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Home
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Man Alive
Adapted from OHRNET, Parshas Chaye Sora
by Rabbi Asher Sinclair
Neshama. She had always liked her
name. Neshama. A name which whispered the very breath
of life. Neshama breathed in deeply the life giving fluid in
which she floated. Turning on her side, the life support
cable gently undulated in the dark liquid world like a
lethargic seasnake. It was at a time like this that one
thought about the elemental things. Name. Life. The future.
She was frightened. What lay ahead of her? As far back as she
could remember, she had been in this safe, secure waterworld.
Now her life was drawing to an end. Death, non-being, the end
of all she knew, of knowledge itself, awaited her at the
tunnel's end. Like a puny raft circling on the edge of a
giant whirlpool, she felt herself being drawn inexorably down
into the vortex. Panic rose in her mouth. A primordial fear
of the unknown gripped her. I don't want to die! I want to
stay in this world and live forever! She had spent her
days here in deep meditation on the secrets of the universe
with her spiritual guide. But now she was alone. And she knew
this was the end. The time had come. It seemed that her ears
filled with the most sublime music. A single chord of all the
water voices sounding one wordless chord undulating through
every known scale. The sound grew and grew. She was
terrified. Terrified of the pain. Terrified of not feeling
the pain anymore. Down and down she went. Down the world's
end. Down to the place of death. It was here. This was the
end. It was over. She had died.
It wasn't a particularly busy night in the
delivery rooms at Hadassah Hospital. Another little soul had
just come into the world. Screaming and crying as though she
had been summoned reluctantly to this earthly sphere. The
nurse cleaned the little baby, wrapped her in swaddling to
keep her warm and gave the baby into her mother's arms. The
mother looked at her newborn daughter and thought to herself,
"You are so beautiful, little Neshama."
Like the dark world before this existence,
this world, too, is no more than a dark corridor compared
with the great palace of light into which we will enter. This
world is the place where we have the opportunity to prepare
ourselves to enter that palace. To the extent that we
prepare, so will we be able to bask in that radiance.
I don't know about you, but I don't find it
so simple to see this world as a corridor. It's so easy to
get caught up looking at all the neon signs along the way.
It's so easy to think that this world is the palace itself.
And it's a pretty shabby palace for all its beauty. Is there
anyone here who dies with even half his dreams fulfilled?
With how many problems and heartaches and backaches is this
world filled!
This week's parsha is called
Vayechi. A strange title. This is where Yaakov passes
away. The same applies to the "...lives of Sora" which speaks
of her death. But the name is apt. Only when we leave this
passing world do we really start to live.
There is an interesting fact about the Hebrew
world for life. It has no singular. Maybe that's to remind
our neshama that there are two lives, and this one is
only a prelude to "the main attraction."
(Sources: Rabbi Amiel in Iturei Torah)
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