November 13, 2019
Who Presides Over the Dead in Judaism? His Name Is Dumah.
And what you need to know in case you ever encounter him.
Irwin Rosenthal writes:
In an English translation of the Yiddish author Sholem Asch’s one-act drama The Sinner, a character says of a dead man who is about to be buried:
Let him be sure that he remembers his own name when the angel Domai asks it.
A note at the bottom of the page explains: “The angel’s request must be answered with a passage from the Psalms, which a sinner cannot remember.” Certainly, this sinner can’t. I can’t even remember who the angel Domai is. Neither can Google. Can you help?
How nice it would be to believe that there still are some things that can’t be Googled! But had Sholem Asch (or his English translator) correctly spelled the Hebrew name—דומה—as Dumah or Duma, Mr. Rosenthal would have found the angel he was looking for. Never underestimate Wikipedia.