Why Shed Tears?

I had planned to spend some time today blogging further about the answerers — interesting fellows (all male, so far as I can tell) to know — or perhaps about several legal, political, or religious topics that have caught my mind lately.

One of the blog posts (had to stop myself from calling it an essay — what would de Montaigne say about blogging?) was to be about authenticity of religious expression. I was at a kosher food store yesterday (Friday) afternoon on an errand. Outside stood a yeshiva bochur (a Jewish Orthodox rabbinical student) or rabbi — Chabad Lubavitch, I'll wager. "Hello, friend!" he said to me. "I'm sorry, " I said, because I could tell from the other fellow standing there putting on tefillin that he wanted me to put them on too. Putting on tefillin is a mitzvah, a good deed, as, I think, is helping people do it. "But it will just take one minute!" he said, as I passed him on my way into the air conditioning.

As I left, he called to me again. I just ignored him. It was hot, and I was in a hurry, and I just couldn't be bothered. Even so, I almost turned around. As I walked to my car, I outlined a blog entry about why I didn't lay tefillin: because it would not have been authentic for me.

The phone rang early this morning, at about seven a.m. The caller ID said "Denise —," one of the aides who takes care of my bed-bound, enfeebled 98-year-old great-uncle Harry. My wife answered the phone, then handed it to me. It was my mother, borrowing Denise's cell phone. "Harry passed away. He died in his sleep, at about 6 a.m."

My wife and I showered, dressed, and headed to Harry's condo to be with my mom.

As I started thinking about this blog post, I opened my copy of Mencken's Dictionary of Quotations to "death." I found this one that I liked:

Why shed tears that thou must die? For if thy past has been one of enjoyment, and if all thy pleasures have not passed through thy mind, as through a sieve, and vanished, leaving not a rack behind, why then dost thou not, like a thankful guest, rise cheerfully from life's feast, and with a quiet mind take thy rest?

- Titus Lucretius Carus, De rerum natura ("On the nature of things"), book III, 57 C.E.

Or, from a more poetic translation by William Ellery Leonard (the above translation is unattributed in Mencken's Dictionary of Quotations):

Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?
For if thy life aforetime and behind
To thee was grateful, and not all thy good
Was heaped as in sieve to flow away
And perish unavailingly, why not,
Even like a banqueter, depart the halls,
Laden with life? why not with mind content
Take now, thou fool, thy unafflicted rest?

All this Epicurean philosophy is well and good. But in sorting through Harry's effects and arranging for his funeral this morning, we found his tallit (prayer shawl) and two kippot (skullcaps) — and two sets of tefillin. One Harry's, old and worn, and one probably his late son's; the son had no sons (and no interested daughters) to leave them to. Harry will be buried in his tallit, but tefillin are passed down — traditionally, to sons.

So yesterday, I refused to lay tefillin. Today, I own two sets. I can't help thinking, Lucretius to the contrary (not believing, necessarily, just thinking) that there's a connection there.

— — —

Tefillin, phylacteries (the Greek — from the Hellenized Jews of the period around year 1 B.C.E – 1 C.E. — term, I believe) are boxes observant Jews (mostly men, but controversially — but not to me — some women) strap to their foreheads and non-dominant arms when they say their daily prayers. Putting them on is called "laying tefillin."

Harry was — I had written "is" — my maternal grand-uncle; he and my late mother's mother — and my 100-year old great-aunt Dora, still with us; we celebrated her 100th four days before my 39th, on July 24th — were all siblings.

In Orthodox Judaism, many men receive semicha, rabbinical ordination, without intending to serve as, as the Reform movement calls them, "pulpit rabbis."

De rerum natura: see Wikipedia; link to document at the Gutenberg Project.