I don't think we're supposed to judge this man. My great grandparents have made an opposite decision when faced with Stalinism and Nazism - they decided not to tell their kids anything about Judaism and take it all on themselves. Well, it worked. My great grandfather, a rabbi, refused to sign a confession stating judaism is opium to the masses. They were thus deprived of the right to work and my great grandmother, a direct decendant of the Ba'al Shem Tov coming from a big ultraorthodox Hassidic family, had to work as a bartender in order to feed the family.

They have also traded gold spoons, which was awfully illegal but necessary in order to survive when you can't legally work. It was their moral decision to do that rather than sacrifice their kids on the altar of their beliefs.

So in the end the whole wonderful family of my great grandmother was brutally massacred in Babi-Yar and on the way by the storming Nazis and their Ukrainian allies. Her beautiful sister went insane after watching her baby's head smashed against the wall, she wondered in the streets before being taken into an Ukrainian house, where she was murdered and buried in the lawn. It happens.

Then Stalin died and my grandparents had my mother, called after this beautiful sister. And I'm called after the fathers of my great grandmother (Hassidic Rabbi) and my great grandfather (mitnaged Rabbi, decendant of the gaon from Vilna). It also happens.

Then in 1998 my great grandfather died in great misery after suffering for 5 months in a poor hospital in Netanya, where he got fleas and other diseases just due to maltreatment. Then again, he would never make it to the age of 94 had it not been his daughter, a doctor, who took care of him through all these years. It also happens.

Then his little son, a manager in a leading defense research facility, didn't know how to say kadish over him properly because he was never taught how to do it by his parents, nor by the Soviet Russians. It also happens.

So none of us can judge whether my great grandparents, who saved dozens of Jews in the holocaust and were willing to suffer Stalinism but were not willing to let their children suffer with them, have made the right decision.

If any religious man would come to me and say that my great grandfather has died in so much misery as a punishment for bringing up a secular family, I will personally break his nose if not have him blinded. Not because anyone deserves having his nose broken, but because no one deserves the misery and humiliation my great grandfather had to withstand in the end of his amazing life.

Right?

NDE in survivors of cardiac arrest

During the pilot phase in one of the hospitals, a coronary
care-unit nurse reported a veridical out-of-body experience-
of a resuscitated patient:

"During a night shift an ambulance brings in a 44-year-old
cyanotic, comatose man into the coronary care unit. He had
been found about an hour before in a meadow by passers-by.
After admission, he receives artificial respiration without
intubation, while heart massage and defibrillation are also
applied. When we want to intubate the patient, he turns out
to have dentures in his mouth. I remove these upper dentures
and put them onto the 'crash car'. Meanwhile, we continue
extensive CPR. After about an hour and a half the patient
has sufficient heart rhythm and blood pressure, but he is
still ventilated and intubated, and he is still comatose.
He is transferred to the intensive care unit to continue
the necessary artificial respiration. Only after more than
a week do I meet again with the patient, who is by now back
on the cardiac ward. I distribute his medication. The moment
he sees me he says: 'Oh, that nurse knows where my dentures
are'. I am very surprised. Then he elucidates: 'Yes, you
were there when I was brought into hospital and you took my
dentures out of my mouth and put them onto that car, it had
all these bottles on it and there was this sliding drawer
underneath and there you put my teeth.' I was especially
amazed because I remembered this happening while the man was
in deep coma and in the process of CPR. When I asked further,
it appeared the man had seen himself lying in bed, that he
had perceived from above how nurses and doctors had been
busy with CPR. He was also able to describe correctly and
in detail the small room in which he had been resuscitated
as well as the appearance of those present like myself. At
the time that he observed the situation he had been very
much afraid that we would stop CPR and that he would die.
And it is true that we had been very negative about the
patient's prognosis due to his very poor medical condition
when admitted. The patient tells me that he desperately and
unsuccessfully tried to make it clear to us that he was still
alive and that we should continue CPR. He is deeply impressed
by his experience and says he is no longer afraid of death.
4 weeks later he left hospital as a healthy man."