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Source: https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/three-talks-about-death-you-should-have-now/2020/05/26/
Three Talks about Death You Should Have Now
By Rabbi Benjamin Blech -
3 Sivan 5780 – May 26, 20200
Until the current global pandemic made the angel of death an all too evident and unwelcome visitor in our midst, most people would have agreed with Roger Rosenblatt’s observation that “Death is something that happens to others, you think, until it happens to you.”
It seems we are biologically as well as psychologically oriented to deny our mortality. That’s because, researchers say, our brains do their best to keep us from dwelling on our inevitable demise. A study found that the brain shields us from existential fear by categorizing death as an unfortunate event from which we ourselves are exempt. “The brain does not accept that death is related to us,” in the words of Yair Dor-Ziderman, at Bar Ilan University in Israel. “We have this primal mechanism that means when the brain gets information that links self to death, something tells us it’s not reliable, so we shouldn’t believe it.”
Unfortunately, death is all too real. All of us will die. And as has become tragically clear in the past few months it can come without warning, condemning the young as well as the elderly, the perfectly healthy together with the infirm and the sickly...
Three Talks about Death You Should Have Now
By Rabbi Benjamin Blech -
3 Sivan 5780 – May 26, 20200
Until the current global pandemic made the angel of death an all too evident and unwelcome visitor in our midst, most people would have agreed with Roger Rosenblatt’s observation that “Death is something that happens to others, you think, until it happens to you.”
It seems we are biologically as well as psychologically oriented to deny our mortality. That’s because, researchers say, our brains do their best to keep us from dwelling on our inevitable demise. A study found that the brain shields us from existential fear by categorizing death as an unfortunate event from which we ourselves are exempt. “The brain does not accept that death is related to us,” in the words of Yair Dor-Ziderman, at Bar Ilan University in Israel. “We have this primal mechanism that means when the brain gets information that links self to death, something tells us it’s not reliable, so we shouldn’t believe it.”
Unfortunately, death is all too real. All of us will die. And as has become tragically clear in the past few months it can come without warning, condemning the young as well as the elderly, the perfectly healthy together with the infirm and the sickly...