Death, birth, and peace, a day with Rabbi Brody

The JFS Baskin Jewish Community Chaplaincy program, led by Rabbi Rick Brody, focuses on providing direct spiritual care, comfort, and counseling to unaffiliated Jews in the greater Denver area and beyond who are ill, in crisis or near the end of their lives. Below, Rabbi Brody reflects on a meaningful first experience he recently encountered. 

I don't know if I've ever had the experience of being in the presence of one human being who was almost certainly going to die later that day and of another human being who was born that very same day—an encounter with the holiness of the bookends of birth and death. Perhaps, full-time hospital staff chaplains have this experience frequently. But for a community chaplain who only some of the time spends the better part of the day in a hospital, this confluence of interactions had never occurred for me.  

Fittingly, the two visits were the first and last of my time at the hospital. 

At about 2:00 p.m., I was with a patient (and his family) about to have life support removed. I spent a little over an hour with them, conducting the ritual of asking for Divine at-one-ment, with the explicit idea that when we take our final breath, we wish to be in the same state of spiritual innocence and purity that we were in when we took our very first breath.  

The above perspective is based on an interpretation of Deut 28:6 — “בָּר֥וּךְ אַתָּ֖ה בְּבֹאֶ֑ךָ וּבָר֥וּךְ אַתָּ֖ה בְּצֵאתֶֽךָ׃ 

Blessed shall you be in your entrance and blessed shall you be in your exit.” The medieval Torah commentator known as Rashi connects this verse to a teaching from the Talmud (Bava Metzia 107a) and offers this interpretive understanding of the blessing: 

 שֶׁתְּהֵי יְצִיאָתְךָ מִן הָעוֹלָם בְּלֹא חֵטְא כְּבִיאָתְךָ לָעוֹלָם 

May your departure from this world be as sinless as was your entry into the world. 

There I was with a man who was mostly sleeping, barely conscious, surrounded by the love of those whose lives he touched through many decades, as we prepared him to exit his bodily existence in a state of wholeness. The last thing I do before leaving the room of a dying patient—to emphasize this aim for wholeness—is to chant the word SHALOM (“peace”—but from the Hebrew root for wholeness, completion) over and over. At the same time, all those gathered joined me, holding hands in a circle (to signify being whole, complete), including their dying loved one. (In this case, the man's wife held one of his hands while a family member held the other.) This time, the family members sang with beautiful harmonies, elevating the idea of purity and innocence through the majestic music we made. Indeed, the prevailing mood when I left the room was of shalom.  

I imagine the patient, suffused with shalom, left the room that is this world within the next few hours.  

I then saw a few other Jewish patients who were in the hospital; my final stop, several hours later, was in the maternity ward, where a young first-time mother lay in bed, resting, next to a tiny, precious little peanut of a newborn baby girl who had entered the world in all her spiritual purity at 9:30 that morning—with the proud young dad standing over the bed attending to his wife and child. The visit was much shorter than the one in which we worked to return the dying individual to a state of wholeness. Here, the little papoose—mostly sleeping, barely conscious—was surrounded by the love of those whose lives she will surely touch through many decades as we honored her entry into her bodily existence in a state of wholeness. Her at-one-ment was still unbroken and whole, yet to be disrupted by the messiness of a perfectly imperfect human existence. The last thing I did (after offering a prayer for healing for the mom and some prayers for a good life for the child) was come right up to the newborn, place my fingers upon her tiny head, and chant the Priestly Blessing—which, fittingly, ends with the word SHALOM: 

יְבָרֶכְךָ֥ יְהֹוָ֖ה וְיִשְׁמְרֶֽךָ׃  

May the Eternal bless you and protect you.  

יָאֵ֨ר יְהֹוָ֧ה ׀ פָּנָ֛יו אֵלֶ֖יךָ וִֽיחֻנֶּֽךָּ׃ 

May the Eternal radiate Divine light towards you and be gracious with you.  

יִשָּׂ֨א יְהֹוָ֤ה ׀ פָּנָיו֙ אֵלֶ֔יךָ וְיָשֵׂ֥ם לְךָ֖ שָׁלֽוֹם׃ 

May the Eternal turn kindly towards you and grant you Shalom. 

(Numbers 6:24-26) 

This new life—who had exited the womb and entered the room that is this world just several hours prior—was suffused with shalom. There was no doubt she had begun her life in that state of grace the Priestly Blessing hoped for, radiating purity and innocence.  

Indeed, the prevailing mood when I left the room was of shalom. 

In this one day of pastoral care, my encounters became an explicit display of the entire life cycle, a manifestation of the bookends of Rashi's gloss about our beginnings and endings:  

Blessed are you in your entrance; blessed are you in your exit. 

I exited the hospital that night with the potent awareness of being blessed—both with awe for existence (and its dramatic bookends in this world) and with the wholeness and at-one-ment that is captured in the word SHALOM. 

Thank you to Jewish Family Service of Colorado for giving me the opportunity to engage in this sacred vocation as the Baskin Jewish Community Chaplain, to JEWISHcolorado for their generous funding of this position, and to the Baskin family for endowing the chaplaincy program at JFS. Learn more about our Chaplaincy program.