The Pointless Negativity of Atheism By P. David Hornik
Thirteen years ago when my mother was dying of cancer, her rabbi was a major support figure. The phrase "her rabbi" may imply religiosity, but actually she wasn't very religious -- not interested in God as an idea, belonging loosely to the framework of her Conservative synagogue.
The rabbi, however, was different from the several other support figures she had in that he symbolized something: the hope of a connection to the divine, the hope of an afterlife, which for her meant mainly the hope of being reunited with my stepfather and other loved ones. She was a worldly person and those, even in her last weeks in the hospital, weren't her main concerns; still, his being a rabbi, invested with spiritual knowledge and authority, gave her a special kind of uplift.
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