Page 61
In our thrice daily prescribed prayers, and on all other occasions, we bless our Creator for various mercies, adding, "Blessed art thou O Lord who revives the dead". Where is the evidence? Most people take this blessing with a grain of salt, perhaps as a later insertion to promote the Religion and as a sop for people's sensitivity. Thus, it is noteworthy that people never bow at this blessing, as they do for all other blessings.
Thus, when Rabbi Ezra Basri, Chief Justice of Jerusalem, offered to write an article for The Scribe, I readily asked him to write an article on the revival of the dead as appears in our liturgy. What he wrote was taken from mythology and as he would readily appreciate, could not be accepted as an evidence in a Court of Justice.
However, thinking again and again about the subject myself, I came to what may be a proper answer and a satisfactory explanation.
The answer is in the question or, perhaps, in the bones of the dead. The Bible tells us how our ancestors were very careful to preserve the bones of their dead and to carry them with them when they journeyed to other destinations, such as when the children of Israel carried with them the bones of Joseph when they left Egypt. They knew that the remains were merely bones and yet they attached great importance to them.
The Prophet Ezekiel when visiting a mound of bones in Babylon asked himself, "can these bones really come to life again?"
It appears that the Persians and Babylonians, at that time used this method of burial in the open so that vultures would pick off the flesh and leave only the bones as the valuable remains of the deceased, and thereby avoiding polluting Mother Earth and the environment. Likewise, Jewish religion does not allow cremation so as not to destroy the personal identity of the deceased.
Science has now demonstrated that each individual has a specific number consisting of millions of digits. A milestone has recently been achieved, considered to be the most important of all time in discovering and tabulating the complete human genom. From this it follows that eventually a dead person may be recreated from the DNA taken from his bones. Isn't that fulfilment of G-d's promise of the future revival of the dead?
If you would like to make any comments or contribute to the scribe please contact us.