It's Your Gift — LIVE IT
"If the art of life was easy, it would not need to be a commandment. 'Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even.' It’s a choice — a sacred decision that we make every single day."
By Rabbi Mari Chernow
To illustrate what we mean when we say that Judaism is a culture of life, I like to invoke my favorite movie, Harold and Maude. Harold is a young man who is obsessed with death. He drives a hearse, stages elaborate fake scenes of his own death and has one hobby: attending funerals.
Harold befriends Maude, a vivacious, eccentric 79-year-old woman. Though Maude also enjoys funerals, she is quite the opposite. Deeply taken with every stage of the life cycle, she is in this lifetime to live it. She models nude for an ice sculptor, “plays” the player-piano, and has audacious run-ins with the law. She is also the self-appointed liberator of plants and animals. Maude is that slightly crazy grandmother we all wish we had.
As their friendship grows, Harold explains his fascination with death. “I haven’t lived,” he says. “I’ve died a few times.” He talks about the time he accidentally caused a chemical explosion. In the chaos that ensued, he was presumed dead. The misunderstanding highlighted his profound emptiness, and he sadly tells Maude: “I decided then that I enjoy being dead.”
Maude listens to Harold, and then responds. She does not judge, but explains to her new friend that there’s a whole different way of looking at it:
“I understand. A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. Play as well as you can. Go team, go. Give me an L! Give me and I! Give me a V! Give me an E! L-I-V-E! LIVE!”
Maude’s sentiment is a primary message that I read in the Torah. The two words that are most precious to me are Uvacharta bachayim in Deuteronomy 30:19. Choose Life (not in the way this phrase is used in the current debate over reproductive rights).
In those two words, “choose life,” the Torah is telling us that since we’re lucky enough to be living, we should fully get in the game!
It’s an absurd commandment on the surface: if there is one matter over which we have no control, it’s the length of our lives. The centerpiece of High Holiday liturgy, Unetaneh Tokef, confronts us with the harsh reality that we have no idea – and we certainly don’t determine — “who shall live and who shall die” in the coming year. We live on God’s time, not our own. Is it not obvious that anyone and everyone would make the choice to live in the literal sense, versus the alternative?
It would be nonsensical for the Torah to demand that we increase the number of days we live on this earth. That’s where Harold and Maude come in. They are right. A lot of people prefer being dead. Or at least deadened. Because living is hard. And if we Jews thought it was hard on October 6th, it has only gotten harder since then.
The Jewish community is facing communal grief, loss, and trauma unlike any I have ever seen in my lifetime. Many of us are profoundly lonely as friends, colleagues, and institutions neglect – or worse yet – refuse to acknowledge Jewish suffering and fear. We wrestle with the truly impossible dilemma facing the State of Israel. We mourn the thousands upon thousands of Palestinian casualties while at the very same moment we insist that Israel find a way to keep our people safe and secure. Sometimes living is barely tolerable. Always, living is hard.
But even in that context, our tradition teaches uvacharta bachaim, choose life. There will be days when it will take tremendous work to get out of bed, let alone to the negotiating table. On those days, choose life. There will be days when it is simply impossible to envision a way forward to a better future. On those days, choose life. Every day, choose life. Get in the game. L-I-V-E – LIVE!
If it were easy, it would not need to be a commandment. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. It’s a choice. A sacred decision that we make every single day.
Mari Chernow is the Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel of Hollywood and a Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute.
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