sidleypkhermit | (no subject)

There is a story behind "a person who dies on the eve of Rosh Hashanah is a tzaddik - a righteous person." (Tzaddeket for a woman, btw.) I love seeing this teaching passed around on FB, and I want you to know the full story.

The story as I learned it is from a teaching built upon a discussion in the Talmud of the "who shall live, who shall die" concept of who is written in the book of life for the year to come at the High Holy Days, and who is not. (BT Rosh Hashanah 16b, I believe.)

A truly righteous person, too, must eventually die (as death is the inevitable conclusion of life). But God does not want to let this precious, righteous person go; God wants to cling on to every second of having this person on earth. But, God is God... and God knows that this person's name is not written in the Book of Life for the year to come. So God waits until the very last possible moment of the year, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, to allow the Angel of Death to descend. And finally that truly righteous person breaths her last and her soul departs.

Gosh I love that teaching.

Now, of course, I do not believe - as most progressive Jewish folks don't - in any literal sense of a "Book of Life," or that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, or that a decree is set regarding our life or death on a certain date. I believe that we each write our own book of life, so to speak. And our actions write themselves in it, and our deepest truths are found within it. And every book has a conclusion. But the best books don't really end when you finish reading and sadly close the cover. They stay with you, linger in your heart, arise in your thoughts, and change you. They become a part of you.

So it is with someone like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her book may have closed, but her legacy remains with us as long as we allow it to. What she taught us. Who she insisted on being despite how society would have limited her. The role model she was for so many women and people of all genders. How she dissented. (How she made fashion choices aligned with her judicial decisions! Had to get that in there.) The equity she fought so diligently for. Her ethics, her bravery, her intelligence. I could go on and on. These will endure long past her time on earth.

Just like God, we didn't want to let go of her. We held on until the very last moment of this precious, righteous woman's life. And now she is no more. May we merit the opportunity to live her legacy and may we honor her memory.

Rabbi Emily Segal, posted on Facebook 9/18/20