Yeah, right. If only.
A few days ago one of my friends posted a link on Facebook to this video.
In the video Rabbi Mizrachi claims that he will provide scientific proof of the existence of the afterlife. Always hopeful, I watched it. I didn’t bother watching the rest of the series. After rambling a bit and citing Torah sources, R’ Mizrachi outlines his five scientific proofs for the afterlife. They are:
1) Out-of-body experiences
2) Séances
3) Reincarnation
4) Hypnotic regression causing people to speak in languages they don’t understand
5) Two people inhabiting one body, by which I assume he means split-personality disorder.
The list is laughable. Even his proof from the Torah that there is an afterlife is hardly conclusive. He says that the Torah forbids us to communicate with the dead. This, he claims, proves that it is possible to speak to the dead, which in turn proves that there must be some sort of afterlife.
Unfortunately for him, this is not necessarily so. Many things in the Torah are polemics against idolatry. Communicating with the dead was common practice in many idolatrous cults of the Ancient Near East. The prohibition is as likely meant to prevent Jewish people from engaging in this idolatrous practice of their neighbors (despite it having no efficacy) as it is meant to prevent actual communication with the dead.
I had never heard of R’ Mizrachi, and at first I figured he was just some local rav who had decided to give a hashkafa lecture and had it filmed. But no, it turns out that he has his own kiruv organization, with its own website with many lectures purporting to PROVE that Judaism is right scientifically and theologically.
What little I’ve seen of his lectures show that it’s not even worth debunking. I mean, going through it might be fun, and picking stuff like this apart is good for my ego, but there’s no real accomplishment in picking such low-hanging fruit. And yet, Rabbi Mizrachi’s bio claims that one of his videos was distributed to more than 200,000 people, he’s given 4,000 lectures, and his Facebook page has 56,000 friends and over 1,000,000 hits a month. In the tiny frum world, those are celebrity stats.
Bad science and terrible “proofs” from kiruv organizations is hardly news. Being confronted by something like this video, though, brings home just how bad it can be and highlights that sad state of popular Orthodox theology.
Showing posts with label afterlife. Show all posts
Showing posts with label afterlife. Show all posts
Monday, September 19, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Suicide is Painless…
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:
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:
Monday, April 13, 2009
Do Believers in the Afterlife Believe in After-Life?
I don’t remember how the discussion started, but somehow I found myself talking to the Rebbi about how nasty life could be. The class of bochurim in their late teens and low twenties listened as I listed potential horrors.
“So why don’t you end it?” the Rebbi asked.
“What?”
“If life is so awful why don’t you kill yourself and end it?”
“Well,” I replied, “My life isn’t so bad. Besides, even if it was, killing myself wouldn’t help. It would just make me dead, and in big trouble.” I firmly believed in Olam Habo, and had learned that a special torment was reserved for those who chose to kill themselves. These unfortunates were condemned to float forever in limbo, adrift in a spiritual void.
The class laughed.
“No, no,” the Rebbi admonished. “Let him share his thoughts.”
I turned to one of the guys near me who had laughed.
“Don’t you see, killing yourself doesn’t help. It just makes more bad stuff happen to you.”
He smiled and shook his head.
I don’t remember how this ended, but the incident and its implications has stayed with me. Here was a class of twenty or so young men from a fairly wide spectrum within the frum community. Asked individually whether they believed in Olam Habo, I’m certain that nearly all or all would have said yes. Yet when I brought up the practical implications of the belief in a context that wasn’t focused directly on the belief, their first impulse was to laugh. While they intellectually held a belief in the afterlife, this belief didn’t practically inform their attitude towards death.
They found it funny when I implied that someone could be in trouble after death. I believed that “I” with all that implies was going to stand in some sort of physically perceptible courtroom and be judged after I died. I would have to account for every sin, and suicide would have been a big one. That was more trouble than I had ever been in.
I can only conclude that this class of young men had never given their belief in the afterlife much thought, and when confronted with the implications of what it would mean for the consciousness to survive death, they intuitively found it ridiculous.
Later I would notice how the Chumash never refers to an afterlife, and how the most stringent punishment is “mais yamus.” Later yet I would learn that belief in Olam Habo was not universal until after the Churban Bayis Shayni. But all of that is beside the point.
A class of frum guys with sincerely held beliefs thought those beliefs were ridiculous when hearing their implications instead of their assertions.
“So why don’t you end it?” the Rebbi asked.
“What?”
“If life is so awful why don’t you kill yourself and end it?”
“Well,” I replied, “My life isn’t so bad. Besides, even if it was, killing myself wouldn’t help. It would just make me dead, and in big trouble.” I firmly believed in Olam Habo, and had learned that a special torment was reserved for those who chose to kill themselves. These unfortunates were condemned to float forever in limbo, adrift in a spiritual void.
The class laughed.
“No, no,” the Rebbi admonished. “Let him share his thoughts.”
I turned to one of the guys near me who had laughed.
“Don’t you see, killing yourself doesn’t help. It just makes more bad stuff happen to you.”
He smiled and shook his head.
I don’t remember how this ended, but the incident and its implications has stayed with me. Here was a class of twenty or so young men from a fairly wide spectrum within the frum community. Asked individually whether they believed in Olam Habo, I’m certain that nearly all or all would have said yes. Yet when I brought up the practical implications of the belief in a context that wasn’t focused directly on the belief, their first impulse was to laugh. While they intellectually held a belief in the afterlife, this belief didn’t practically inform their attitude towards death.
They found it funny when I implied that someone could be in trouble after death. I believed that “I” with all that implies was going to stand in some sort of physically perceptible courtroom and be judged after I died. I would have to account for every sin, and suicide would have been a big one. That was more trouble than I had ever been in.
I can only conclude that this class of young men had never given their belief in the afterlife much thought, and when confronted with the implications of what it would mean for the consciousness to survive death, they intuitively found it ridiculous.
Later I would notice how the Chumash never refers to an afterlife, and how the most stringent punishment is “mais yamus.” Later yet I would learn that belief in Olam Habo was not universal until after the Churban Bayis Shayni. But all of that is beside the point.
A class of frum guys with sincerely held beliefs thought those beliefs were ridiculous when hearing their implications instead of their assertions.
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