Last week, I watched my mother-in-law slowly pass from this world to the next. It seems that when one does not have the energy or capacity to do anything else, one can still sleep. I suppose this reflects the Talmud’s adage that sleep is one-sixtieth of death. It seems that each night, unconsciously, our ultimate end pierces our this-worldly mind. Can meditating on this end inspire us, or is it better to avoid such thinking for reasons of psychological self-preservation?

The 20th-century philosopher Martin Heidegger believed that we do not really encounter our lives until we place the ever-present possibility of our demise front and center. This knowledge has the power to make us truly authentic; otherwise, we live our lives occupied with avoiding this thought.

The Talmud (Shabbat 153a) states something similar: “Rabbi Eliezer says: ‘Repent one day before your death.’ Rabbi Eliezer’s students asked him: ‘But does a person know the day on which they will die?’ He said to them: ‘All the more so is this sound advice. One should repent today lest they die tomorrow, and by following this advice one will spend their entire life in a state of repentance.’ 

Jewish thought is ambivalent about our transitory world. The mystics call the physical world alma d’shikra, the world of falsehood. But on the other hand, it is only in this world that one can accomplish anything at all, as the Mishnah states, “More beautiful is one hour of good deeds and Torah study in this world than all the life of the world to come.”

In this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, we read about the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. The Torah tells us, “Make for me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” It does not say, “I will dwell in it,” but “in them.” The mystics say this means God dwells in each individual person. Some Hasidic commentaries even try to draw parallels between different elements of the human body, mind, and soul and the parts of the Temple.

We are dust and to dust we return, and yet we are made in the image of God. We are like a passing shadow and yet we are the Mishkan, the dwelling place of the Divine.