ABSTRACT
Could this really be happening? Why would God do this to me, to my beloved wife and partner, and to my little loves-our zestful, darling, little daughter and our bright-eyed, ever-smiling baby boy? Why should my mother be forced to witness the lingering and gut-wrenching road to death of the child she had waited so many years to have, and whom she nurtured, supported, and championed, while at the same time watching my father enter the downward spiral in the final chapter of his life? Did I, the rabbi, the social worker, the hospital chaplain, and hospice volunteer, the one who had truly believed that humankind was molded after and modeled by Divinity, and who sought to exemplify being created [TzelemN’shamah],1 deserve such a fate? Was the chromosome that had gone berserk in my otherwise healthy body, causing the deadly cancer, a fluke of nature, or was God meting out a just punishment for some transgression I was too arrogant to know I had committed?
