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The ESP of the
Jewish Way of Life

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Every Yom Kippur, following my D’var Torah,there is a portion of the service known as Eilah Ezkerah — "These I will remember." Here we recount human courage throughout our people’s history to inspire us to rededicate our lives. It’s a tall order, a very tough challenge. 

The challenge of Eilah Ezkerah is the challenge of the entire Yom Kippur experience. How can we look into the darkness and not be overwhelmed? How can we confront our deepest fears and yet be inspired to live life more fully? 

In our tradition, Yom Kippur is supposed to be a rehearsal for our own deaths. But the truth is that most of us are not capable of handling the rehearsal. It’s just too scary — it freaks us out. We become paralyzed by the fear of our own death and it doesn’t work. 

In the Torah there are amazing teachings about this. 

Moshe — Moses, has fought to fend off death, feeling that his work is not complete. There are wonderful, moving commentaries as the rabbis imagine all sorts of strategies that Moses uses to stay alive. Then, amazingly, Moses stops denying his own death and is no longer afraid of it. He realizes that he has completed his work. In this moment, he gains a vision beyond his own life. 

In my own experience of accompanying many people as they move toward their death, I have often been privileged to witness people gaining this kind of clarity, this wisdom. So this year, I have decided to make my D’var, this teaching, a very personal Eilah Ezkerah for our community. 

A year ago, on Erev Rosh Hashanah,I had entered this room, had come up the aisle, and was about to move onto the bimah  when Rosalie Mazzola stopped me. Rosalie was a lively, passionate woman, who wore her emotions on her sleeve. I took one look in her eyes and I knew something was wrong. 

She said to me, "Rabbi, I’m sorry to bother you right before the service begins, but I am going in for exploratory surgery and I just wanted to ask you to include me in your prayers for healing." I felt her fear and I knew how important prayer was to Rosalie. I embraced her and whispered, "What’s wrong, Rosalie?" She said they weren’t sure, but that she had internal bleeding and they thought she had a hole in her lung. I hugged her again, and told her that I would certainly wrap my prayers around her. 

Rosalie was an old friend. I met her and her husband Brad, when they joined Beth Chaim many years before. 

Rosalie had grown up in a large Italian Catholic family in Michigan and due to her mother’s early death, she had been the surrogate mom for many of her siblings. Rosalie was the kind of person most of us want for a friend. She was vivacious, strong-willed; she had this laugh that was loud and full of raucous music. 

I loved Rosalie’s warmth, I loved her questions, and I loved her clarity. When she and Brad joined Beth Chaim in early 1997, she told me that she had been through a lot in her life, a lot of adversity, and that she had a close relationship with God. She said that she was ready to become a Jew and wanted to make a Jewish home and raise Jewish children. This was Rosalie. Once she decided something — it was decided. 

I ask everyone who is exploring conversion — actually, I prefer to call it "choosing Judaism" — to do a final project as they near the end of their process of study and preparation. The final project usually involves studying a Jewish spiritual practice of their choosing. Completion of the final project provides an additional reason for the person to feel more authenticity in the challenging process of their acceptance of themselves as Jewish and as such, each individual chooses his or her own final project. 

After a long and difficult number of years of waiting, Rosalie had become pregnant. We had discussed the birth of what she knew was going to be her twin boys. She was excited  about their entry into Judaism through the circumcision and naming ceremony. 

So Rosalie asked if, for her final project, she could study the traditions around brit milah, circumcision, and create her own ceremony. She read, studied, and asked so many questions. I guided her to a range of materials and she wrote and weaved together different beautiful threads. 

Brad’s family would be there and many of her siblings would be coming in from Michigan for this as well. She kept giving me things she had written — she created a juicy ritual and unforgettable ceremony! 

When Rosalie had her two boys, Sam and Noah, her life changed irrevocably. She loved them fiercely. She wanted them to be mentsches, and she and Brad surrounded them with love. 

Rosalie loved the family dimension of Judaism and was very involved in the Tot Shabbat Friday playgroup at Beth Chaim. It made Shabbat special for the participating children and families. 

She was so thrilled that her boys were able to go to the Jewish Day School in Fremont, and so saddened when it didn’t survive. 

Rosalie was proud to be a stay-at-home Mom and loved her Noah and Sam with all of her being. There was no pleasure greater in life than putting her boys in the Kissing Machine and totally immersing them in her love. 

Being Jewish — making a Jewish home — was a deep commitment of Rosalie’s. It was one of the ways she anchored her family. 

Two years ago, Rosalie came to see me in crisis. She had hepatitis and it had flared up in a very serious way. They were trying all sorts of things, but the doctors told her that if a particular last-resort treatment didn’t work, she would be in a life-threatening situation. 

Rosalie went through a dark and difficult time facing this possibility. Her close relationship to God helped her move through it, and when her disease responded to the treatment, she was elated beyond belief. She had been given a  second chance and she wasn’t going to waste a moment of her precious life. 

The exploratory surgery Rosalie had told me about on Erev Rosh Hashanah revealed that she had lung cancer, and it had already spread. This time the diagnosis was grim and horrible. Rosalie and everyone who cared for her had to face the terrifying question: How could the radiant light of this luminous soul be extinguished at such a young age? 

As I said, I have had the privilege of accompanying many people as they moved toward their deaths, but I have never witnessed a person walk a more conscious and aware path than Rosalie did. 

When Rosalie knew what she was up against, she came to meet with me. She told me that she knew she was going to die, but didn’t know if it was going to be months or maybe, if the cancer responded to chemotherapy, she might survive a few years. 

She told me that it broke her heart to leave Brad, but the worst part of it was leaving her two little boys. She wasn’t sure how she was going to be able to do it, but she was committed with every fiber of her body to do it the best she could. 

Rosalie’s best was formidable. She fought the disease with ferocity. She brought all of her anger, her love, her desperation, her fear — she brought it all to God. 

She asked me if I would be her spiritual guide through the challenge ahead. Through my own tears, I accepted. 

Every time we talked she was incredibly focused. She was always concerned about her relationship with God, her ability to pray with clarity even when in great pain. 

She would often say things that would simply take my breath away. After one of her chemotherapy treatments, when she was feeling pretty devastated, she said to me, "I now understand why I had to go through the hepatitis scare last year. It was a dress rehearsal for this. I have already experienced the worst fear, I have had to face my own mortality, and it will help me respond to this."   

For many months Rosalie and I talked at least once a week, every week. Rosalie didn’t waste time with small talk. It was a soul check-in every week. She would ask me questions — and I would do my best to respond. Very few people in my life have asked more of me, and I am so grateful for her trust and her honesty. 

Early on, whenever we would talk, I would end our intense conversational encounters with life and death with a blessing. Often, I would tell her that I may have needed to offer the blessing as badly as she needed to receive it. After awhile, when she had to watch her energy output, she would let me know she was done by saying, "Rabbi, I need my blessing now." 

I learned a lot about blessings during those months. There were times when I thought, what if she asks and I don’t know what to say? Or, what if I offer the wrong blessing? But, thankfully, it never happened. I would simply listen carefully to where she was at the particular moment and trust that she was communicating the blessing she needed, and a blessing would come. 

You see, there was no right blessing, so there could be no wrong blessing. Rosalie had a deep need to feel blessed, and all I had to do was respond to her shining spirit and incredible heart. 

Rosalie made me make promises. Some of the promises were easy — "Rabbi," she said, "will you promise to Bar Mitzvah my boys?" Easy. Other promises, I wasn’t sure that I could keep. Most of these requests came in the form of, "Rabbi, when the time comes…" 

I can’t share some of them, but there are two that I will never forget. One was, "Rabbi, when the time comes, when I still am able to talk, I am going to need to say goodbye to my boys. I want them to know that I am really dying, and I know that my Brad won’t be able to do this. It will be too hard for him. 

This is what I want you to do. I want you to tell me first that you are going to talk to them. Then, gather them with Brad and other family members that they trust and tell them. Then bring them in to me to say goodbye." I promised. 

She also said to me, "Rabbi, when the time comes, when I am near death, I will then need to say goodbye to Brad. Then, I want you to offer me your final blessing and say goodbye. Will you do this for me? "I said, "Rosalie, I promise, but I don’t know if I can keep these promises." She smiled — that kind, knowing smile — and said, "I know. But if you promise, that’s good enough for me." 

What a teacher she was. She was in and out of the hospital, rallying and fighting with all her strength. I would sit on her hospital bed, and she would say to me, "Sing the Shema with me." I let out a sigh, because in our tradition, the Shema is the last prayer that we utter before death. 

She would laugh at me, and say, "I’m not practicing for death, I just need to pray, I need the comfort of praying with you." 

But she was practicing for her death. I saw it in the way she spoke with her boys, and with just about everything she did toward the end. She worked with awesome concentration and awareness to find a sense of peace, which she lost and fought to recover anew as time began to run out. 

At the end of every single meeting and phone conversation she asked for a blessing. Even when her consciousness was compromised, she continued to ask for blessings. Rosalie Mazzola died with such an elevated degree of consciousness. Her suffering was unbearable to witness, but her death was heartbreaking and transcendent. 

As she moved toward her death, Rosalie stood in the present. She gave up projecting a future in linear time. She had to move past the sorrow of leaving a husband and two six-yearold children, and be spiritually nourished by the love she had been gifted to share with these loved ones and other family members and friends in her journey on this earth. 

She did. She lived in the presence of love: the human love of family and friends, who wanted nothing more at this time than to be with her. The presence of love made it possible for Rosalie to live in the presence of God, at the border between life and death, with all of its terrifying ambiguity. 

The last week of Rosalie’s life was unforgettable. On Monday afternoon, it seemed that Rosalie was moving rapidly toward her death. I went to Rosalie, who was already in and out of consciousness, and told her that I thought it was probably time to say goodbye to her boys. 

She looked at me with impossibly sad eyes and said, "Oh, do you think it’s that time already?" I had to tell her that no one knew for sure, but it was getting close. With heartbreaking composure she said, "Yes. Okay, I need to prepare. We’ll do it tomorrow then." 

I then went to Brad and I told him of Rosalie’s wish to say goodbye to the boys the next day. When he asked me what he was going to do, how could he and the boys get through it, I looked at him and said, "One year ago, Debbie Patrick, another young mom, died of cancer, leaving two beautiful daughters, Sara and Emma." I told him that Sara and Emma were getting through it — the love Debbie had showered on them and the love of their family were sustaining them. 

This might have been the only thing that could have offered Brad any comfort in that moment, and I was so grateful. 

The next day, I went in to see Rosalie and she was so weak. She looked at me and smiled and said, "Okay, it’s time to tell the boys. I’ll be ready when you bring them in." 

Telling those two little souls that their Momma was getting ready to die was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. When we brought them in to her room, Rosalie was sitting up and greeted her boys with so much energy and love. She took each of them in her arms and kissed them goodbye. As soon as they left the room, she fell back on the bed completely exhausted. She had mustered every ounce of strength for her goodbye. 

She had done it the way she wanted it done. She smiled wearily and said, "I know in my heart that they will never forget my love." 

Rosalie went into a coma for the next two days, but there was no way of knowing how long she was going to live. 

On Thursday, I had a late night meeting at Beth Chaim, and I started to head home. We were going to drive down to Palm Springs the next day on a badly needed Shabbat off. Before I was even aware of it, I found myself driving to the hospital to say my own goodbye to Rosalie.

As I was driving into the parking lot, Brad called from home, saying that the hospital had just told him that he had better come. He arrived with two of Rosalie’s siblings. Rosalie was not conscious, but all four of us in the room felt the strength of her presence. 

For more than three hours I sang prayers and we assured her that she had Brad’s and her family’s permission to go. Sitting there, holding her, singing to her, I suddenly remembered my promise to her. 

Brad had done his best to say goodbye to her. I whispered to her that it was time to say goodbye and I gave her the threefold blessing for peace. As I stood up and took a step back from the bed, she died. 

Even in the last moment of her life, her awareness and presence was astonishing. 

Rosalie once told me that she no longer had a future. She said that without a future, there are no excuses — no putting off what one needs to do. She said that not having a future radically changes the present. The present becomes fuller because it holds everything. Rosalie spent the last few months of her too-short life filling the present with her presence. 

The unbelievable fullness of her life was simply breathtaking. Rosalie made me promise one other thing: that I would tell the story of her dying to help others live and die with more meaning. 

I will continue to tell her story. 

Yom Kippur comes to remind us not to wait until the end to live our lives with all the fullness we can muster. 

None of us knows how much time we have. Yes, we trust that we have a good future, but, as Rosalie taught us, let’s not use the future as an excuse to put off living and loving with all of who we are. 

Thank you, Rosalie, for your wisdom and for your ability to share it so generously. You are greatly missed. 

You will continue to be loved. May you be the shofar, the wake-up call for everyone here today, for all who hear the story of your journey. Eilah Ezkerah — All who knew you and all who hear your story will remember. Keyn Yehi Ratzon. So may it be. Amen. 

Rabbi Dan Goldblatt is the spiritual leader of Beth Chaim Congregation in Danville. California. He can be emailed at Rabbi@bethchaim.com.

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