides, the religious genius of Spanish Jewry in the thirteenth century. I place my hands on this cloth, which is the color of wine, I see the traces of the hands that preceded mine. Here stands the precentor, that is, the leader of the service, that is, the mourner and as A red velvet cloth is thrown over the rostrum at the front of the room, directly before the ark in which the Torah scrolls are housed. When I stand by the wall of books, I feel as if I am standing on the shore of an immensity. The beauty of the room is owed to its homeliness. Justify the judgment, but judge the judgment, too. 'He is the Rock.' And the Rock struck hard. I watched the words disperse across the surface of the wood like the clods of dirt The words spilled into the pit and smashed upon my father's coffin. 'Magnified and sanctified.' Sounds, not words. 'Magnified and sanctified may His great Name be.' Words of the kaddish, the long one for the funeral, the one about the world that will be made new, the one that I had never said before, and I uttered it. 'He is the Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are judgment.' I was presented with the

I was presented with the words that justify the judgment, and I justified the judgment. I stood and I swayed and I said what I was told to say. The wooden box hitting the floor of the pit. The door slamming behind me in the black car. MAY HE WHO MAKES PEACE IN HIS HIGH PLACESĮverything struck hard. MAGNIFIED AND SANCTIFIED MAY HIS GREAT NAME BE IN THE WORLD THAT HE CREATED, AS HE WILLS, AND MAY HIS KINGDOM COME IN YOUR LIVES AND IN YOUR DAYS AND IN THE LIVES OF ALL THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL, SWIFTLY AND SOON, AND SAY ALL AMEN!

Kaddish in russian transliteration