A few years later, I was at the graveside burial service of my Aunt Lisl in Toronto. She lived for over 97 years!! It was a cold damp January day in Toronto. The funeral home had agreed to delay the burial for a day ( usually a Jewish funeral is held within 24 hours). I had flown in late the night before and had a glimpse of her body at the funeral home before meeting the Rabbi for a chat in his car at Holy Blossom Memorial Garden.
The Rabbi had phoned me long-distance the day before and had asked me to share briefly about Lisl’s life. In the car, I asked him if I could also read a passage from Isaiah 11 about the wolf lying down with the lamb, and the peace and harmony that would come in the messianic era.
He knew I followed Jesus from speaking with Rosie ( she and her team of Filipinos were all Christians), and he was said he didn’t like the way Christians used that passage to evangelize Jews about Jesus.
I told him I liked it because it spoke of the time of peace in the new world to come, along with the renewal of the environment – so fitting for Aunt Lisl as she was an animal rights protector and had been active in Canada’s Green Party, even runnng for office!
However, I did respect his worries and decided not to read it at the graveside, and I spoke briefly about her life and work.
BTW, I don’t seek out Jews to evangelize them; I know too well the terrible history of malignment and persecution for centuries of Jews by Christians. If Jewish people ask me about my beliefs, and actually, I am surprised how often that does happen, I will, of course, try to explain what I believe and why.
The Rabbi spoke the funeral liturgy, some in English, most in Hebrew and said the Kaddish in Aramaic. ( Lisl’s Filipino “family” and I were the unconventional minyan 😊).
Then we threw handfuls of dirt onto her coffin, deep in the hole. And i also tossed in small rocks I had brought from Mayne Island, one for each of my family members and for my brothers.
That day, January 22nd, 2017, I decided I also wanted the Kaddish to be recited at my burial. Nothing personal or sappy about it: only praise to our Creator, prayers for peace and hope in the resurrection and affirmation of the renewal of the world in the future!
Not being raised with any Jewish religious traditions or practices, I was first introduced to the Kaddish through Chaim Potok’s book Davita’s Harp. Ilana Davita is the child of Jewish mother and a Gentile father ( like me!). When her journalist father dies in Guernica, Davita starts to attend synagogue regularly and recites the Kaddish regularly in memory of her father.
Only several years ago, when attending an occassional Shabbat service in Toronto was i actually exposed to the words of the Kaddish, which as you can read above, surprisingly say nothing about grieving the dead one, but basically praises God’s great name, and showcases the hope of the world to come, along with peace! (when “the wolf WILL lay down with the lamb….and a little child shall lead them!”- Isaiah 11:6.)
This past week, after the tragedy in Pittsburgh, I was at a Hillel House UBC vigil, and we did recite the Kaddish. ( I had already written most of this blog, never thinking I’d be reciting the Kaddish the next week.)
Death is a powerful reality that awaits each of us one day, through old age, illness or accident, war or some type of violence.
Personally, I feel too many in our comfortable western society minimize the reality of death, which biblically is called the “final enemy”.( 1 Corintians 15:26) Instead, we prefer to take solace in the “cycle of life”or reincarnation ideas or that there will be nothing at all after – extinction.
When my dear Mum was dying of cancer, 30 years ago this Fall, she told me one day she thought death would be “darkness”. “No Mum” I said, choking back tears, “ it will be light”. And my Mum, who had been raised a secular humanist by her atheist mother, asked me how I came to believe and follow Christianity. This was after I had followed Jesus for 10 years, during which time she closely, but rather skeptically watched me, expressing her wonder at when this “fad” or “phase” would end. ( she did come to visit church, but found it all rather puzzling.)
By her hospital bed, I explained the reasons for why I began to follow Jesus.
“I attended a Christian camp at age ten, at a teacher’s suggestion. While there, I began to follow Jesus quietly and prayed until my Granny died when I was age 12.
In my late teens, I began to seek again; I was looking for a source of unselfish love whom I could always trust and for a power by which I myself could experience transformation. I too wanted to be able to love others unselfishly.
My adult faith commitment began when I was 19, through the prayer of a high school friend, while I was standing on a big rock somewhere along Wreck Beach in the pouring rain on a dark October Friday night. God, my Rock, has never let me me down!” – an excerpt from my recent autobiography for a spiritual care application.
My mother responded to my story by saying: “I see, a psychological crutch…”. I took it in stride, cried my eyes out in private and asked my friends to pray. Interestingly, the night before my Mum went into a coma, she stayed up all night, writing thank you notes to her doctors ( many of whom she had taught during in their residency) and good – bye notes to old family friends.
The next morning, her pain had become so severe, that she pulled out her NG tube and indicated she had had enough. From that time on, she was in a coma, with a balance of pain meds to keep her comfortable. She still heard us and sometimes responded a bit, but died comfortably and peacefully 2 days later on Dec 21, 1988.
My brother and I looked through the cards she had written that night. Some were clear and could be delivered. One was to an old family friend; the woman was a respected feminist involved in International Women’s work; she was an atheist and especially hated the Apostle Paul, because of what she interpreted to be his anti- women comments!! She had laid into me when I stayed with her in London England home ten years previously. ( It didn’t bother me – and I didn’t know enough at the time how to counter her remarks. I’d have plenty to say now, 40 years later!)
In the note, my Mum said good bye to her, and then wrote: “There’s a three day resurrection. Let’s join the gang!”
My brother and i decided she had been confused on too much morphine, and did not send the note on to London, ( we wrote a note of our own).
However, in my heart, I was comforted that she had taken hold of Resurrection hope!!
The cover to her memorial bulletin had a quote from John Donne’s poem: Death be not Proud.”
Death is also used by tyrants with absolute power to control those who oppose them, whether through war, imprisonment with torture and or murder, and we see plenty of that daily in our global newscasts.
Belief in resurrection, that death is not the end, gives ability for a brave and dignified “in your face” approach to one’s fate.
I think of the row of 21 Coptic prisoners, refusing to renounce their faith in Jesus, lined up in their orange uniforms on a beach, with black clad ISIS men making ready to murder them.
I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (above photo), imprisoned and hanged in the Nazi concentration camp, Flossenbürg on April 9, 1945, for his plot to murder Hitler. His last words were:
”This is the end – for me, the beginning of life.”
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/defiant-theologian-dietrich-bonhoeffer-is-hanged
In Surprised by Hope, NT Wright makes a solid critique of the skepticism of the enlightenment era that dismisses the possibility of the reality of resurrection.
“ Insofar as I understand scientific method, when something turns up that doesn’t fit the paradigm you’re working with, one option at least, perhaps when all others have failed, is to change the paradigm – not to exclude everything you’ve known to that point, but to include it within a larger whole.” p. 72
Wright also makes a case for a type of knowing that is deeper than the sterile objective/ subjective antithesis:
Wright’s conclusion to his chapter 4: “The strange story of Easter” is powerful:
JenniEliz 