A rational understanding of Al Tiftach Peh Lasatan.

Although Y.K. and his fellow commenters do not exactly enhance Kevod Shamayim, sometimes their questions can make one think and clarify a perplexing issue. Rambam does not legislate Al Tiftach Peh Lasatan and the first reaction is that he disagrees with it. However one may wonder did he read and understand it differently? Did he see this as a theological issue which is not something that can be legislated? I believe that it is so.

When we say that something is evil we are really referring to the absence of good. When we say that a person is dead, which is the ultimate evil that we humans can conceive, we are saying that there is an absence of the biological mechanisms that keep us alive. Those biological mechanisms that were set into motion when a baby was conceived have stopped working and have shut down. There is no positive action in death. It is the absence of life. The same applies to all things we consider evil or bad; they are all the absence of a good thing which is existence. (See MN3:10 – an important chapter that I intend to discuss at length at another time).

Death is therefore evil only as it relates to our physical existence. It is the absence of life in our physical body that is seen as evil. There is however one thing that our physical existence does not allow us to have; knowledge of God.

כ וַיֹּאמֶר, לֹא תוּכַל לִרְאֹת אֶת-פָּנָי: כִּי לֹא-יִרְאַנִי הָאָדָם, וָחָי.
20 And He said: 'Thou canst not see My face, for man shall not see Me and live.'

It is only at the moment of death that a person who has spent a lifetime searching for God and developing his rational faculties can possibly attain a level of understanding beyond what he could attain during his life. It is almost like saying that such a person has worked all his life to prepare himself for that last moment of life. This kind of death is no longer seen as evil. Although no one has come back to tell us about it nor do we really understand it other than by inference, we call it Olam Haba or life after death. It is not a physical state but a fusion of the knowledge we acquired in a lifetime with the universal knowledge that is out there about HKBH. It is the fusion with a Jungian type of collective unconscious, the repository and source of all reality and existence. The understanding one gets is dependent on the level of knowledge a person attained during his life. Rambam in MN3:51 describes this as follows:

“The philosophers have already explained how the bodily forces of man in his youth prevent the development of moral principles and all the more pure thought which man attains through the perfection of those ideas that lead him to an intense love of God. Man can by no means attain this so long as his bodily humors are hot. The more the forces of his body are weakened, and the fire of passion quenched, in the same measure does man's intellect increase in strength and light; his knowledge becomes purer, and he is happy with his knowledge. When this perfect man is stricken in age and is near death, his knowledge mightily increases, his joy in that knowledge grows greater, and his love for the object of his knowledge more intense, and it is in this great delight that the soul separates from the body. To this state our Sages referred, when in reference to the death of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, they said that these three died by a kiss. They say thus: We learn from the words, "And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab by the mouth of the Lord" (Deut. xxxiv. 5), that his death was a kiss. … The meaning of this saying is that these three died in the midst of the pleasure derived from the knowledge of God and their great love for Him. When our Sages figuratively call the knowledge of God united with intense love for Him a kiss, they follow the well-known poetical diction, "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth" (Song i. 2). This kind of death, which in truth is deliverance from death, has been ascribed by our Sages to none but to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. The other prophets and pious men are beneath that degree: but their knowledge of God is strengthened when death approaches. Of them Scripture says, "Thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward" (Isa. lviii. 8). The intellect of these men remains then constantly in the same condition, since the obstacle is removed that at times has intervened between the intellect and the object of its action: it continues for ever in that great delight, which is not like bodily pleasure.”

I understand this as what the Gemara means when it says that “Yaakov Avinu lo Met”, Yaakov did not die.

The Gemara in Ketubot 8b tells of Resh Lakish who in his Birkat Aveilim, the blessing which one says at the house of a mourner and which should contain words of condolences, talked about death being a universal state. People have died in the past and will continue to die in the future. Abaye commented on this that saying that people will die in the future is incorrect because it is “Al Tiftach peh Lasatan” one should not give Satan an opening. Rambam in MN 3:22 quotes Resh Lakish as saying that Satan, Yetzer Hara and the angel of death are synonyms, different names for the same state. I understand Abaye’s comment that by assuming that everybody will die one eliminates the possibility that a righteous person may not die. To such a person physical death may not be death at all but just the opportunity for real life. [1] One is therefore assuming that Satan, Death, Yetzer Hara are unbeatable; one gives them more credence than necessary and in a way deny freedom of choice.

My point here is to show that what seems to be a superficial statement by Abaye, in reality contains much depth and thought. Not reading it literally gives us a much deeper appreciation of Chazal and how great our Torah sages were.


[1] Similarly the proof text the Gemara quotes from Yeshayahu shows that a negative attitude reinforces negativity. That could be another aspect of the same idea.