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Jewish World Review Nov. 9, 1999 / 28 Mar-Cheshvan, 5760
THOUGHTS OF MORTALITY were hardly out of place, considering the fact that I
was lying in a curtained-off cubicle adjacent to a hospital's emergency
room, my chest bared and awaiting the sort of wired paddles that make still,
supine bodies on television medical dramas jump like chopped onions in a
hot, oiled frying pan.
Heart and soul
By Rabbi Avi Shafran
The memory returned during this Jewish high holiday season, when, like every
year, a soulfully sung part of the service presented the vivid imagery of a
decree: "Who shall live and who shall die?" in the coming months.
The procedure I was about to undergo, though, several years back, was
relatively routine and quite safe; it had been scheduled weeks earlier in
response to my heart's march for several years to the beat of a different
drummer. One means of discouraging such nonconformance is to teach the
offending muscles a good, swift lesson with a well-placed jolt of
electricity. Same principle as the cattle prod for obstinate livestock or
electroshock for wayward brains.
No private room had been available at the hospital for so minor a
chastisement as a cardioversion (or "conversion" in medical parlance; I
warned the men of the frocks that they stood little chance of successfully
converting an Orthodox rabbi, but I had apparently not been the first
bearded, beyarmulked patient to make the comment). Thus my decidedly
unprivate, if off-the beaten-path temporary digs.
As I lay there, head propped up on a pillow, awaiting the arrival of the
anesthesiologist and the executioner, I was able to watch the parade of
patients being chaperoned from the emergency room through the hub of
activity just beyond my feet and the half-parted curtain. A bloodied head
here, a broken limb there, a macabre march, the yield of a sleepy city and
its mistakes on the sober morning after a Saturday night.
And then, in the middle of the procession, I saw her, and the look in her
eyes.
A blanket covered all but her hoary head and one skeletal, desperate arm
reaching for something that wasn't there. Her eyes, though, deeply sunken
in a wizened, trembling face, were an irresistible force; they seized my own
and simply would not let go, not for the eternity of that fleeting moment.
What I saw in those unforgettable eyes was unfiltered, utter fear.
Maybe the fact that my heart was about to be stopped by a machine had
oversensitized me to the sight. But something else was weighing on me too,
3000 years of religious tradition.
For Judaism values life to an awesome degree. One moment on this earth is
cherished beyond imagining in the Torah's eyes. "Tomorrow," asserts the
Talmud -- the next world -- is for our ultimate reward; only "today," though,
"is for doing."
The contemporary world values an assortment of talents and skills but none
so intensely as Judaism treasures the ability to confront one's life, to
face reality, to wield free will, to choose, to resolve, to repent. And
even immobilized and ailing in a hospital bed, a man or woman can do those
most meaningful things a human being can possibly do. A Talmudic teaching
has it that some "acquire their portion" in heaven through the efforts of
many years, but others in a mere moment.
Even the comatose may well be functioning beyond our assumptions.
Electroencephalographs that measure electrical activity in the brain do
precisely that and nothing more. Who can possibly know what might be
happening in the soul of a living human being?
And so,though my condition itself was benign and treatable with medication,
the imminent treatment was somewhat disconcerting. A lightning-quick
thought of my imminent anesthesia and what would follow stabbed at my
brain.. What if my heart protested the punishment (its owner, after all,
tends toward overreaction) and decided to stop beating altogether? What, I
wondered, was the hospital's policy about patients who suddenly need the
proverbial "heroic measures"? Old or diseased patients, I knew, can have a
"DNR" -- a "Do Not Resuscitate" -- order attached to their charts. They, or
their relatives, or a doctor - depending on circumstances - can direct
medical personnel to allow a patient in extremis to die, rather than
interfere to postpone the final event. But I knew that I, a relatively
healthy 40-odd year old, would surely be rescued if things went awry.
Should there, though, really be any difference, I mulled, between young and
old, sick or healthy, clearly moribund or only subtly so like the rest of
us? If a moment of human life is invaluable, is it not so for everyone?
Which thought made the punctuation to the apparition so striking, and fixed
it forever in my mind.
For just as the eyes and arm, blanket and all disappeared to the left of my
line of sight, a nurse's face entered stage right for the briefest of
moments. It was a speaking part, but only one short line.
"That's a DNR," she called with chilling nonchalance, and even before the
voltage, a frisson washed over my bones.
And when the electroshock came, it did nothing but burn my chest; my morning
in the hospital left my heart unchanged.
Its rhythm,
anyway.
Rabbi Avi Shafran is American Director of Am Echad, an international organization promoting Jewish unity. He may be reached by clicking here.
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