May We Pray for a Suffering Loved One to Die?
KAUFMAN, JAMES LEE
May We Pray for a Suffering Loved One to Die? JAMES LEE KAUFMAN In Jewish tradition there is a blessing for everything, a prayer for every situation, a ritual for every unutterable emotion, a...
...It usually is possible to learn the wishes of the dying person, according to Hausman...
...They did not...
...How long...
...What are they to do...
...The suffering I refer to, however, is the suffering of a child who must endure the absence of recognition from the eyes of a dying parent...
...Ecclesiastes tells us that "The day of death is better than the day of birth" (7:1...
...They surrounded his house, offering prayers to God that he be saved...
...For the religious person, the issue is quite clear...
...At the moment they ceased praying for the life of Rabbi Judah haNasi, God heard the prayer of the maidservant and took the rabbi's soul...
...Only recently (perhaps since the discovery of penicillin) has the dying process become protracted to unbearable limits...
...Jewish law forbids us to hasten the death of another (in modern terms, "active euthanasia" or "mercy killing...
...But there is no prayer, ritual, blessing or commandment that can be uttered by an individual who must nurse, support and live with a loved one who is dying...
...It seems to me that throughout most of the history of human civilization, when one became ill with a fatal disease, that individual became a fatality and not a lingering liability to himself/herself or to others...
...Until the advent of modern medicine, the time during which a person lived as a gosais was relatively short—hours, sometimes days...
...A gosais continues to be protected by all the rights, privileges and mercies of one who is living, with the awareness nevertheless that he or she is moving inexorably toward death...
...When life began and we were created, we were given bodies, minds and hearts—and a complete emotional system...
...A prayer called birkat hagomel is said by someone who has arrived at his or her destination after a perilous journey, or who has returned from captivity or recovered from illness: ' 'Blessed are You, O Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who does good to the undeserving, and who has dealt kindly with me...
...it gives them a kind of control...
...Yet Ecclesiastes clearly states that one should choose the day of death over the day of one's birth...
...When family and friends surround a gosais, there comes a point when they must say that the day of death is better than one more day of life...
...It is becoming more and more difficult to do so...
...When someone is helping another die with dignity, we as a community must realize that those who provide that selfless gift to another, also need frequent expressions of love and support, sometimes even more than the gosais...
...Some rabbinic authorities approve the removal of I.V.'s and respirators...
...And so it is in life: On the day of birth we should not overly rejoice for we are unsure of the journey of this new life, but when the journey is completed and life comes to its end, if it has been a good journey, then we should truly rejoice and not mourn...
...Today, more often than not, it is the family members who ask, "Tell us, Lord, how long, how long before the end...
...The sages say, ' 'Encourage a gosais to confess and fear not that evil will ensue because of the confession, for many who have confessed became well again, and many who neglected to confess, died...
...What wisdom can be shared, what prayers can be said by those who care for agosais for an extended period...
...Hausman stresses that caretakers should not deny their feelings of anger and resentment, but she would stop short of sanctioning a prayer for God to act on those feelings...
...And so, you gather the opinions of the doctors, clergypersons, friends and relatives, and if the collective judgment is that the person who is before you is truly a gosais, then you must do nothing to delay the death—and you may even pray for death...
...The psalmist is in great mental anguish and is dying...
...But what if I pray for death, and the person lives...
...In the midst of extreme trial, Psalm 6 asks the question, "Tell me, Lord, how long...
...JAMES LEE KAUFMAN In Jewish tradition there is a blessing for everything, a prayer for every situation, a ritual for every unutterable emotion, a commandment for every dilemma...
...When the ship leaves, we cry, for we are afraid and unsure as to the dangers that await it in the open seas...
...Even if someone is ill, he or she can usually express these feelings...
...When It Is Not Permissible to Pray for Death From a rjsychological point of view, Rabbi Kaufman's proposal is a sound one only if those praying for a death know that their prayers are in accord with the wishes of the gosais (dying person), according to Carol P. Hausman, a Washington, D.C, clinical psychologist and gerontotagist If a caretaker petitions God for someone's death only to relieve the burden of caretaking, not because he or she knows the gosais is ready to die, the caretaker may later be troubled and guilt-ridden,'says Hausman, who was the author of the moment article, "First You Mourn: A Guide to Paying a Shiva Call" (September 1987...
...We are encouraged, though, to pray, and pray hard, for God to come and give this dying soul eternal peace...
...and that includes praying that their parent can go soon, and peacefully, if the parent is suffering...
...After the ' 'saved person" says this blessing, the congregation responds: "May God who has shown you kindness deal kindly with you forever...
...These words must come from within, backed by the encouragement, love and support of those who surround the individuals who surround the gosais...
...This system enables us to rejoice at births and to mourn and eventually cope with deaths...
...When the ship returns to the harbor, we rejoice, for we know that it has made the journey safely...
...This being so, it is permissible to pray that the dying may die...
...Doctors, lawyers and judges try to keep up with medical technology but fail to arrive at universally accepted definitions of "hastening" and "delaying unnecessarily...
...The rabbis answer this question in the context of the mitzvah of encouraging a person to say a final confession before death...
...But it is equally forbidden to delay one's death unnecessarily...
...Even if a parent suddenly loses consciousness, Hausman says, "if people have had a good communicative relationship with their parent earlier in life and the parent is in a vegetative state, children can pretty well know what the parent would have •• wanted because they know what their parents values are...
...the suffering that is experienced by friends and relatives who surround agosais...
...We do need to die with greater dignity...
...the suffering of those who struggle to ease the pain of a loved one dying of AIDS...
...I use the word "liability" in an honest, yet respectful way, for a body that functions without the benefit of mind is a liability to itself, as well as to those who must attend to it...
...What prayers can they say to utter the unutterable and wish for the impossible...
...we are not permitted to do anything that will speed the death, including even touching a gosais...
...Though we do believe that the soul is eternal, that it returns to God protected under God's loving wings, our emphasis has always been on "life after birth," and not "life after death...
...His maidservant begged them to stop...
...A person who quietly utters a prayer for release of a loved one needs the approval and support of those who care...
...Traditionally, Jews turn to the Bible, especially the Book of Psalms, for comfort during distress...
...Birkat hagomel, however, is for those who have already escaped...
...Today it might be hours, but more often than not, it is days, months or even years...
...The message...
...The story is told of Rabbi Judah haNasi's maidservant who prayed that God should come and take the afflicted body and soul of her dying master...
...She landed on her feet, but at the moment she jumped, the students stopped praying and ran toward her...
...Human knowledge is limited...
...Where are we to get the courage to live with the dying...
...But the focus of the psalmist is on being freed from captivity or released from suffering at the hands of others...
...But they know that already...
...But confronted with a loved one's terminal illness, we find that we were not created with the emotional wherewithal to cope with the protracted process of dying...
...Mostly, we're just afraid to talk to them about it because we think we're going to give them the idea that they're dying...
...it seemed uncharacteristic of Jewish wisdom...
...We cannot know what the future is, we can only know what is before us now...
...How long...
...If the children—without kidding themselves—are pretty sure that they're doing what their parent would have wanted, I think they can feel comfortable about that...
...Won't I have betrayed them...
...So she went up to the roof of the house and jumped off...
...The sages had difficulty with this passage...
...We must also be present to offer courage and strength to those who help their loved ones die with dignity...
...Agosais, according to Jewish law, is a human being who has begun to die...
...Furthermore, it is for the victim, not for the victim's family members who also suffer...
...Just as the individual who utters birkat hagomel enjoys the support found in a congregational response, so a person who quietly utters a prayer for release of a loved one requires the approval and support of those who care...
...Even if you believe in your heart that you must pray for God to come and retrieve this afflicted soul, this gosais, and through some miracle the person lives, you need not allow your guilt or fear based on superstition to condemn you for betraying the individual...
...The students of Rabbi Judah haNasi thought otherwise, for they wanted their teacher and leader to remain alive so he could continue to guide them...
...Tell me, Lord, how long...
...The prayer of Rabbi Judah haNasi's maidservant was appropriate and moral...
...The sages rationalize this by interpreting the saying as follows: One should not weep at the day of one's death because it is similar to a ship that leaves the harbor on a long journey...
...Though the sages state that it is permissible to pray that God take back a soul, they do not provide words for us...
...The day of death is sometimes better than the day of birth...
...Most people wantto indicate their preferences...
Vol. 13 • June 1988 • No. 4
