It has been taught: 903 types of death were created in the world, as its said, the issue of death and the numerical value of 'Tozaot' are so. The most difficult among them is Diptheria, and the easiest is a Kiss. Diptheria is like a thorn in a ball of wool being pulled out backwards, and some people say: its like pulling rope through the holes [of a ship]. [a] Kiss is like drawing a hair out of milk.
This stuck out to me. Why 903 (aside from the Gematria)? In our experience do we think that's an approximately close number - and why would God bother to create such a variety of deaths, especially when we recognize that some are much worse than others?
Yeah, this was pretty crazy, 903 ways to die. Sure makes life tough for those who are already paranoid.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to ask you about the nature of these deaths. The most severe one is some kind of internal choking/strangulation (is that really as bad as it gets?), and the lightest one is what the Gemara calls a "kiss." Perhaps this is where we get the phrase the "kiss of death." I am reminded of midrashim (forgetting specifics and citations) that teach that children enter the world with some kind of kiss -- they know the whole Torah in the womb and forget it when they are born after an angel kisses them. Or, similarly, the acceptance of Torah by Israel was affected by the angel kissing the receiver of Torah, a sort of spiritual rebirth. So, I like this image of death as a kiss -- the same kiss that brought us into the world is the kiss that takes us out, as simple as a hair dropping into and being pulled out of milk, I guess. It makes death --p and life, for that matter -- feel a whole lot more serene and, somehow, manageable.