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The Talmud relates that King David constantly occupied himself with study on the Sabbath, for he had been foretold that on that day of the week he would die (Bab. Talmud, Shabbat 30a). Indeed, it was only when he ceased his study one Sabbath that the Angel of Death was able to claim him. In a related sense, we can speak likewise of the three generations of the Freud family: Sigmund Freud, his father Jacob, and grandfather Shlomo, after whom Sigmund was named. When their work was over, their time to lie down had arrived.
But beyond the basic commonality, the fate of all human beings, who must eventually yield to death and oblivion, the three generations of “patriarchs” mentioned above also shared life's culminating event on the Sabbath (i.e., the seventh day of the week), a coincidence gone unnoticed all these years. The records substantiating these occurrences are most illuminating even as they vary widely in preciseness, extent of available information, and nature of communication.
For Shlomo Freud, father and grandfather, respectively, of Jacob and Sigmund Freud, we have one clear detailed statement: the Gedenkblatt notice found in the Philippson Bible. Ernest Freud (1956), Sigmund Freud's son, who discovered this sheet containing the notices of the death of Shlomo Freud and the birth of his posthumous grandson, believes that it was transferred to this Bible from another source, perhaps where other written records of life events were kept.
The memorial (copy of original document: courtesy of J. K. Davies, Freud Museum, London), translated from the Hebrew, reads:
My father, may his memory be for a blessing, Rabbi Shlomo son of Rabbi Ephraim Freud, may his memory be for a blessing, went to the land of heaven on the sixth day the fourth hour after the middle of the day during the month of First Adar on its sixteenth day 5616 and came to his
* Private practice; Diplomate, American Board of Professional Psychology.
Page 107rest upon his couch on the first day [of the week] the eigh