Learning the Art of Dying by Learning the Art of Living

On Moshe’s last ascent and the dignity of a life prepared

“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death,” writes the famous twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. “If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessåness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.”[1]

While it is not entirely clear what Wittgenstein intended, Judaism would not agree—at least not as usually understood. Death is an experience of life. But this is true only when one has truly lived.

God’s final instruction

In our parashah, God informs Moshe that he will soon die:

Go up into this mountain of Abarim, Mount Nevo, which is in the land of Moav, facing Jericho, and see the land of Canaan that I am giving to the children of Israel as a possession. And die on the mountain that you are ascending, and be gathered to your people, as Aharon your brother died on Mount Hor….[2]

God is telling Moshe to prepare for death. Nothing is more difficult than realizing the art of dying; one needs a lifetime to prepare for it.

How many people die without ever having truly lived? On some tombstones it could truthfully read: Died at 25, buried at 90. How tragic to leave the world without ever having awakened to life.

Living shapes dying

Our attitude to death is fashioned by the way we live. It is life that teaches us how to transform the moment of dying into an encounter with eternity. That moment can be one of deep ecstasy—if we realize how much we were given while alive, gifts given to us gratuitously.

Death confronts us with the great test of indifference: was life for us a gift that we acknowledged, or did we treat our life as ownerless property? To live indifferently is to waste the one thing we cannot replace.

We ought to build our lives as if they were works of art.[3] Yet many of us treat life as if it belongs to no one in particular. We imagine we are fully in control—until a serious illness humbles us and we find we cannot even lift a finger. That is the absurdity of life when it is taken for granted.

The Kotzker Rebbe once quipped, in spirit, that there are people who are bodies without souls—busy, productive, papers in hand, ever networking—yet without a design to their lives.[4]

The kiss and the gathering

The Torah says Moshe died “al pi Hashem”—“by the mouth of God”.[5] Our Sages understood this as mitat neshikah, the “death by a kiss,” and that God Himself buried Moshe.[6] Judaism thus envisions a death of intimacy and dignity for the righteous—not oblivion, but a gathering to one’s people, a return.

It is not death itself that matters most, but the opportunity to prepare for it.

A chassid’s lechayim

I once heard the story of a Kotzker chasid on his deathbed who ordered an alcoholic drink to make a “lechayim”, a blessing. His family thought he had lost his senses. He smiled and told them he had already prepared for his death: he had repented and said viddui (confession), and now he was ready to depart. To fulfill a mitzvah is to do so with joy—so he drank to life

The chasid continued with a parable: twins in the womb. One cries when the other begins to leave their small world. But the one who is “born” is greeted with celebration. So too with death: what seems like departure may be birth into a larger reality. When there is a mazal tov, one says lechayim.

When we have prepared for our death by living well, dying becomes a mitzvah of surrender—the moment of giving ourselves over entirely to God.

Choose a life worth dying for

If we do not learn to live meaningfully, we grow impoverished with age instead of enriched. We busy ourselves with entertainment and diversions, waiting for death behind a camouflage of distractions.

When life lacks meaning, death becomes absurd. What, after all, is the difference between a life unlived and death? Have we been “dead” for the eternity before our birth only to turn our short life span into another form of death? What then has been gained?

Albert Camus once asserted that philosophy’s most serious problem is suicide: if life is meaningless, why not end it?[7] Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel did not agree: the most serious problem is martyrdom—is there anything worth dying for?[8] The Torah’s answer is that there is something worth living and dying for: the sanctity of life in covenant with God.

Our Sages said it concisely: “The wicked—while alive—are called dead; and the righteous, even in death, are called living.”[9]

Practice, daily

How then does one “practice” dying? By practicing living. Our sages set out some practical guidelines: “Repent one day before your death”—and since we do not know that day, repent every day.[10] Live with gratitude and design; craft a soul large enough to receive the kiss of God.

Not all of us are summoned to prepare for death as Moshe was. But even if we are not, we should live as if we were called.

A final question bears reconsideration: to what extent should we keep a human being alive by extraordinary medical means when dignity and the ability to prepare for this holy moment are lost? Death should, whenever possible, be a moment of nobility.

Moshe died. And yet, perhaps more than anyone, he knew how to live.

Notes

[1] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus §6.4311–§6.4312 (exact edition/page TBD).

[2] Devarim 32:49–50.

[3] See Abraham Joshua Heschel, often urging that “life is a work of art,” e.g., A Passion for Truth (New York: Macmillan, 1973), p. 23; see also themes in Who Is Man? (Stanford University Press, 1965).

[4] Saying attributed to the Kotzker Rebbe (R. Menachem Mendel of Kotzk); exact phrasing varies in oral/hasidic collections.

[5]  Devarim 34:5.

[6] Devarim 34:5. See Bava Batra 17a, Moed Katan 28a (Moshe and Miriam died by God’s kiss); Sotah 14a (God buries Moshe).

[7] Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (trans. Justin O’Brien), opening essay.

[8] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Who Is Man?, p. 92.

[9] Berachot 18a–b.

[10] Avot 2:10 (R. Eliezer: “Repent one day before your death”).