This Shabbat:

• Friday Candle Lighting: 6:58 pm
• Shabbat Ends: 7:45 pm

Torah Message:

A Promise of Eternity

“…You are children to the L-rd, your G-d — you shall not cut yourselves and you shall not make a bald spot between your eyes for a dead person.” (14:1-2)

The fact that the Jewish People are a holy people promises them eternity.

It’s axiomatic that G-d doesn’t waste His time, so to speak. Why would He create a holy nation to then assign them to oblivion? What would be the point of infusing them with His own Holiness, and then have them evaporate like a mist after a few score years?

Thus, it is not fit to allow our mourning to break the bounds of reason, to cut and mutilate our bodies as was the way of other cultures, and even for the death of a child, G-d forbid. The fact that we are “children of G-d…” reveals our promise of eternity.

However, to cry and to mourn is only natural when taking our leave of a loved one, and thus our Sages prohibited only excessive mourning, but to mourn a loved one is only a proper and natural expression of our own loss, not the fate of the departed one who has returned to our Father.

• Source: based on the Ramban