I sat at one of the long tables in the dining room, idly munching on potato chips while I listened to the bearded man at the front of the room. It was motzei Shabbos, and like every week when Shabbos ended early enough, the yeshiva had a melave malka after night seder. The man at the front of the room was a guest speaker, a rebbe at one of the other high schools in the city.
I’ve long since forgotten most of his drasha, but one story that he told stuck with me. A couple had bought a house and discovered that part of the floor in the attic was broken. They called a contractor, he came the next day, and after a few hours of work it was repaired. A few days later, they went up to the attic to put some boxes away and found that the floor was broken again in the same spot. They called the contractor back. This time he spent an entire day reinforcing the floor. A week later it was broken again.
A few days later the couple was discussing the problem with a neighbor. “I’m surprised you bought the house at all.” he said. “After that boy hung himself in the attic, the house was vacant for years.”
“That was why the floor was breaking.” The rebbe declared. “The neshama of this boy was barred from gan eden, and even from gehenom. With no place to go, he kept returning to the place where he had killed himself. And every time his neshama visited, the floor broke. If he had only known what would happen, he would never have killed himself!”
In retrospect, it sounds like the kind of ghost story ten year olds tell around a campfire to scare each other. For some reason, though, it brought the afterlife into sharp focus for me. This boy, who had killed himself hoping to end it all, was instead living on and suffering for his misdeed. I, too, would live on after I died in this world. I too would be judged. I no longer saw Olam Haboh as a fairytale, but as a real place that I would one day go to. I, not a character in a story called “my neshama.” For years, I would periodically have dreams in which I stood before the Heavenly court.
It’s the association with that sudden insight, rather than any inherent quality of the story, which made me remember it.
When I took Abnormal Psychology in college and learned about major depression and suicide I was reminded of the story. This time, instead of bringing a religious concept into focus, it raised some disturbing questions. Nearly everyone who commits suicide does so because they are clinically depressed. The only exceptions are terminally ill patients who wish to end their pain and religiously-motivated people such as suicide bombers or the Jonestown Massacre. A clinically depressed person who dies by suicide was killed by his illness no less than someone who dies of cancer. Could a person be held morally responsible for dying of an illness, condemned because of it to exist in limbo for all eternity?
It turns out that the rabbonim today agree that a clinically depressed person is not responsible for committing suicide. The family sits shiva for them, and they may be buried in a Jewish cemetery. But what, then, of all of the suicide victims of the millennia between matan Torah and advent of modern psychology? How many families of clinically depressed suicide victims were denied the opportunity to mourn their loss and to give their loved ones a Jewish burial (something that I assume would have caused them pain). And why would Hashem dictate a halachah that He knew would be improperly applied until the modern rise of psychology?
It would be a long time before I came to the obvious answer: He didn’t. The severe condemnation of suicide reflects a time when there was no recognition of mental illness. Perhaps it was a way of punishing someone who murdered himself: after all, he couldn’t be executed for his crime, so denying him a proper burial and condemning him in the afterlife was the next best thing. Perhaps the knowledge that they would be denied mourning and burial in a Jewish cemetery served to dissuade some people from committing suicide. But the divine mandate of an all-knowing God it was not.
[Inspired by this post from Onionsoupmix]
The title, of course, comes from this:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_thinking_dissolving_questions_about/
ReplyDeleteI have been trying to read all highly upvoted posts at this site for several months. This has taken most of my free time and has been worth it, especially for Eliezer Yudkowsky's posts.
A clinically depressed person who dies by suicide was killed by his illness no less than someone who dies of cancer.
ReplyDeleteYou go too far. Bodily illnesses kill people whether they want to die or not; depression, in the worst cases, makes its victims want to die. Even if they kill themselves, they still die by their own action. Your statement denies this. Depression may diminish rational agency, and therefore responsibility, by diminishing rational capacity. But it does not reduce the sufferer to a non-agent.
MKR, technically, of course, you’re right. One who commits suicide is the agent of his own death, but only in the sense that he’s the one who pulls the trigger. I think we must be clear about what it means for someone who is suicidal to “want” to kill himself. Unlike the terminally ill patient who makes a rational decision that he’s in terrible pain and going to die soon anyway, so he may as well end the terrible pain, someone who is suicidal does not go through such a reasoned process. He does not kill himself because he is sad; rather, the feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness that cause/are caused by depression both make him sad and make him want to kill himself.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, 1. people who commit suicide often get happier once they determine to go through with it, and 2. putting a patient on anti-depressants increases suicide in the short term, because the drug takes time to work and at first lifts them out of crippling depression just enough that they are able to want to kill themselves.
We forget that it's God that does the sorting out of where neshamos go, not rabbonim.
ReplyDeleteEven if only a century ago mental illness was not understood, God did understand it and sorted things out appropriately.
> Garnel, sure, God can sort ‘em out. So maybe depressed suicides go straight to Gan Eden. But what about the family not sitting shiva and the body not being buried in a Jewish cemetery? These things cause pain to the family, and supposedly, to the deceased as well. Why was the halacha written in such a way that it wouldn’t be properly understood until the last century, causing pain to millennia worth of suicide victims and their families?
ReplyDelete> But what, then, of all of the suicide victims of the millennia between matan Torah and advent of modern psychology? How many families of clinically depressed suicide victims were denied the opportunity to mourn their loss and to give their loved ones a Jewish burial (something that I assume would have caused them pain).
ReplyDeleteA very moving post. You show a tremendous amount of compassion for people who have had little compassion directed their way (albeit retroactively). Yaffe Meod.