"See I have set before thee this day life and good, death and evil...life and death, the blessing and the curse.

Therefore choose life, that thou mayest live,
thou and thy seed."
We are given freedom to chose we are minds and hearts and
intuitions not automata, robots, pawns of another will.

Without freedom, prescription and proscription
turn to mindless laws,

Without freedom, praise or blame are but foolish conceits.
In large areas of life
We exercise free choice and responsibility for acts and intentions. But not in all matters are we free.

Necessities, compulsions, accidents, amoral laws
of nature, limit our cherished claims to freedom.
The Rabbis knew it.
"By dint of force are we born.
By dint of force we die."
When we are born, with what we are born, to whom we are born
When we die, of what we die, what we carry mindlessly in our seed, our bones, our blood is not ours to choose
nor ours to bear responsibility.

When we die, of what we die is not in our hands.
But how we live and how we die
how we respond to illness and to dying
over this we have measures of choice.

Whether we sink into despair allow the darkness of death to eclipse
the brightness of life
Whether we allow the last days of suffering to
wipe out the memory of joys and laughter
allow death to kill the spirit of hope
the past to overwhelm the future

Or rise to courage, accept facts without surrender,
open ourselves to the possibilities of the future.
Over these life and death attitudes we may exercise mastery
wrestle the shadows.
Bowed in sorrow,
we rise to recite the Kaddish.

On our feet we stand to confront the grave
promise to make our choices, form our future,
shape our lives, bless our children
within the limits of inexorable boundaries.
Life and death, the blessing and the curse
are given us
Choose wisely and with heart.

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