From chemo to Kol Nidre: writing myself into the Book of Life

Under cancer treatment, MARK BAKER faces the Yom Kippur refrain “who shall live and who shall die” with new insights.

Rosh Hashana famously contains the mythical image of a world created anew and its inhabitants – humans of all beliefs and animals alike – being judged by the Almighty. As each creature passes under the divine rod, God taps them and predetermines "Who shall live and who shall die?"

Given my diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in April, I might naturally be inclined to identify with that image of human passiveness before a majestic God. Thankfully, I am responding well to chemo and my tumours are shrinking, but it’s hard not to feel helpless in the face of an overwhelming cancer decree that has already cut the lives short of my first wife Kerryn and brother Johnny.

But I prefer to take succour from a different interpretation of the song-text. Hailing from Belarus, the Slonimer Rebbe turns the image upside down. It is not God who chooses to write us into the Book of Life or Death, but we inscribe ourselves. Do we want to be part of the renewal of this world, or aligned with its destructive forces?

The one thing I’ve learned this year is that the defining attribute of life is yearning. Living with cancer has heightened my desire to be part of the world and connect to the people I most love; I inscribe myself in the Book of Life because I yearn in the deepest way to wake up each day to the sound of my one year old miracle child, Melila; to the nurturing love of my wife Michelle; to see my three adult children and Melila’s twin nephews and niece, my three grandchildren. I yearn to witness my mother’s suffering cease, and to hear messages of support from my friends.

I yearn for the small things that make one feel alive: strolling with Melila on the beach with my neuropathic feet; sitting outside my favourite café sipping a latte and eating breakfast with my family, even though I have to swallow enzyme tablets to digest the meal. I yearn to observe the expanse of the sea forever and wish to see in my lifetime the end of senseless wars and oppression, and a radical approach to climate change and racism in our country. My name is very clearly affixed to the Book of Life not because I believe that by doing so I can defeat the outcome of my illness, but because my desire to renew the world courses through me.