Vah’ychee 16 Tevet 5767 / January 6, 2007

Let me begin by sharing someone else’s dream. He is at Dulles Airport and he has a reservation to go to heaven. Of course, heaven is the last gate in the terminal. He stops and buys some reading material and some snacks for the flight. While standing in line he encounters a number of friends, surprised to see that they were going, too. He finally gets to the security gate. The agent tells him that he doesn’t have to bring his own computer, because everyone gets his/her own computer in heaven. They make him take off his jacket, belt and shoes as the agent advises him, “You don’t want to wear shoes in heaven. They scratch up the floor.” Because he has a pacemaker they send him through another gate where he is searched with a wand.

Finally, at long last he gets to the departure gate but there are no seats as the area is so crowded. So he goes to Starbucks to kill time, not sure if perhaps he should buy lunch, as well. As he says, “For all I know, they give you a bagel and cream cheese and a soft drink.”

There is open seating on the plane, but he is dismayed to discover that while heaven is a wonderful place, that on the way there you have to sit three across. He enters the waiting area. The loudspeaker announces: “Heaven is at the last gate. There will be intermediate stops in Dallas, Chicago and Albuquerque. The plane has just arrived.” He goes up to the desk and asks if he gets frequent flyer miles. He is told “You won’t need any, because you’re not coming back.”

The dream concludes with one more announcement over the loudspeaker: “Because of inclement weather, today’s flight to heaven has been canceled. You can come back tomorrow and we’ll put you on standby.”

The dream is the opening chapter in Art Buchwald’s new book, Too Soon to Say Goodbye. Buchwald, the famous columnist, should’ve died nearly a year ago. Not only did he have a foot and part of a leg amputated but he was told that without dialysis he would die of kidney failure. After 12 sessions of dialysis he decided that at age 80, having been properly feted in his lifetime, he was ready to let nature take its course. He moved to the hospice unit at Georgetown University Hospital, where he held court. And to everyone’s surprise, including his doctors, his kidneys did not fail. After weeks and months in hospice, it was time to move on and get on with the business of living. As of yesterday—I googled—he was still with us.

Garrison Keillor is quoted as saying: “They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.” Well, Buchwald didn’t miss them; he was around for the eulogies. He got to say goodbye to friends and colleagues and then proceeded to live on and write more humorous columns and yet another book.

Few of us get to have such an extension. Few of us will get to heaven’s gate to be told, “Sorry, our mistake; you’re not on this flight. Come back in a few years.”

This morning we read about three people who weren’t granted extended runs: Jacob, Joseph, and King David.

This three Biblical figures offer some guidance as we uncomfortably confront our own mortality. Let us start in reverse order.

It is hard to believe that the King David we see is the David who composed psalms and the beautiful ode on the death of his friend Jonathan and his father King Saul. It is hard to believe that this is the same man who in the first chapter of the Book of Kings seems barely aware of what is happening and is seemingly manipulated into ensuring Solomon’s place on the throne, rather than Adonijah’s. This is a David who is the ancestor of the Godfather, telling Solomon to take care of his unfinished business; to continue to respect those who aided David in his lifetime and to settle scores with those he had to leave untouched in his lifetime.

I am convinced that this Biblical figure is not one that we should emulate. Though the portrait is tempered by a sense of ongoing indebtedness to Barzillai the Giledaite, its dominant theme is that of vendetta: of getting back at two people that David himself couldn’t touch in his lifetime, but were in his eyes deserving of death. This is not the kind of legacy we should be leaving behind.

So let us move on to Joseph. For his part, Joseph dies much less dramatically, though as I have noted, the fact that he has to ask that at some undesignated future point that his body will be taken from Egypt suggests that even now that the tide has begun to turn for his family, for the Israelites, and that his power has waned. But the text offers a pleasant contrast to the intrigues of David’s court. We are told that Joseph lived to see great grandchildren and bounce them on his knee. And when he is ready to die he has a request, namely that when Jacob’s descendants leave Egypt “you shall carry up my bones from here.” There is a tranquility about Joseph’s death; a sense that life has been full and the one task remaining is to be buried in native soil, a hope to be deferred for the future. And indeed, we know that Joseph’s bones will be transported out of Egypt; Moses himself attending to the transportation. Joseph is a model of pre-arrangements, as it were; knowing that he would be embalmed in Egypt, but at some future point transported home. He overcame his anger at what his brothers had done to him. And you will recall that when Jacob died, 17 years after they were reunited, the brothers were still worried that Joseph would get his revenge. Joseph once again reassured them that things had turned out for the best. Joseph focused on the joy of family and preparing for his afterlife rather than on getting back at his brothers.

And finally, we reach back to Jacob. Seemingly, he is the paradigm of all of those authors of ethical wills. He lays out the future for all of his sons. And yet, Jacob’s legacy is problematic. On his deathbed he is in some senses like David: righting past wrongs. He disinherits Reuben for his act of sleeping with Bilhah, one of his concubines. He punishes his next two sons, Simeon and Levi for their brutality in rescuing Dinah. In both instances he held his tongue: he settles accounts before he dies. And then, lapsing into behavior which got everyone into trouble before, he picks out favorites: elevating Judah and assigning him the monarchy and granting Joseph an extra measure of blessing as well, having already designated Joseph’s two sons as equals of Jacob’s own. In one sense, Jacob is a noble guide for us: he plans for his death; he blesses his children. On the other hand, he waits until his final moments to balance the scales of a lifetime and that is a model we should eschew.

Art Buchwald is still on standby. Most of us won’t be so lucky. Nor can we know if we will have time for long goodbyes. Many of us were not granted that with loved ones and won’t be granted that blessing when our own time comes. However, how we live from now to then is in our hands. Do we leave bitter legacies for our heirs? Or do we make peace with our lives, enjoy our blessings, and ask that when our time comes that we be buried with dignity? Those choices remain firmly in our hands.

Shabbat shalom.