GEN416 Jewish tradition confronts rather than avoids the inevitability or the reality of death. At the very beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures, we are told [this verse]. Ecclesiastes (3:1-2) forthrightly states, “A season is set for everything a time for every experience under heaven: a time for being born, and, a time for dying.” Ecclesiastes (7:2) further counsels that “it is better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting: for that [i.e. death] is the end of every person, and the living one should take it to heart.  The awareness of human finitude found in the Hebrew Scriptures is amplified in rabbinic literature.  For example, the Talmud recounts that “when Rabbi Jonathan finished the Book of Job, he used to say: the end of man is to die, and the end of a beast is to be slaughtered, and all are doomed to death” Berachot 17a. A verse in Psalms (144:4) reads, “One’s days are like a passing shadow.” On this verse, a midrash comments: “What kind of shadow? If life is like a shadow cast by a wall, it endures … Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rabbi Aha: Life is like a bird that flies past, and its shadow flies past with it.  But Samuel said: Life is like the shadow of a bee that has no substance at all” Ecclesiastes Rabbah, Chap. 1, sec. 1.  While rejecting an escapist attitude toward death, and while advocating a frank confrontation with death and dying, Jewish tradition considers the encounter with human mortality to be an invitation neither to morbidity nor to nihilism.  The attitude satirized by the prophet Isaiah (22:13), “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die,” finds no resonance in Jewish thought.  Rather, the candid awareness of human mortality is treated by Jewish religious literature as an opportunity to confront the quest for and the creation of human purpose and meaning.  Since life is a blind date with an uncertain future, each moment is considered a summons to begin or to continue the project of creating the ultimate work of art-one’s own existence.  Commenting on Hillel’s famous statement, “If not now, when? (Palestinian Talmud, chap. 1, sec. 14), a medieval Jewish writer observed that Hillel did not say, “If not today, when? But “If not now, when?” because “even today is in doubt regarding whether one will survive or not for at any instant one can die.” Consequently, “one cannot wait even a day or two to exert oneself in the pursuit of human [moral] fulfillment” (Gerondi 1971, 115). A candid confrontation with death can compel one to examine and improve the moral quality of life.   For example, “Rabbi Eliezer said: Repent one day before your death. His disciples asked him: Does then one know on what day he will die? Then all the more reason to repent today, he replied, lest he die tomorrow” Shabbat, 153a.  Another text advises: “One should always incite the good inclination to fight against the evil inclination. … If he subdues it, well and good. If not, let him study the Torah. … If he subdues it, well and good. If not, let him recite the Shema. … If he subdues it, well and good.  If not, let him remind himself on the day of death” Berachot 5a. SHER20C 36-8