Clergy Sermons

Yizkor – My and Our Grief

This has been a hard year – between all the loss in the Middle East and personal loss – it has felt like too much at times.  As many of you know, this is my first Yizkor since my mother died in July.  I have led Yizkor for so many years here and this is my first time when I am an official mourner.  I feel sad and vulnerable.  I think of my mom all of the time. With absence, love grows even stronger.  I miss her.

I have taught that Yizkor is a time to allow blurry or forgotten memories to well up.  And if we don’t have many memories because our loved one died when we were young or many years ago – we listen to stories others tell about them. The impact of Yizkor is that our memories – faded or vivid, present or re-emergent come to us – and have the potential to change us.  

          In these last couple months since my mother died, memories are flooding in all of the time – some expected and others out of the blue.  Every Shabbat when I would look at the Zoom boxes, I feel a twinge.  Mom was on Zoom every Shabbat watching services.  I would always give her a tease or a shout out, or just smile to myself if she was taking a little nap.  I loved that she would have a snack, often potato chips during the sermon.  She would always call in the afternoon to tell me how brilliant I was.  I would say, “You have to say that – you’re my mom.”  And she would insist, “No – it is an objective fact – you were brilliant.”  How can you argue with that…. But when I see the Zoom – and no Bubbe – it always brings a pang of sadness.

Sometimes forgotten memories come at unexpected times. During a speech by Kamala Harris, she talked about all the people in the neighborhood who were like family and raised her.  My mother made our home a place of family for people who came to our house – that was vivid in my memories; but I forgot that my freshman year of college, my mom invited a friend of mine who was in a difficult family situation to live with us for the year.  How could I have forgotten that?  It’s a big deal! But that’s how memory works.  When we open our hearts to remembering - things often come flooding in. Yizkor can often trigger those memories.  Let them come to you tonight and in the coming days. Open your hearts to those memories.

Yizkor teaches us to transform memories into meaning – allowing memories to inspire us to lead life more mindfully and thoughtfully.  In the prayer we will say in a moment, we read: “May I prove myself worthy of the many gifts with my loved one blessed me.”  What are those gifts?  How do we make ourselves worthy of those gits by living those values in our own unique ways.   My memories of my mother are: love, laughter, friendship, welcoming people into our lives and home, treating each person as unique and special, reveling in family, art, teaching, activism, Judaism.  Pieces of her lives in me and through me. As I ask the question, how else might I emulate her special traits – the more the words: May I prove myself worthy of the many gifts she gave me whisper thoughts and questions: Are there other way I can prove myself worth of the gifts she gave?  How else might I honor memory?

I write these words knowing not everyone has as unambiguously beautiful memories as I have of my mom.  For some of you there are memories of regret, anger, disappointment, sadness that doesn’t diminish.  Maybe for you the line: May I be worthy of the gifts I was blessed with are lessons of how not to behave, or how to forgive in the face of painful behavior.  May we all take the gifts with which we have been given and let our memories lead us to their lessons.

          Finding meaning does not reduce the pain of the loss of our loved one.  Yizkor creates space for emotion.  Allow yourself to cry or just to reflect.  Memory takes us to all kinds of places.  I write these words knowing that you can’t compare sadnesses – that there is a different experience when you mourn someone who lived a good, full almost 93 years like my mom, and someone who died too young or tragically.  We all honor our own unique grief.

This year my grief for my mother weaves in with grief I am feeling about lives lost in the Middle East.  Grief compounds grief. National grief and personal grief mingle together – both needing their own space. 

Let’s allow the tragic losses of October 7 and this past year sear into our hearts.  At the October 7 memorials we wept and wept – and needed to.  Let the stories, faces and loss be part of Yizkor. At the site of the Nova music festival at Reim, my friend Rabbi Corey Helfand described a powerful memorial forest that has been set up. 

Just in front of where the stage and DJ has been set up, there now stood hundreds of wooden posts with pictures of every one of the people murdered or taken hostage. Photographs if women and men smiling, frozen in time, with joy. A picture of Matan Elmalem, known as DJ Kido, headphones on, spinning and forever making music. Matan, who in his final moments, because he could see everything in front of him, was able to guide so many to safety before losing his own life. At the base of each planted pole, artistic kalaniyot, those red flowers of Israel, as if blooming from the ground. Amongst the dancers, is of course Hersh Goldberg-Polin - a smile frozen eternally on his face. The words of his mother Rachel at the funeral remind us how great these losses have been: “I will love you and I will miss you every single day for the rest of my life. But you are right here. I know you are right here.  I just have to teach myself to feel you in a new way.”

On the other side of the forest, there are hundreds of newly planted trees. Each one a memorial to one of the victims with a name. Some have been decorated by the families of loved ones who brought hats, pictures, flags from a favorite sports team, a beret from their military unit, and other identifying objects that tell the story of one of the lives lost. Each has an Israeli flag planted next to the tree. Next to the tree planted in memory of Guy Azar are Guy’s rules of happiness: Don’t hate, live simply, expect the least, don’t worry, always smile, love a lot, enjoy the moment, you fell? Get up, Remember God is always by your side.”

          Let’s honor their memories by telling their stories and feeling their loss.   Read the letters that many of these young people wrote before going to battle in case they fell.  You will see that this is indeed a generation of giants, who died far too young, and whose memories call upon us to live lives worthy of the gifts they have left us.

          This year in a deep way, we simply need to create room for grief.  Poetry often takes us to that place.  Listen to these excerpts from Maya Angelou’s poem When Great Trees Fall that is printed in its totality in the Yizkor booklets:

When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down in tall grasses,

and even elephants lumber after safety.

When great trees fall in forests,

small things recoil into silence,

their senses eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile.

We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly,

see with a hurtful clarity.

Our memory suddenly sharpened.  

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always irregularly. 

Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.

The prayers we are about to say also teach us to transform loss into meaning by tangible acts caring for others. Listen to this line from Yizkor: In loving testimony to their lives, I pledge tzedakah to hep perpetuate ideals important to them. What tzedakot honor the memory of your loved ones and the fallen in this past year.   We have donated both in my mother’s memory and on behalf of those who have fallen in Israel. 

This has been such a difficult year on so many levels.  Imagine the forest memorial at Nova and let it inspire you figuratively to plant: Seeds of memory which inspire goodness. Seeds of meaning that flow from memory. Seeds of resilience that come as we name pain and reflect on how to transform it. Seeds of care that honor memory. Seeds of hope that we must hold onto.  Seeds of peace that we pray will sprout.