Abstract
The Book of Genesis reports that “On the sixth day of Creation “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (1:31). The very, so a Talmudic sage taught refers to “death”. We are to share God’s exultant affirmation of His work of creation as culminating in death. For death is intrinsic to the blessings of life. As Buber notes in the epigraph cited above, life is “unspeakably beautiful because death looks over our shoulder”. The seeming paradox—an existential antinomy—inflected the vernacular Yiddish of my late father which was also that of Buber’s youth “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42); “love is strong as death” (Song of Songs; 8:6).
Original language | English |
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Article number | 26 |
Journal | Religions |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 2022 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Keywords
- Apotropaic practices of East European Jewry
- Franz Rosenzweig
- Hans Blumenberg
- Joseph D. Soloveitchik
- Martin Buber