It is a long-standing custom for both men and women to wear white on Yom Kippur, and especially for men to wear their white kittel, the special robe worn by the groom at a Jewish wedding. The kittel is a unique garment that is only worn on very special occasions – each community and person according to their custom. Various times that kittels may be worn are — on the first night of Pesach when reciting the Haggadah, on Rosh Hashanah (sometimes only by the shalich tzibbur, the one conducting prayers), on Hoshanah Rabbah during the morning service, and by the shaliach tzibbur, the prayer leader, when leading the prayer for dew on Pesach and for rain on Shmini Atzeret. As with all physical expressions of faith or intention within Jewish spirituality, this practice elicits various questions as to the deeper meaning and inner significance of its concepts and details.
White is a universal symbol of purity, holiness, light, and Godliness. Thus, wearing white on Yom Kippur is a constant reminder of the themes of the day, inspiring us in our attempts to elevate ourselves and integrate these attributes into our consciousness. Intriguingly, there is also a custom among certain communities for a man to be buried in his kittel, as well as for everyone to buried in white shrouds. In this section, we will explore the practice of dressing in white on Yom Kippur and its connection to death.
The first association between these two experiences is the Jewish belief that the judgment of whether one will live or die in the coming year occurs specifically during the period in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Therefore, wearing white throughout the day of Yom Kippur reminds us constantly of its seriousness and high stakes. Although we are constantly praying for life during these existentially anxious days, it is also considered appropriate and even beneficial to contemplate our own deaths as well. The question thus becomes: why contemplate death when we are requesting life, and a good life at that?
Theoretically, we can question whether there is any way to effectively inoculate ourselves against actual death in the first place. On the one hand, the answer is quite simple. At the present time, all living things, including human beings, cannot live without eventually dying. On the other hand, although there is no escaping death, humans can prepare themselves for their eventual demise, thereby deflating the paralyzing fear of death’s finality.
Although the Jewish tradition is unequivocal about the soul’s eternity and the existence of an afterlife, many Jews are unaware of this article of faith. Furthermore, even those Jews who are aware of these teachings may find that intellectual awareness is not quite enough to comfort them when faced with the ultimate reality of their own mortality or the deaths of those close to them.
There is a profound allusion to how one may, in a sense, inoculate themselves against the fear of death in the Torah portion of Chuchat, where a mysterious ritual is described that was used in the times of the Temple to purify an individual following any contact with the dead. This ritual is referred to as the Red Heifer ceremony. The Hebrew word for heifer, the animal whose ashes were used to purify those defiled by death, is “parah” (פרה). The red heifer was burnt until nothing but ashes – efer (אפר) – remained. Homeopathic remedies are also prepared in a similar manner. The ingredients for the remedy go through a process of serial dilution wherein, through intense shaking and spinning, less and less of the original physical substance is left, until only the very essence remains. (Homeopathy, vaccines, and the use of ashes from a dead animal to purify an individual defiled by death, are all based on the concept of “like cures like.”)
The words parah and efer share two Hebrew letters, peh and reish, while their third letters are hei (ה) and alef (א) respectively. The red heifer’s reduction to ash, reminiscent of the production of a homeopathic remedy, is represented by the hei of parah becoming the alef in efer. The letter hei, which equals five and symbolizes the number of fingers on a human hand, represents assertive action in a world of multiplicity. The letter alef, on the other hand, has the numerical value of one, thus symbolizing unity and essence. This reduction to essence is further hinted at by the hei, which is the last letter of the word parah, being replaced by an alef, the first letter of the word efer.
The message we can take from this process is: when we are connected to the essence and purpose of life, there is nothing to fear from death. When one connects to the Creator and spends a lifetime fulfilling His will, death is just one more stage, one more step deemed necessary for attaining the ultimate good He has promised. Yom Kippur is an auspicious time to contemplate both the essence of life and death, as well as to see them both as one inseparable cycle.
Just as a vaccination or a homeopathic remedy introduces us to a weakened form of the very disease we want to be protected against, contemplating our own deaths is actually a very effective method of inoculating ourselves against the paralyzing fear that often accompanies encounters with or thoughts of death. The Torah alludes to this notion twice in Chukat. The first hidden reference is revealed by the Sages’ radical reading of the verse – “This is the Torah regarding a man who would die in a tent” – which was interpreted to be referring to a kind of ego death or an individual’s willful assumption of a truly humble nature as a prerequisite to successfully learning Torah. Furthermore, subduing the ego or practicing self-nullification at various points throughout our life prepares us to more gracefully and graciously accept death in this world as our ultimate fate. By cultivating existential humility, we learn to trust God implicitly, even on matters of life and death.
The second beautiful allusion relates once again to the red heifer. After the heifer is burnt with cedar and hyssop and only ashes remain, the ashes are collected and put into a vessel (keli) to be mixed with “living waters.” The word “keli” has the numerical value of sixty. In Jewish law, certain mixtures are considered forbidden. Yet, if a mixture is created (for example, dairy products are mixed with meat ones) and the ratio between the two is less than 1:60, the minority substance is considered nullified – as if it were not there at all – and the mixture is permitted. The numerical value of the word keli, vessel (60), in which the ash, afar, (beginning with the letter aleph which equals one and represents essence) is mixed, alludes to the importance of self-nullification when confronted by the reality of death.
Parenthetically, the general importance of self-nullification in obtaining Torah knowledge is emphasized by the following mathematical gem. The numerical value of the Hebrew word for “Torah” is 611. This is the exact amount reached when multiplying thirteen (the numerical value of the word “one”) by forty-seven (the numerical value of the word “bitul,” which means self-nullification). This mathematical allusion mirrors the message of the verse, “This is the Torah regarding a man who would die in a tent.” True Torah knowledge is only achieved when an individual nullifies his ego in the face of God’s essential oneness.
Significantly, Rashi notes in the portion of Chuchat that Aaron and Miriam died by way of the “kiss of God,” a process “as gentle as removing a hair from a glass of milk.” This image is certainly more comforting than that of death as a jarring transition from the brilliance of life to a dark and eternal pit. In fact, virtually all recorded near-death experiences describe death as a beautiful experience full of light and compassion. Visualizing death as receiving a kiss from God would no doubt minimize our fear of death and the unknown. In truth, the more we learn about the Jewish understanding of death and the afterlife in order to integrate these ideas deep into our consciousness, the less we will fear death and the fuller our appreciation of life will be.
The Torah’s final portion, Vezot Haberachah, concludes with Moses’ death: “And Moses, servant of God, died there, in the land of Moab by the word of God” (Deuteronomy 34:5). According to the Kabbalah there are fifty gates of understanding. Moses attained forty-nine of those levels during his life. Some commentators suggest that he so ardently wished to enter the Promised Land because he knew that the fiftieth gate could only be found in the Land of Israel. Other commentators suggest that Moses did in fact attain the fiftieth gate when he too died by the “kiss of God.” Above we translated the verse describing Moses’ death as stating that Moses died by “the word of God”; however, it could also be translated as “by the mouth of God.” Reading the verse literally, Rashi explains that Moses, like Aaron and Miriam before him, died with a Divine kiss.
Before Moses’ death, God instructs him to ascend Mount Nevo, the mountain on which he would die. From this vantage point, God shows him the entire Land of Israel “until the yam ha’acharon,” the “last sea” (Deuteronomy 34:2). The straightforward peshat meaning of the verse is that God allowed Moses to see the entire country, up to and including “the last sea” – the Mediterranean. However, quoting a homiletical derash interpretation from the Sifrei, Rashi states that instead of vowelizing the phrase as yam ha’acharon, which would mean “the last sea,” it could be vowelized differently and read as yom ha’acharon, “the last day.” Based on this derash, the Sages suggest that God revealed to Moses the Jewish people’s entire history up until and including “the last day,” the resurrection of the dead. This reading supports the notion that Moses was permitted to enter the fiftieth gate of understanding, just before or in the very moment of his dying by “the kiss of God.”
The name of the mountain upon which Moses died, Nevo, has the numerical value of fifty-eight, the same as the Hebrew word for “grace” (chen). “Chen” is a very important word, as the Torah often relates that Moses prayed to find grace in God’s eyes, especially when praying on behalf of the Jewish people. The proof that Moses did in fact find grace in God’s eyes is that He acquiesced to Moses’ pleas on behalf of the people. Here at the end of Moses’ life, we find proof that he ultimately did find grace in the eyes of God on a personal level as well, as he died by “the kiss of God” on Mount Nevo, a mountain symbolizing the ascent and complete union of the soul with its ultimate Source.
On Yom Kippur, each person has the potential to connect to the essence of all things, to get a glimpse, even if only for a moment, into the allusive fiftieth gate, the Holy of Holies within. This is the ideal vantage point from which to contemplate our lives, to earnestly consider how we can improve ourselves, and to remain receptive to a new and bright future. At the same time, we can also “see” even beyond this life to the yom ha’acharon, “the last day.” This is the infinitely panoramic perspective that allows us each to accept our own deaths with equanimity, thus inoculating ourselves against the fear of death. Doing so will draw down grace upon us, not only in our death, but more importantly and immediately, into our very life.
