Jews and Death

" ... if there's one idea the mind can't sustain it is its own nullification. Perhaps the Buddhists can, the Tantric monks, but not the Jews. The Jews, who have made so much of life, have never known what to make of death. Ask a Catholoic what happens when he dies and he will describe the circles of hell, purgatory, limbo, the heavenly gates. The Christian has populated death so fully that he has excused himself altogether from the need to wrap his mind around the end of his existence. But ask Jew what happens when he dies and you'll see the miserable condition of a man left alone to grapple. A man lost and confused. Wandering blindly. Because though the Jew may have talked about everything, investigated, held forth, aired his opinion, argued, gone on and on to numbing lenghts, sucked every last scrap of meat off the bone of every question, he has remained largely silent about what happens when he dies. He has agreed, simply, not to discuss it. He who otherwise tolerates no vagueness has agreed to leave the most important question mired in a nebulous, fuzzy grayness. Do you see the irony of it? The absurdity? What is the point of a religion that turns its back on the subject of what happens when life ends? Having been denied an answer - having been denied an answer while at the same time being cursed as a people who for thousands of years have aroused in others a murderous hate - the Jew has no choice but to live with death every day. To live with it, to set up his house in its shadow, and never to discuss its terms."

N.Krauss. True Kindness (II)

A.S. Два дня назад заказал на американском амазоне "The Denial of Death" по рекомендации Вуди Аллена.