The Meaning of Death
משמעות המוות
God commanded man to cleave to the good and not allow evil to penetrate him, and in this way he would live and not die, as it is stated: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it, for on the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Bereshit 2:16-17). But man sinned; evil penetrated him and damaged all the systems of his life and all the systems of nature, and as a result it was decreed that he would die. Yet death is for his good and his rectification, for without it man could not rid himself of the evil and sin that clung to him. The wicked would continue to do evil without limit, and the strong would dominate the weak, tormenting and exploiting them endlessly in order to increase their wealth and satisfy their desires. Now that there is death, these wicked people ultimately die and are punished, and goodness and relief spread through the world. Without death, the righteous too would be terribly frustrated with their lives, for “there is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins” (Kohelet 7:20), and the sins that clung to them would continue to envelop them without any ability to free themselves of them and be redeemed. Now that there is death in the world, death separates the soul from the body and consumes the sins that clung to the body, and thereby the soul is freed of its sins. Sometimes this also involves the sufferings of Gehinnom, but ultimately the process of purification continues until the soul ascends to Gan Eden and reconnects to God as at first. “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Kohelet 12:7). In this way death rectifies the sins of humanity as a whole, and the sins of each person individually – until the rectification of the world is completed, and all the souls of the people who chose good will rise to their destiny at the end of days, to live again in the renewed body that the Creator will grant them at the Resurrection of the Dead.
Since this is so, despite the terror and the loss, death is not final cessation. The soul returns to the world of souls, while the body, in which death takes place, gradually returns to its dust, and in the course of this, remnants of life still stir within it. While a person is alive, the spirit of life, by whose power he can engage in settling and rectifying the world, preserves the basic purity of his body. But from the moment he dies, the body becomes an “avi avot ha-tum’a” (the most severe source of ritual impurity), because it is sealed off from the Divine light, and the remnants of life that still stir within it have no power to add goodness. Since this is so, the body is left without protection, and the forces of impurity – that is, life forces that have been cut off from their root – long to draw strength for themselves from the remnants of life stirring within it, which themselves have become distant and cut off from the soul of the person who died; and this is the basis for sorcery (see Zohar vol. 1, 131a; 220a). And even after all his flesh has returned to its dust, there still remains upon the remnant of his bones the “havla de-garmei” (the vapor of the bones), a faint trace of life that expresses the eternal kernel within him, from which he will rise at the Resurrection at the end of days.¹
Notes (1)
- The Arizal explained (Etz Ḥayim, Sha’ar 22:2): “Behold, when a tzaddik dies, his NaRaN (nefesh, ru’aḥ, neshama) from the side of Atzilut ascend to Atzilut; his neshama of Beri’a ascends to the Upper Gan Eden, and the ru’aḥ of Yetzira to the Lower (earthly) Gan Eden, and the nefesh of Asiya remains in the grave. And when the flesh decomposes, that nefesh too ascends on high, and that havla de-garmei remains upon those bones that remained in the grave, as mentioned in parashat Shelaḥ (Zohar vol. 3, 170a).” It is explained there that the “havla de-garmei,” which is the moḥin de-katnut (lesser consciousness) of the “nefesh of Asiya,” and the sparks, always remain “in the grave until the time of the Resurrection, for since it is of the secret of dinim (severities), the kelipot always have a hold on it, and it cannot separate from the body to ascend on high.” Moreover, “all the kelipot take hold only of them, and their main sustenance is from them, which is why the entire sitra aḥra is called ‘other gods,’ as is known; and therefore they do not have the power to separate from the kelipot and ascend on high with the nefesh de-gadlut of Asiya” (Sha’ar Ha-pesukim on I Shmuel, on the verse “And his mother would make him a little robe,” I Shmuel 2:19). That is, the forces of impurity draw from those forces that remained in the soul, and it is they that prevent the soul from ascending fully. Further on the “havla de-garmei,” see Da’at Tevunot by Ramḥal §130, and below at the end of note 3, in the words of R. Tzadok.