Four Considered Dead

The Talmud tells us that there are four individual who are considered as dead. ארבעה נחשבים כמת. The handicap of being blind or suffering from leprosy, makes coping with life, very difficult.

The third category of a poor person being like a dead person is learned from a Midrash concerning Yakov Avinu. Eisav had sent his son, Elifaz, to kill his uncle. He really didn’t want to do it. Yakov gave him a solution how to fulfill his father’s wishes and allow him to live.

He gave Elifaz all of his possessions that he brought with him on his journey. Now that he was poor, it was as if Elifaz caused his death.

Rachel demonstrated the fourth category when she demanded of Yakov, “Give me children! And if you don’t, I am like a dead woman.”

The four categories are: Blindness, leprosy, poverty, and being childless. Some learn a different message from this list. We must open our eyes and not be blind to the truth of Hashem and the Torah. We must not act as lepers and quarantine ourselves from taking part in the needs of the Jewish people.

We must not be morally poor, and gain the proper values in the way we conduct ourselves each day. And we must neglect our children where they feel their parents are missing. They are longing for love and discipline, and want to be shown by our examples, the proper way to conduct ourselves in this world.

We must wake up and be alive, and not live like dead people, blindly passing through life.