They believe wedlock extends from this world into the next. Other faiths have been erected partly out of a belief that the mystery of what comes after mortality is never solved. People want answers that will help them feel more comfortable, more reassured. The answers are just sometimes not there. During a recent interfaith debate in Ventura on the epilogue to death, retired Rabbi John Sherwood told an audience dominated by senior citizens that humans are the only species to realize they have limits - economic, social, intellectual.
People are finite.
And they don't like it. Sherwood's father died of cancer 30 years ago. Lew Sherwood was a gifted trumpet player who played with the Eddy Duchin Orchestra. The son of an orthodox cantor, he drifted away from his Jewish roots, returning after his own son began studying to be a rabbi. He told me, 'I'm very proud of you, my son.