SERMON FOR YIZKOR YOM KIPPUR 5776 Rabbi Reuven Taff What We Can Learn from Oliver Sacks On February 19 th I read an op-ed in the New York Times written by Oliver Sacks. My Own Life----Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer Many of you know that he recently passed away. In fact just two weeks before he died his last published op-ed of his life was published in the New York Times, entitled Sabbath where he writes about the peacefulness of a day completely separate and disconnected from the frenetic schedule of the everyday. When I read his op-ed in February of this year, I was amazed at the way in which this man expressed his thoughts after receiving the news of his diagnosis. Let me quote from his article: My Own Life Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer FEB. 19, 2015 New York Times A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered that I had a rare tumor of the eye, an ocular melanoma. The radiation and lasering to remove the tumor ultimately left me blind in that eye. But though ocular melanomas metastasize in perhaps 50 percent of cases, given the particulars of my own case, the likelihood was much smaller. I am among the unlucky ones. I feel grateful that I have been granted nine years of good health and productivity since the original diagnosis, but now I am face to face with dying. The cancer occupies a third of my liver, and though its advance may be slowed, this particular sort of cancer cannot be halted. It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. In this I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, upon learning that he was mortally ill at age 65, wrote a short autobiography in a single day in April of 1776. He titled it My Own Life. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution, he wrote. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great 1
decline of my person, never suffered a moment s abatement of my spirits. I possess the same ardor as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. Oliver Sacks continues: I have been lucky enough to live past 80, and the 15 years allotted to me beyond Hume s three score and five have been equally rich in work and love. In that time, I have published five books and completed an autobiography (rather longer than Hume s few pages) to be published this spring; I have several other books nearly finished. Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight. This is not indifference but detachment I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands. I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate the genetic and neural fate of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death. I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure. 2
When I finished reading his words the first time, I thought what a remarkable man to express such thoughts without bitterness, without anger, without saying to God, Why Me? ---well, since he was an atheist, I doubt that he would ask God any questions. But I want to ask you, how many of you if you would be in Oliver Sack s situation would have that perspective? How many of us would say, It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. Many of you might be aware that in his 82 years of life, Oliver Sacks has achieved dazzling success and acclaim as both a scientist and an author. His groundbreaking discoveries in the field of neuro-science have transformed modern medicine's understanding of the brain. Dr. Sacks first won widespread attention in 1973 for his book Awakenings, which became an Academy Award Nominated film about a group of patients with an atypical form of encephalitis at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx. When Dr. Sacks started his clinical career there, in 1966, many of the patients had been catatonic, locked inside themselves for decades as a result of their sleeping sickness. Dr. Sacks gave them the drug L-dopa, which was just beginning to be recognized as a treatment for similar symptoms in patients with Parkinson s, then watched as they emerged into a world they did not recognize. Some responded better than others both to the drug and to their changed circumstances and Dr. Sacks used his book to explore the differences and celebrate his patients limited rebirth. He told a reporter in 1986: I love to discover potential in people who aren t thought to have any. Sacks came from a large London-based Jewish family; one of his cousins was in fact the eminent Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban (another cousin was Al Capp, of Li l Abner fame); and that his principal intellectual hero and mentor-at-a-distance, whose influence could be sensed on every page of Awakenings, had been the great Soviet neuropsychologist A. R. Luria, who was likely descended from Rabbi Isaac Luria, the 16th-century Jewish mystic, who by the way is a relative of our congregation s own Yair Luria. The New York Times called Dr. Sacks the the poet laureate of medicine, and that he will leave the world of both medicine and literature infinitely richer. Do you know what moves me? It is the fullness of his life which moves me. It is specifically the fact that he stood facing death with not a whisper of regret in his words. Quite the opposite, his words were dripping with fulfilment and gratitude. Till his last day, he chooses to embrace the world: It is up to me now to choose 3
how to live out the months that remain to me, he writes. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can. You know, I sometimes think that I will one day stand at the edge of my life. It is inevitable, isn t it? But what terrifies me most is to stand at the brink of my life and to have not lived fully. I am so full at the moment, brimming with dreams and plans and hopes and goals. I want so much for myself, for my relationships, for my wife, my children and my grandchildren. Yet I am constantly unsure that I will get there. And like many of us, I find myself pushing off my dreams to another day. Oliver Sacks does not live in the world of another day. He faces death with courage and serenity because he is living a life full with vitality. To stand at the edge of this world, looking back with regrets and saying to yourself, I had dreams but I was afraid. I held grudges because I was too proud to let it go. I wanted to do so much but I got distracted. I thought there was more time that to me is terrifying. You know, often we hear stories of near-fatal events where a person was miraculously saved from an illness or an accident. And then what happens? The person who was miraculously saved writes down a bucket list and dramatic changes to that person s life are made. Relationships are prioritized, old feuds are settled and a heightened awareness of purpose and the sacredness of each moment is awakened. But why do we have to wait for a tragedy to rearrange our priorities and goals? Each of us is born with infinite potential for greatness. Yet we hold back. The what-ifs, the have-tos, the should-haves often cloud our choices and decisions. Sometimes we don t examine our choices fully. We let the expectations and social norms dictate. Our dreams remained buried among fears and complacency. So reading Oliver Sacks reflections as he nears the end of his time in the world, I am envious. He is confident that he has given his all. Listen to his words. He says: But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. To be overflowing with gratitude in the face of death can only be a result of life lived with constant appreciation of the blessings. So with the courage, engagement and creativity that he lived his life, he approaches his death. The self he has cultivated the self of love and gratitude is what he will carry through the rest of 4
the days on this planet. And he did exactly that until he took his last breath on August 30 th, just three weeks ago. Just two weeks before he died, another op-ed was published in the New York Times and it actually appeared on a Shabbat, August 15 th. In that article he referenced his Orthodox upbringing and the role that Shabbat played in his life. It was a time when his parents who were both physicians, put away their stethoscopes (unless they were on-call) and they would share a carefully prepared dinner, visit with cousins and friends and go to services at their synagogue. As a young adult, because of a very hurtful incident that was religiously based - between Sacks and his mother, Sacks abandoned his Jewish religious practice. He described that many years later when he visited his relative, the Nobel Prize recipient, Robert John Aumann who in 2005 received the Nobel Prize in Economics. Robert John, an Orthodox Jew said to him, Oliver, the observance of the Sabbath is extremely beautiful.it is not even a question of improving society it is about improving one s own quality of life. Reacting to this Shabbat experience with his family, Sacks says in his last op-ed article the peace of the Sabbath, of a stopped world, a time outside time, was palpable, infused everything, and I found myself drenched with a wistfulness, something akin to nostalgia, wondering what if. What sort of a life might I have lived? His final paragraph of that article reconciles the above thought with this: And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one s life as well, when one can feel that one s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest. As we are about to begin the Yizkor service to remember our loved ones and our friends who are no longer in our midst, may our thoughts be on what Oliver Sacks taught us, to not worry about what happens after we leave this world, but rather let us contemplate the meaning of living a good and worthwhile life in this world and achieving a sense of peace within ourselves. And perhaps we all can contemplate the Shabbat when we can put a halt to our daily routine, feeling that our work is done and for one day every single week, welcome a day of rest. And let us all say, AMEN. 5
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