Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
Yizkor means to remember, to cause to remember. It is a time for us to consider those that we love, those that we have lost, and the intersection between the two. In today’s society, we can choose to remember in so many different ways. We can talk, write, consider. We can donate, endow, build. We can memorialize in many different ways.
A while back, Rebecca started reading a blog about Superman Sam. Sam was “a sweet and funny 7 year old with refractory acute myeloid lukemia.” http://supermansamuel.blogspot.com/p/about-sam.html
Rebecca found the posts very moving and started sharing them with me. Sam was the child of two Reform rabbis Phyllis and Michael Sommer. Rabbi Phyllis has served a congregation outside Chicago for more than a decade, while Rabbi Michael was “semi-retired” the last year to take care of their son (and other three children) full-time. He just began as the interim rabbi at another Chicago area congregation.
From the very beginning of their son’s cancer, they blogged. They wrote of the challenges of treatment, posted photos, and shared poignant insights of their lives. Filled with numbers, dates, treatments, their writing somehow remained spiritual. They made their experiences real to so many people, sharing their love, heartache, pain and joy. We celebrated when his numbers looked good, when his bone marrow transplant seemed to work, when he seemed to be in remission and mourned when his prognosis became bleak. When he passed away in December, his death rocketed around the Jewish blogosphere, filling my facebook newsfeed. Many mourned together.
After his death, I thought they might stop writing. But they didn’t. I want to share one post with you, from the end of 2013.
The first week of 2013.
On March 29th, he was wheeled down the hall for a bone marrow aspirate to confirm what the doctors were pretty sure that they already knew...relapse.
On November 12th, another bone marrow aspirate confirmed, yet again, what our doctors were pretty sure that they knew.
It just seems so unfair and horrible, so crazy and unbelievable, so inconceivable...
From the fullness of hope in January through the twists and turns of the summer and to the ultimate depths of December...
The year 2013 was a roller coaster. Ups and downs and all arounds.
Stop the world, I want to get off...
In 2013, we lived each minute, each moment. We never took a single bit for granted.
How could we?
I will never ever ever understand.
And yet, I will always be proud of this year. Of the work we did all year long, of everything we did for Sam and for all our children. I will always be proud of the way that we kept Sam healthy and happy, of how we made each day possible and how we never let up in our belief that we would get through this. We flushed those darn lines and we ran that darn micafungen and we washed our hands and we kept him out of the hospital all summer long, through multiple rounds of chemotherapy and bone marrow aspirates and tests and worry and fear…we uprooted our family to live at the Ronald McDonald House and we went to art therapy and music therapy and family dinners…our kids went to camp and school and the library...we went to the museum and the zoo and yoga and pottery, we watched movies and we played games, we played outside and we spent time with friends…we sucked the marrow out of each day, even as his marrow continued to fail him. But we did not fail him. Our doctors did not fail him. We did everything humanly possible from our end and I will always believe that our doctors did the same from their side, to the very best of their medical knowledge. And we still did not get what we wanted.
And I will never ever ever understand.
...So we face 2014...our first year without Sam.
I am paralyzed when I think of all that he will miss. I am overwhelmed and breathless when I imagine the future and he's just not there. Yet I know that we will awaken each day, and we will move forward, even if it feels like we're slogging through a thick fog, even if it feels like we're just moving for the sake of moving, even if it feels like we're faking every moment...we will keep going.
2014, here we come. Be gentle on us, please.\
http://supermansamuel.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-year-that-was.html
In the months to come, they have continued to post pictures, share stories, write of the challenges of returning to their rabbinates, of officiating at funerals in the same cemetery where they buried their son. They have made tears come to my eyes more times than I can count, and as Rebecca can tell you, I don’t really cry.
Yet, besides their writing, they found another way to memorialize their son. While he was still in treatment after his relapse, his mother and Rabbi Rebecca Schorr wondered what would happen if
(At the end of October, Rabbis Phyllis Sommer and Rebecca Schorr had a crazy idea: what if) thirty-six Reform rabbis would shave their heads to bring attention to the fact that only 4% of United States federal funding for cancer research is earmarked for all childhood cancers as well as raise $180,000 for this essential research. Two weeks after this conversation, Phyllis and her husband, Michael, learned that their son, Sam, had relapsed with AML (acute myelogenous leukemia) and that there are no other treatment options for him.
36 Rabbis Shave for the Brave. That’s who we are. Thirty-six slightly-meshugene, but very devoted rabbis who are yearning to do something. We couldn't save Sammy; perhaps, though, we can save others like him. And spare other parents like Phyllis and Michael from the pain of telling their child that there is nothing that the doctors can do to save his life.
In the wee hours of 14 December 2013, surrounded by his loving parents, Samuel Asher Sommer, z"l, breathed his last and, on 16 December 2013, was tenderly laid to rest by his beloved family and friends.
The #36rabbis now number more than seventy shavees and nearly two dozen volunteers. We have surpassed our initial goal, but will not stop. Not now; not ever.
http://www.stbaldricks.org/events/mypage/10921/2014
Initially attempting to raise $180,000, they are almost to $700,000 with the current goal being $720,000. At the CCAR conference, the Reform rabbis conference, 73 rabbis shaved their heads. 73! Those shaved heads are now all across the country, starting conversations about cancer and childhood throughout the Jewish world. Every single one of those rabbis will point to superman Sam and his parent’s blog. That’s a legacy!
As we prepare for Yizkor, as we prepare to remember those we have lost, let us think about how we remember them. What concrete, physical things do we do? Do we support the causes they supported? Do we pray in their name? Do we put their name on the wall of a building, a website, or in our hearts? Do we do good deeds, take on an extra mitzvah? Do we spread good will in their name? Do we come to shul to say Yizkor? None of these options exclude another. Each is meaningful in its own right. As we open our books for Yizkor, I pray that our prayers will lift their souls, will bring our loved ones into the presence of the Holy One, put them in the shelter of Gd, and bring them peace. Amen.
For more from the Rabbis Sommer:
http://imabima.blogspot.com/
http://abbasababa.blogspot.com/
