Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

And it came to pass after these things that someone said to Joseph, “Behold your father is ill”. (Genesis 48:1)

This illness of Jacob’s the first time any illness is mentioned in the Bible. It is taught that Jacob prayed to God to grant people a short illness before their deaths in order to put their affairs in order and to say goodbye to their families. Jacob’s prayer was granted and therefore he was able to bless his children before he died.

Before this, according to the sages, death occurred after one would suddenly sneeze and the soul would depart through the nostrils. (Not everyone who sneezed would die, but everyone who died would sneeze.) The Torah teaches us that at Creation God “formed man from the dust of the ground” and blew into the first man’s nostrils the soul of life, “and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) Thus, death would be initiated through reversing that process. The soul would exit the body through the nostrils, and the then inanimate body would be returned to dust through burial in the earth.

Since sneezing was once seen as a moment of mortal danger, we have the custom arose of saying “Gesundheit” or “God Bless”, meaning “to health” or “to life” as a way of protecting a person.

Shabbat Shalom!