Silence: the Reward for Attending a House of Mourning - #DafYomi Ber. 6a-b

Some thoughts on today's Daf Yomi, Berakhot 6a-b. (Daf Yomi means "Daily Page," referring to a page from the Talmud. It's a practice of reading through/studying the entire Talmud, one page each day, from beginning to end. It takes about 7 and a half years, and a cycle just ended last week. I decided to start doing it this time around, with no promise that I'll finish it).

One topic is the reward one gains for doing various deeds, beginning with running to hear a rabbinic lecture. The one that struck me is the reward for going to a house of mourning: "אמר רב פפא: אגרא דבי טמיא - שתיקותא" - Rav Pappa said: the reward for attending a house of mourning is silence."

What does this mean? One commentator explains it from another passage: "Those offering consolation are not permitted to speak until the mourner opens his mouth" (Moed Katan 28b).

So sitting with the mourner without speaking, with the person whom grief has silenced, until they are able to speak, to leave that condition of stillness and reenter the world of other people that is created through speech. Not to intrude onto silence with one's chattering words and self-concerns. But can the mourner escape from his or her silent world without a hand being extended by the would-be consoler? Must all the work be done by the mourner to restart the conversation? How to center speech in the silence of the mourner and reach into that person's grief without causing further pain.

So now he's dead

So now he's dead. I've been thinking about it all day, but I haven't talked to very many people about it, except in two of my classes this morning.

It brings back all the emotions I felt on that day - that great blue-sky day - September 11, 2001. The feelings of shock, and fear, and grief, and then anger. The realization that we had been attacked. And then the days and weeks and months and years afterward. The having to listen to fools who blamed the United States. Anger burning in me. The feeling of "and you go your way, and I go my way." (That's what Dumbledore said when Fudge wouldn't believe him that Voldemort had come back - I know it's ridiculous to mention the Harry Potter books in this connection, but it captured how I felt). I supported going into Afghanistan, and screamed at a friend of mine who thought that this was a law-enforcement problem, and that Muslim nations should take care of bin Laden.

Supporting the war in Iraq, when hardly any of my friends did. I even thought of voting for George Bush in 2004, until the Abu Ghraib revelations early in that year.

It just brings back all of the rotten, twisted up, angry, grief-ridden feelings of that "low, dishonest decade," the 2000s. W. H. Auden's poem, September 1, 1939:

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

I don't know if bin Laden's death will change anything materially - how could we know yet? It feels to me as if his death might be part of a spiritual cleansing. He was an evil man, who did evil, knowingly, and he deserved to die.

Cancer and closure

Although this article says that Lung Cancer Affects Sexes Differently, the disease killed both my mother (in 1981) and my aunt Susan (her sister), this past December. My mother was diagnosed about 15 months before she died -- it had already spread from the lungs into other parts of her body. My aunt was diagnosed when it was still confined to the lungs, and she had surgery to take the cancer out. That was in the early 1990s. A couple of years ago the cancer reappeared, in an inoperable form, and finally killed her on December 16, 2003. Even though she beat the odds (the article says, "Among cases diagnosed from 1992 to 1999, only 12 percent of patients over all survived five years, 10 percent of the men and 14 percent of the women"), the cancer finally did get her.

Both my mother and my aunt were smokers until the moment they were diagnosed with lung cancer. They had started in their teens. My father, who was also a smoker, managed to quit smoking in the early 1970s (I don't remember exactly when) and his lungs appear to be healthy now.

Today was the last day of Passover (I had my first hametz meal tonight). The service on the last day of Passover includes Yizkor - the memorial service. I thought of my mother, my aunt, and also my grandmother (who died in June of last year, at the age of 98). Even though my mother died over 20 years ago, I am still not reconciled to her death. I still miss her. I would guess that my aunt's death has stirred up feelings also for me this year.

In America, we believe in "closure." There is no such thing as "closure." The pain of death is not so acute, so many years afterward, but it never goes away.

yitgadal ve-yitkaddesh sh'mei rabbah....