Last Thursday, I received an email from the chaplain of a county-wide home hospice agency. I knew what it was before I opened it; we've communicated before: A Jew is dying somewhere in the county and the family requested a rabbi visit.
It's my sacred duty, and an honor to be there and accompany people through their last moments.
So, on Friday morning I drove an hour to Mohave Valley. I didn't know this family and they didn't know me. It was a truly moving experience. Harold - as I'm dubbing him for privacy's sake - was in his early seventies. He had recently gone into remission from blood cancer, but it then returned with a vengeance. When I arrived, he lay, asleep. He hardly responded to the sounds and feels of his family trying to gently rouse him; he was in another world.
I prayed at his bedside, reciting the traditional final prayers in a soft singsong. Then, I sang some of the most well-known liturgical prayers that he would have known from his youth, growing up in Brooklyn. Adon Olam had his family in tears, but Harold didn't stir. Then, I sang the Shema - the most famous Jewish prayer. Harold opened his eyes, his gaze meeting mine. Mustering up his remaining strength, I could hear him faintly singing along.
Those words, reverberating through three hundred centuries of Jewish history, were the final words of our sages killed by the Romans; the entire community of York, England in 1190 burned alive in a tower; the Jews hiding in their attics during the murderous crusade rampages and the Jews marched into the gas chambers in the 1940s.
And they were the last words on the lips of a Jew in Mohave Valley, who returned his soul to the Creator just hours later. Shema Yisrael Ado-nai Elo-haynu Ado-nai Echad! Hear, O Israel: G‑d is our L‑rd, G‑d is one!
That timeless declaration of faith is written in last week's Torah reading, read in synagogues around the world the day after Harold sang it with his last breaths.
The verses contain important mitzvahs such as loving G-d, educating our children, wearing tefillin, and affixing mezuzahs to all our doorposts - which I helped Harold's family do that very day.
This week, we read the second paragraph, which contains many of the same concepts as the first paragraph, but with several changes and additions. The primary addition in the expanded version is a description of the effect mitzvahs have on the world. We are promised that by adhering to G-d’s commandments our land will be fertile and the physical world will do well (and the opposite, if not, G-d forbid).
Where the first paragraph focuses primarily on our spiritual pursuits, which is certainly a vital introduction, the second paragraph makes it real and tangible — the ultimate purpose of spirituality is for it to become entangled with the mundane world and impact every part of G-d’s creation.
So every time you do a mitzvah, you are fulfilling the ultimate purpose of creation: to make this world a dwelling place for G-d, which we will experience in its most perfect form with the coming of Moshiach, may it be speedily in our times!
May the soul of Yosef the son of Tzvi rest in peace, and intercede in heaven on behalf of his family, and for his community - the Mohave County Jewish community. I may not have known him, but no Jew is a stranger; we are all brothers!