By Rabbi Jaron Matlow, Special to The Jewish Sound
In the last few years, the ugly specter of suicide has popped up twice in my extended family. In both instances, thank God, the attempts were unsuccessful. Both were cases of despondency over poor health and fear of the unknown given the health situations. Suicide is a very troubling event for any family or community to contend with.
As society continues to age, and more people become assimilated from their religious or other traditions, I suspect the rate of suicide will only increase. In states like ours, there is also the “Death with Dignity” law, which basically allows terminally ill people to commit suicide legally, assisted by their doctors.
In Judaism, suicide is very frowned upon. People who commit suicide cannot be buried in Jewish cemeteries. Traditional rabbis will decline to officiate at funerals for people who have committed suicide. So, what is the issue?
Judaism requires us to preserve life at all costs. We are told that life-saving actions override the restrictions of the Sabbath. We read, in the Book of Genesis, that we are created in God’s image. Thus if we take any action that ends life, we are, in effect, removing God from the world. Our tradition teaches that to take a life is as if you have destroyed the world, while to save a life is as if you have saved the entire world.
So, with this as our basic mindset and theology, how do we make sense of it when someone chooses to end his or her life? Many emotions arise with any death — grief, anger, guilt, etc. In the case of suicide, these emotions are far more intense and painful, especially the guilt. The “if only…” thoughts lead to incredible pain.
As a pastoral caregiver, my primary concern with a suicide lies with the victim’s family and friends. There is, quite frankly, nothing any rabbi can do for a victim of suicide. What we can do is help family and friends make sense of the loss, come to terms with it, deal with the guilt and grief, and help them make sense of the tradition.
Our traditional theology can often be very difficult to grasp, especially in times of tragedy. It is incumbent up on pastoral caregivers and others to help find ways to understand Jewish theology. Judaism is losing far too many members as it is. Having people leave Judaism due to their frustration with how people responded theologically to a suicide only compounds the tragedy.
I would like to offer two paths to help in dealing with the tragedy of suicide. One is to understand suicide differently, and the other is to understand God differently.
As Rabbi Elliot Dorff of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies teaches, suicide should not be looked at as a sin of infinite circumstance. Rather, we should consider suicide to be a symptom of a medical disease: Depression. Thus, he who dies from the symptoms of severe mental disease should not be considered a sinner — rather, an ill person. In my opinion, we need to make every effort to provide suicides with normal funerals to give comfort for the family. This may not be consistent with the letter of Jewish law, but it is consistent with the intent that we should live by Torah and not die by it.
We also need to change how we view God. If we see God as the “man behind the curtain” pulling the levers, a la Wizard of Oz, we can never find peace with the tragedy of suicide. I suggest reading Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson’s new book, “God of Becoming and Relationship.” Rabbi Artson, dean of the Ziegler School, helps us to understand God within the framework of Judaism in a radically new way. “God is not outside the system as some unchanging, eternal abstraction,” he writes. “Rather, God permeates every aspect of becoming…working in each one of us…to nudge us toward the best possible outcome.” In other words, God transcends and is a part of all of us and we are all a part of God. God wants us to succeed and to become closer to God, to surround us with love and peace. If we are able to see God in this way, then we are better able to deal with suicide, since we are not seeing God as a punitive energy, set to destroy someone’s precious soul because he was severely troubled.
I pray the time comes when suicide is a thing of the past. But until that day, I pray that we can all find positive ways to deal with this tragedy when it strikes, to learn from what happened, and to help others become closer to God and Judaism through the love and comfort that God’s characteristic of mercy provides us.
Rabbi Jaron Matlow is a retired Navy officer who works to better the lives of fellow disabled veterans. He provides counseling services through www.Soldiersproject.org for Iraq/Afghanistan veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.