The Social Lives of the Dead: Postmortal Sentience and Sociality in b.Berakhot 18b

What is the social life of a dead person? Who can they hear? To whom can they speak? And with whom can they be in community after death takes place? 

Most religious–and scholarly–meditations on death move immediately from the present to the eschaton, treating the in-between as if it were a vast abyss of nothingness. Once death takes place, we are inclined to imagine the individual purely in terms of a soul that survives death, or in terms of a soul or body that will return in the eschaton. The state of the dead body in its grave is, to use an apt idiom, out of sight, and out of mind. 

This ‘vast abyss of nothingness’, however, proved to be a generative space for the rabbinic imagination. The rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud (c.4th-8th centuries CE) were far more interested in narrating the experiences of those in the “in-between” than in theorizing about the eschaton. What’s more, these are not usually stories of holy, saint-like spirits performing miracles, but stories about animated corpses that communicate with the living over deeply quotidian matters. 

This paper will explore rabbinic representations of postmortem existence by looking at a series of stories found in the third chapter of tractate Berakhot in the Babylonian Talmud. The third chapter of Berakhot is largely focused on exemptions from the obligation to recite Shema, and opens with exemptions for those occupied with a burial or other needs of a recently deceased person. This exemption is traditionally explained as being a pragmatic concession, which allows the mourners to arrange for an immediate burial. However, many of the sources that follow the Mishnah in the Talmud indicate a larger concern for proper behavior in the presence of a corpse. Among other things, the Talmud discusses restrictions on eating food before one buries one’s dead. 

Why should it make a difference what one does in the presence of a corpse? The Talmud poses this question by asking what the dead can know about life among the living. The first episode in the story cycle on page 18a-b narrates two sages walking through a cemetery. Rabbi Yonatan unintentionally allows his tzitzit, the ritual fringes of his garment, to drag on the ground. Rabbi Hiyya tells him to pick them up so as not to disgrace the dead buried beneath them. When Rabbi Yonatan responds incredulously that the dead cannot possibly be aware of such things, the sages descend into an exegetical debate over scriptural proofs for postmortem consciousness. 

After Rabbi Hiyya succeeds in bringing scriptural evidence for postmortem consciousness, the Talmud attempts to support these exegetical proofs with anecdotal evidence. The Talmud cites four stories where the dead seem to have knowledge of events occurring or about to occur in the realm of the living. 

In the first story, the sons of Rabbi Hiyya leave the academy, making it difficult for them to recall their studies. The brothers ask themselves whether their deceased father might be anguished by their forgetfulness. The third and fourth stories feature sages who visit the graves of the deceased to learn where they had been safekeeping money. 

In the second story, a certain pious man who happens to be in a cemetery overhears two spirits conversing with each other about weather patterns for the coming year. The pious man uses this information to plan his crop rotation. The strategy proves successful, and he returns once a year to eavesdrop on the spirits, until the spirits become aware of the fact that someone in the realm of the living has been listening to them.  

Stories one, three, and four are similar in that they are all relatively short, narrated in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, and feature named sages. The second story is distinct in that it features a more sophisticated plot, is composed in Hebrew, and does not ascribe proper names to any of its characters. 

Most scholarly reflections on this Talmudic unit have tended to focus on questions of rabbinic anthropology and embodiment. For example, in his analysis, Aryeh Cohen called attention to how gender and other embodied aspects of life persist even in death, thus reflecting a rabbinic anthropology that views the body as the site of the self.  Elizabeth Shanks Alexander has demonstrated how these stories highlight the ability of the living (males) to adorn themselves with ritual objects that put them in a relationship with the divine–an ability that both women and the dead lack. 

This paper will continue to build on earlier research to investigate what this story cycle can teach us about rabbinic understandings of postmortem existence. It seeks to understand how the rabbis imagine relationships between the living and the dead. To what extent do the dead remain in the public of the living? How are they affected by events that take place in the realm of the living? Can social relationships survive death? Is the postmortal realm one in which even new relationships can be forged? 

Ultimately, this paper will argue that the rabbis imagine the dead to maintain the capacity for a robust existence–one with social, emotional, and perhaps even physical dimensions. Dead bodies are not merely lifeless objects, but retain a semblance of personhood. The dead continue to think and feel, react to external stimuli, experience shame and honor, and communicate with other dead and living persons. This conclusion calls into question how we define life and death, and how starkly we define the boundary between the two.