RABBI MANES FRIEDMAN RECORDINGS
AUDIO TRANSCRIPTIONS
1. Are We Going to Heaven or Hell?
So I’m sitting in the Chabad House in Minnesota, and I get a phone call from a college student.
He says, “I’m on my way – I need to ask you a question,” and he sounds very anxious. He pulls up in front of the house, screeching to a stop, jumps out of the car, and in a panic says, “Rabbi, am I going to Hell?”
I said, “Uh, I don’t know. What have you been doing lately?”
He says, “No, no, I’m serious.”
I said, “Why? Where is this question coming from?” He was not particularly religious or observant.
He says, “I have a roommate on campus who’s an evangelist.” He’s been telling him for a couple of months that if he doesn’t convert, he’ll go to Hell. So for a couple of months, he humored him. For a couple of months, he tried to ignore him. Now it’s getting to him, and he wants to know, “Am I going to Hell?”
I said, “Why did you have to come all the way from Minneapolis to St. Paul to ask me? There’s a rabbi on campus. Why didn’t you ask him?”
He says, “I did.”
“What did the rabbi say?”
“The rabbi said we don’t believe in Hell.”
So I said, “You don’t like that answer?”
He says, “That’s not an answer! If I end up in Hell, what am I going to say, ‘My rabbi doesn’t believe in this?’ I don’t want to know what you believe. I want to know if I’m going. Am I going or not?”
Are we going to Hell? Do we even know what it is? What happens after life? Is there life after death?
2. What Happens? – The Soul and the Body
So what happens is this: The soul that is a living being enters the body, and the body borrows life from the soul because, inherently, the body is not a living thing; the soul is a living thing, and when they separate and go their own ways, the body returns to dust – “From dust you are and to dust you shall return.” And this soul goes back to being a soul among souls. You can call it Heaven or you can call it Hell, but you’re describing the continued life of the living soul.
3. Life Lives – Poem
Life lives; bodies go back to the dust.
There’s a beautiful poem, if I could remember it for a second here. It’s from a famous poet. “Life is true, life is real, and death is not its goal.
From dust you are and to dust returneth was never said about the soul.”
[**The quote being referenced:
“Life is real! Life is earnest!
And death is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”
– A Psalm of Life, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.]
So, “from dust you are and to dust you return,” that’s the nature of the body. It is not a living thing; it goes back to being a mineral. The soul, on the other hand, always was alive and will always continue to live.
4. The Soul is Very Real
Let’s describe the soul for a moment. What is a soul? What is a neshamah?
When G-d created the world, He created things that never existed.
“Let there be light” and there was light that had never existed before.
“Let there be a firmament, a heaven” – it had never existed before. The sun, the moon, the stars, the water – they’re all new, never existed.
A soul, a Jewish soul, is a little piece of G-d that always existed, just as G-d always existed. This little piece of G-d is, of course, alive, like G-d is alive.
RABBI YY JACOBSON RECORDINGS
1. One of the Most Transformative Moments
One of the most transformative moments in my life was when I walked into the hospital room, where my father lay ill.
I was there in the morning, and then I left, and when I came back and came to the door, I saw that something was wrong. And I saw that he had just passed away.
I was with him in the morning. We were communicating. He was fully alive. Some of you sitting in this audience knew my father. He was a very, very vivacious, creative, engaging, interesting personality. He was a little different. He was quite original. And he had a lot inside of him. He was a very interesting conversationalist and a fascinating dad and human being and journalist. He was just one hell of a guy, as they say. And even when he was ill, the personality was still there.
And I’m looking at him, and nothing is there. It’s just a corpse. And the machines are all quiet – you know how the machines go all dead, just everything is silent; there’s an eerie serenity because there’s nobody to help anymore, there’s nobody to heal.
And just my mind asked one question: Where did my father’s personality go? Where did 70 years of his life go? What happened to it? Did it just mamish (truly) fade into oblivion and all that’s left of my father is fodder for the worms in a cemetery in Queens? Mamish, is that really it?
I wasn’t asking then a scientific question, one that’s going to the laboratory. It was just in my kishkes (similar to “I felt it in my bones”). I was looking at my father and I was trying to – “Where is it all? Because it’s not here anymore. There’s nothing here.”
And then I knew at the moment it was all there, it was just not being manifested through the vehicle we call the body.
2. Refrigerator Clips Combined
So the other day, I had an imaginary conversation with my refrigerator.
I spend time at the refrigerator. I open it, I close it. When I’m stressed I open the refrigerator. I opened it five minutes ago, but somehow I hope that the prophet Elijah put in some new items. Do you ever realize how many times people open the refrigerator? I just opened it. No, no, no, there’s probably something I didn’t find like some cheesecake from Shavuos. Mamish, people open the refrigerator – it’s like a shtickel (little) addiction. It’s refrigerator addiction. Some people call it food addiction, but it sounds better if it’s refrigerator addiction.
So in any case, I’m having this conversation with my refrigerator, and the refrigerator is like, “You know, I am sick and tired of being under a dictator. I really want to be autonomous. I really need self-actualization. I really need to be independent. I cannot stand being and living under the tyranny of monarchs and dictators who control everything about me.”
And I looked at the refrigerator, and I’m like, “Yeah, I agree. Free at last! How are we going to do this?”
And the refrigerator said, “You know, the whole thing with the – I’m always plugged into this wall and I always have to be near the wall and dependent on electricity. I just want to be free. I want to be free to roam wherever I want, to be whatever I want, to do whatever I want. Do me a favor: unplug me.”
Very good. So I unplugged the refrigerator, and you know what happened? Yisgadal v’yiskadash (a phrase taken from the Kadish service, which is said in mourning of a deceased loved one). The cheesecake died. The fruits and vegetables died. The refrigerator – dead. It was a big, lifeless, useless body that occupied extra space in my home for no reason.
Hmmm. When the refrigerator’s plugged into the wall, electricity flows through it. The refrigerator can do what it has to do. The same is true with your laptop. The same is true with your phone. The same is true with your vacuum cleaner. The same is true with your AC. The same is true with your radiator or alarm clock or whatever else you’re using electricity for.
What happens when you unplug it? Electricity doesn’t die.
The human body is like the refrigerator – an extraordinary refrigerator, far more complex. 50 trillion cells, 100 billion neurons. And it’s a channel for the electricity which we call the soul, and that electricity is manifested through the body. What is the body without the electricity? It’s a corpse that decomposes ultimately. So it’s the electricity that gives vitality and vivifies – it’s the current that gives vitality, a personality to the body, which we call the neshamah, the soul.
What happens by death? What happens by death is it’s unplugged; we’re unplugged. So the soul literally becomes part of what it always was and where it always was, barring the years that the soul – the electricity – was manifested through the body.
A more accurate definition of death is “unplugged.” The same soul, that same reality, continues to live – in a way, with even more intensity because it’s not being channeled through a limited vessel.
Nobody dies. What happens is that the connection is not manifested. The electricity is not flowing through your laptop. It’s not flowing through the body. So I’m talking to the body, and it’s dead.
3. When We Understand What Life Is
When we understand what life is, a soul doesn’t die.
The soul doesn’t live after its death; it never died.
“Unplugged” – that’s the word. Unplugged.
The soul was there before birth. The soul was there after death.
Because electricity was not created when you plugged in the refrigerator. Electricity is here since G-d created the cosmos.
Plugging in the refrigerator only means that you channeled the electricity through your refrigerator or computer or vacuum cleaner or iPhone or AC.