Going to a wake is always unpleasant. For one thing the departed, once embalmed, always looks like a stranger. Thus, the corkboard display of photos of the deceased as a baby, and as a teen, can only emphasize that he is now utterly a fossil. To make things worse, a wake usually comes in one of two . . . . Continue Reading »
In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief by James l. Kugel Free Press, 256 pages, $26 Whether we like it or not, death is a constant point of reference, an unavoidable horizon, a question mark over everything. Everyone, gravedigger or intellectual, atheist or fervent . . . . Continue Reading »
Nothing to Be Frightened Of by julian barnesknopf, 256 pages, $24.95 Death has many masks. He comes cruel with his sweeping scythe, cutting down men and women in their prime. He comes kind and compassionate as a nurse, closing the eyes of long-suffering patients. Death comes slowly and shyly behind . . . . Continue Reading »
Near the beginning of the twenty-fourth and last Book of Homer’s Iliad, called by Simone Weil “the only true epic” the West possesses, even the gods—detached as they are in their bliss from all sufferings—have seen enough. Achilles has become inhuman. Ignoring our animal nature, . . . . Continue Reading »
You don’t have to be Jewish to drink L’Chaim, to lift a glass “To Life.” Everyone in his right mind believes that life is good and that death is bad. But Jews have always had an unusually keen appreciation of life, and not only because it has been stolen from them so often and so cruelly. . . . . Continue Reading »
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