S andburg had it mostly right, we gather from Rabbi Benjamin Blech’ s com- pelling new book, Hope, Not Fear: Changing the Way We View Death (Rowan & Littlefield Publishers). To Jewish mys- tics, death is a promise, not a mockery, writes the rabbi. What happens to our dead selves — to our souls, anyway — is poetic, romantic even. This life is only a prelude, says Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), the anteroom before the afterlife. Blech is a scholar, a professor of contem- porary Jewish issues at Yeshiva University, but, in a conversation at his West Side apartment, he tells us, “I did not intend this [as] a book for scholars. ” Rather, at 139 pages, without footnotes but with seven additional pages of suggested contempo- rary readings, this slender but splendid book is conversational, an introduction to the subject for the ignorant (which is almost all of us). Death is almost never mentioned in classrooms or heard from pulpits. Most traditional Jews interviewed for this article doubted or didn’ t know if a dead per- son was capable of hearing, though both Talmuds, Bavli and Yerushalmi, say the dead can. The 85-year-old Blech writes with the excitement of a blind person suddenly able to see the aurora borealis. On every other page, it seems, he discovers Jewish ideas about death that are “fascinating, ” “remark- able” and, after all, what is more fascinating and remarkable than being convinced that death is not the end, that our consciousness and souls survive? “I intended this book to be helpful to people, all people, ” says the rabbi. The Torah itself is strangely coy about the after- life, though hints are sprinkled throughout the Bible. The siddur is more explicit: The Amidah (Shmoneh Esrei), the only prayer recited morning, afternoon and night, states definitively, five times in the opening paragraphs alone, that God is “the resus- citator of the dead, ” the One who “restores life, ” keeping His fidelity “to those who sleep in the dust. ” The preface to every chapter of Pirkei Avot states: “ All Israel has a share in the World to Come. ” Most prayer books include Maimonides’ “Thirteen Principles of Faith, ” including the unambiguous affir- mation: “I believe with complete faith that there will be a revival of the dead. ” Blech, who writes a weekly column for Aish.com, and is the author of the New York Times best-seller The Sistine Secrets: Michelangelo’ s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican, tells us, “To under- stand death is to enter a realm that of necessity requires faith as a guide. ” Despite differing theologies, most religions, he says, “have somehow come to very similar con- clusions: There is life after this life. ” (Hope, Not Fear has been endorsed by leaders of Yeshiva University, St. Peter’ s Seminary and the Islamic Center of Long Island). RETHINKING DEATH Religion and science may seem to be com- ing at death from different directions, says Blech, but doctors who didn’ t believe in an afterlife are being forced to rethink that as medical advances have proved increasingly able to revive patients thought to be dead. “ At a medical conference in Houston, doctors told me there was a new hospital rule forbidding doctors, during or after surgery, from kibbitzing or telling jokes because there were people who ‘ died’ for 20 minutes, no heartbeat, no brainwaves, who were able to repeat everything the doctors said” — and the ‘ dead’ didn’ t always appre- ciate the doctors’ wisecracks, ” Blech said. Patients of almost all religions with near- death experiences, a term that wasn’ t even used until the 1970s, “shared common experiences that were inexplicable and uni- versally consistent, ” Blech says. In 1975, Dr. Raymond Moody wrote Life After Life, a book exploring what the near-dead described: a cessation of pain; an onset of peacefulness; an out-of-body experience, such as floating over one’ s own body; going through a “tunnel”; a mag- netic, spiritual light force; a review of one’ s life; meeting relatives or mentors who were already dead (but never seeing a person that was still alive); a surge of love. In Israel, one of the newspapers did a big story on Moody’ s book in its weekend edition. After Shabbos, said Blech, a radio program featuring the then-chief rabbi of Tel Aviv was fielding call after call: What about that book? Is there any validity to it? Blech said the chief rabbi replied, “Not only does it have validity, this is what Judaism has been trying to teach the world for thousands of years. ” In Genesis, the rabbi adds, “the first thing God created was light, but the sun wasn’ t created until Day 4. That first day’ s light was not light as we know it. Some say it was the [Heavenly] light we see when we die. ” In Exodus, says Blech, “Moses asks to see God, who answers, ‘ Man cannot see Me and live. ’ In other words, you will see God [when you will live no more]. ” Blech cited the eulogy given for Apple’ s Steve Jobs by his sister. Just before Jobs died, she said, he looked at his loved ones, 28 January 17 • 2019 jn continued on page 29 JONATHAN MARK SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS books arts&life “Under the harvest moon, when the soft silver Drips shimmering over the garden nights, Death, the gray mocker, comes and whispers to you As a beautiful friend who remembers. ” — Carl Sandburg New book by Rabbi Benjamin Blech challenges common ideas about death. Other Side of Dying The KOREN PUBLISHING JERUSALEM Benjamin Blech