The Consolation of Judaism

In medicine, we review the risks and benefits of a treatment before we decide on it. We also consider the alternatives and the consequences of doing nothing. I believe we can apply the same practice to Judaism when the indication for it, the diagnosis, is some form of suffering. Doctors focus more on health than wellbeing, but I’d like to address how both benefit from Judaism (and its biblical worldview) in this brief article. Wellbeing is certainly related to happiness, and Carl Jung taught us the five elements of the latter (also referred to as “the five pillars of a good life”): good health, good relations, seeing beauty in nature, satisfactory work, and a resilience-building religious outlook.

We currently find ourselves in an age of philosophical materialism; that is, where the most fashionable—and seemingly ascendent now for centuries—beliefs are that only matter is real and nothing supernatural exists. Those ideas are often discussed like they are new, like that by doubting all the old religions and their metanarratives (to use a term from postmodernism) they have been revealed, but while they are not older than Judaism per se, they do predate its two offshoots: Christianity and Islam. In point of fact, they do so by centuries, but the history of this philosophy is beyond the scope of my article.

The reason a magazine like L’chaim, focused as it is on health and wellness, exists—and that similar ones can be found almost everywhere that magazines are sold—is that we all value human life and the myriad good things it has to offer (e.g. freedom, family life); likewise, we all wish to lessen the evils on earth, those things which threaten our lives and our wellbeing, be it for ourselves or for future generations. But there are limits to our powers, as individuals and a species, in the battles against illness and the downsides of aging. Judaism and the biblical worldview that comes with it, which is decidedly not materialistic, can console the suffering person; as I will go on to show you, it is resilience-building.

Medicine as we know it—let us say modern and western—is decidedly materialistic. That has been good: by seeking material explanations and solutions, it has advanced by leaps and bounds these past two centuries. The aim of medicine is the preservation of the body’s health, but physical things—like the body—inevitably fall apart, they are prone to corruption. Ideas and their systems (i.e., ideologies) are immortal, and they are always competing for adherents. Man, however, is mortal: this is the core premise of the most famous logical syllogism in history; the fact of facts. It is a hard thing to consider death from a materialistic point of view, so let us consider an alternative one. Judaism posits that man has an immortal soul; being immaterial, the soul is not destined to decay like its vessel of red clay. Man is special to G-d among all of His creations (created b’tzelem Elohim on the sixth and final day of creating; given dominion over the earth, etc.; everyday experience shows that man is “like a god…the paragon of animals”); thus, Principles Twelve and Thirteen of Maimonides—belief in Olam Haba and the resurrection therein of the dead, respectively—make sense. We would all preserve our lives, and the lives of those who are a part of us—our children, our parents, our pets even—forever if we could; being omnipotent and eternal, G-d can (Principles One and Four, respectively), and since we are each a part of Him (neshama), it stands to reason that He will. We cannot perfect our bodies or make them last forever, but we can take care of our souls; in Judaism, G-d only wants us to use our free wills (a fiction to materialists) to choose good instead of evil—that is within everyone’s abilities.