Yom Kippur Yizkor

Rabbi Philip Weintraub

Congregation Agudas Israel

September 23, 2015

YK Day: Holiness of Mundane in Loss

As my daughter approaches the age of Disney movies, the dramatic absence of parents is particularly powerful.  Think back to your childhood or of your children and grandchildren: Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Lion King, Bambi, Dumbo, Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, The Fox and the Hound, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Frozen, even Pixar with Toy Story or Up.  Mothers, fathers or both are killed or disappeared in remarkable numbers.  Some suggest this comes from a tragic accident that resulted in the loss of Walt Disney’s own mother.  Others say it is simply an effective narrative tool--if you want to talk about growth and maturity, “knocking off a parent” is useful shorthand.

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-there-are-no-moms-in-disney-movies-2014-9#ixzz3kcJ1gjFa

Whether in Disney terms or in reality, no life is complete without loss and loss can be an opportunity for growth.  At this stage of my life, I am grateful to have my parents and in-laws.  Parenting is a tremendous blessing, but no matter the child, having a resource to ask questions is a gift.  I cannot imagine the loss of any of them, and do not pretend to.  Yet empathy, the loss of grandparents, and even the loss of a potential life, makes grief no less real in my own life.

Having studied grief academically, through chaplaincy, through our shared experiences and my own personal losses, I have seen how different traditions attempt to assist people through their grief process.  I cannot say strongly enough how lucky we are to be Jewish, to choose Judaism, especially when we lose someone.  As Jews, our religion offers us a rubric, an algorithm, a language for loss that is frankly missing in much of our surrounding culture.

I don’t say this to make you feel guilty if you sat shiva for three days instead of seven.  I know that not all of you will come to Yizkor services next week for Shemini Atzeret, at Passover or Shavuot.  We do not have a daily minyan here to help you say Kaddish every day, but we will help you with a minyan for shloshim, for shiva or for a yahrzeit.  In all of those cases, we have always come together--as long as we have a week’s notice!

I stand here to affirm my message from the last week.  Every single day of our lives is one that can be filled with holiness, with kedushah,  with little points of light that can inspire us to deeper, more meaningful lives.  The lesson I have not clearly articulated over these last few days is that as modern Jews, we are all Jews by choice.  If we were born Jewish, we did not have any official conversion ceremony, but we chose to remain within our tradition.  As such, the rituals, the metaphors can speak to us, can help us make daily choices that bring God into our lives.  As I quoted the Kotzker rebbe earlier this week, “Where is God found? Wherever we let God in!”

For Passover 2014’s Yizkor, I introduced you to Superman Sam, Sam Sommer, the second child of two rabbis, Phyllis and Michael Sommer.  Sam had a difficult form of childhood cancer and his parents blogged from the beginning of his diagnosis, through remission, recurrence, and to his death.  Unlike so many health journey blogs, they did not stop at his death in December 2013.  While not as frequent, I get regular emails with new blog posts, with photos of the family and memories as they live their lives and as they remember him.  No matter the stages of grief, it is not a purely linear process.  People may be angry one day and accept another.  They may go back from acceptance to bargaining or denial all on a daily basis.

Rabbi Phyllis wrote recently:

Pouring

I was driving today, wearing sunglasses.

Because the sun was shining.

And then suddenly, it started to rain.

Pour, actually.

But the sun was still shining.

Brightly.

I looked around, thinking that if I tried hard enough, I would find a rainbow.

But I didn't.

And then the rain stopped.

The sun shone.

Sometimes that is how I feel.

The sun can be shining.

And without warning, a monsoon pours down upon me.

I am overwhelmed with grief.

I want to find a rainbow, to imagine that it's going to end.

The rain stops, but sometimes the rainbow doesn't show its face.

Sometimes I am completely overwhelmed with the realization that I'm never going to wake up and find Sam here.

I hope for the rainbow. For the light and love and blessing.

Sometimes it hides its face.

http://supermansamuel.blogspot.com/2015/09/pouring.html

That’s what life is.  Moments of joy, moments of sadness.  I especially loved the line that sometimes the rainbow doesn’t show its face.  It made me think of the rabbinic concept of hester panim, that when we feel lost, hurt, it is as if God is hiding God’s face.  Yet even when we feel abandoned by God, we may just be looking in the wrong place.

On Rosh Hashanah, I argued that we will find more meaning, more happiness, more joy if we could be more appreciative.  The same is true with our memories and with sadness.  We live in a world that is afraid of emotion.  We numb ourselves and distract ourselves from the realities of the world and the realities of our lives.  I argue that our lives our richer when we allow ourselves to mourn, allow ourselves to feel sad, to cry.

In this year, I shared with you some of my own feelings of loss.  We are grateful to Gd, no kunahuras, and hope to celebrate a new addition to our family after next Purim, [pretend to spit].  Yet, even as I find myself incredibly excited about such possibilities, I still grieve and yet am somehow a tiny bit grateful for the miscarriage Rebecca had last summer.  I mentioned earlier the great blessing of the Jewish tradition--rituals and things to do when we lose someone.  One of the biggest challenges people have around death is not knowing what to do, how to act, yet our tradition gives clear instructions--except where it doesn’t.  Miscarriage, perinatal and neonatal loss don’t have traditional Jewish rituals.  We discovered things in the back of my Rabbi’s Manual, online, and Rebecca found going to the mikvah to be a healing experience.  For me, this absence of ritual was the hardest part.  Yet I was blessed to have all of you.  Sharing our story with you, I heard so many, many stories.  Had I not been a rabbi, we might not have told anyone, which would have been so much more difficult for us.  We discovered that we were not weird alien creatures for being sad about losing a potential child, but truly part of a community, one of many who shared that experience.

It has not been easy to share the experience.  As much as I put myself in front of you all, there are some feelings I am more reserved about.  I love to share my joy, but am less excited about sharing sorrow.  Yet that sorrow makes joy so much richer.  I firmly believe that our ability to appreciate the wonders, the miracles of our lives is in direct relationship to our ability to mourn the losses of our lives and the broken world we live in.  When we recognize the sorrows of others, when we work to support them, how much more can we gain from our experience, how much more can we appreciate the blessings that we do have.  How much more can we celebrate?  In my own life, I ask for your continued prayers, as we hope to have much to celebrate in the coming year!  Every morning, Psalm 30 tells us that God turns our mourning into dancing.  I pray that this year will do so for all of us.

Thinking about Yizkor, our minds go to a place of memory, remembering important people in our lives. Whether they are parents, grandparents, children, siblings, spouses or other relatives and friends, they touched our lives deeply.  We simply would not be the people we are without their influence.  Whatever their biological role, they were our teachers and even without a physical existence, they can still teach us.

As Jews in the 21st century, obligation (or guilt) does not resonate in the ways it did for generations of Jews.  Yet you stand and sit here today.  You recognize the potential for holiness, meaning, love in our lives.  We are not simply organisms for whom living is our only goal.  Over the last few days, I have spoken of bringing the kedushah, the holiness, of today into the rest of the year.  I have spoken of the tools of gratitude, prayer, Israel, relationships, community, respect, and now memory and loss.  I pray that in the year to come, these tools will help you discover holiness, find meaning, bring gratitude and love into your life.  These are huge goals, yet we need not entirely accomplish them to reap huge dividends.  Every moment is an opportunity.  Do not waste it, let us turn now to the Yizkor service.

Yom Kippur Yizkor Broken and the Whole

Rabbi Philip Weintraub

Congregation Agudas Israel

October 4, 2014

Yom Kippur Yizkor

בְּראֹשׁ הַשָּׁנָה יִכָּתֵבוּן וּבְיוֹם צוֹם כִּפּוּר יֵחָתֵמוּן כַּמָּה יַעַבְרוּן וְכַמָּה יִבָּרֵאוּן מִי יִחְיֶה וּמִי יָמוּת.

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the Fast day, Yom Kippur, it is sealed, How many will pass on and how many will be born, who will die and who will live.

From the Unatanah Tokef, a focal point of the Musaf Amidah on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we offer this prayer.  We cry out to Gd, every one of us.  We look around the room.  We see those who are with us and those who are not.  We remember those we lost, the good times and the bad.  

Yet at the same time, we celebrate.  Yom Kippur is a day of deeply mixed emotion.  It is truly a roller coaster of a day.  At Kol Nidre, we ask Gd and each other to pray among sinners, knowing not only that all of us are imperfect, that all of us have sinned.  Whether the sins are large or small, hurting others, ourselves or Gd.  I read this week a brief, yet powerful piece reminding that we must remember not only to forgive others, but to forgive ourselves for the sin of not fulfilling our expectations.  Yom Kippur morning we beat our chests repeatedly.  We cry out to Gd to forgive our sins.  We do the Avodah service, remembering the powerful experience of the Temple, when the Cohen Gadol announced to the community that they were forgiven.  At that point, the modern and ancient versions of Yom Kippur split!  When our ancestors had the Temple in Jerusalem, the rest of Yom Kippur was a celebration.  Once the high priest completed the Avodah service, we knew we were forgiven!  Engagements were made, marriages announced.  The traditional Torah reading for Yom Kippur afternoon is all about relationships--who exactly are you allowed to marry and who can you not?

For us, we do not see the crimson thread turn white.  We do see the scapegoat tossed off a cliff.  We do not know if our sins have been forgiven.  We continue our service with the Eleh Ezkarah, remembering the martyrs of our tradition, Jews killed for teaching Judaism, for simply being Jews.  Originally written about Roman persecution, using stories from the Talmud, today we read about the martyrs of the Crusades, about the Inquisition, about the Shoah, the Holocaust.  We could add readings from Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, where Jews were sent from their homes, exiled and killed because of the blasphemy that there might be a Jewish state in the Middle East.  We could share stories today of Jews attacked around the world, simply for being Jews.  I could go on, but the day continues.

Yom Kippur mincha tells us the story of Jonah.  We remember NON-Jews being told to repent, the people of Nineveh.  Yet they do and they are saved.  On a holiday about our particular relationship with Gd, we share a universal reminder of the power of redemption.  

After mincha, we offer one last prayer service.  No other day of the year has FIVE different services, five different opportunities to beat our breast, to confess our sins.  Yet we come back, again and again, to some of the same words.  We cry out, again and again.  For some the repetition is boring.  They are ready to eat.  (One more thing to confess!)  Yet the repetition can bring us focus, can push us to greater heights.  Coming back this afternoon, this evening, we imagine the gate of forgiveness, the book of life, and we try to write ourselves into it.

If only we work harder. . .

If only we do what we are supposed to do. . .  

As I stand before you this morning, I am torn.  I am broken.  I am imperfect. I am a person who devotes his life to helping others, yet inevitably I fail.  I have spent weeks looking for the perfect words to inspire you, to help you find the strength to live another year.  I have looked for the perfect words, that will inspire you to see the world the way I do, to look at the spirals of the Jewish calendar, to let the rhythm of the calendar be the beat of your life.  And yet as I stand here, the words fall flat.  Not all of them will reach you.  They will drift in the ether, in the echo of this beautiful new room.  So I fall silent.

וּבְשׁוֹפָר גָּדוֹל יִתָּקַע. וְקוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה יִשָּׁמַע.

THE GREAT SHOFAR will be sounded and the still small voice will be heard.

Yom Kippur is unlike any other day.  While we have other fasts, other days of prayer, this is a day of reflection like not other.  What are we trying to do?  Who are we trying to be?  How do our expectations help us succeed or fail?

Last night, I mentioned Rabbi Charles Sherman and his book, The Broken and the Whole: Discovering Joy after Heartbreak.  I want to share a couple excerpts to illustrate how we sometimes have to reconsider the paths we are on, be aware of the expectations we set for ourselves.

From the third page of his book, Rabbi Sherman sets the scene, it is 1985:

“Very few people get to live their dreams.  But there I was, forty-one years old, the rabbi of a major congregation in Syracuse, New York, and married to my summer camp sweetheart.  As a preacher, I was passionate, creative, confident, energetic, and well-known in the greater community.  I was on a career path. . .My children were growing up with a strong sense of identity and appreciation for Jewish values. .  .Not that every last detail was perfect.  I had more trouble than most balancing career and family. . .”

Two pages later he writes:

We cannot always identify the precise point in time when our lives are transformed.  For my family, it was 2AM on a frigid March night. . .when I awoke to a child’s whimper. . .

(After a brief debate over which parent would get him, the not-pregnant one did, Rabbi Sherman went to his son’s room):

I felt his forehead and found it very warm.  Not good, but not a disaster, either.  I would give him Tylenol and call our pediatrician in the morning.

“Eyal, let’s go to the bathroom.”

No response.

“Eyal, let me help you.  You’ll feel better.”. . .

Without my assistance, he would have crumpled to the floor.  I atrributed his fatigue to the late hour.  Then I noticed his pasty color, his jiggling legs, his incoherent speech.  His favorite yellow and red pajamas were drenched in body fluid and his eyes were distant and unaware.  At that moment, before I even called out to Leah for help, I knew: something was terribly wrong.”

From there, doctors were called, visited, hospital stays began.  They discovered a brain lesion and were told that their son had, at most, a few months to live.  Yet they weren’t ready to let go.  They fought and called doctors up and down the east coast.  They found a surgeon willing to operate and the surgery was successful.  They were jubilant!

If the story stopped there, I am not sure Rabbi Sherman would have written his book.  He would have had a brief detour on his career path, a couple months of extra time with his family and then gone back to his previous life.  Yet that is not the end of the story, it is only the beginning.  A few days after the surgery, Eyal had a brainstem stroke and was in a vegetative coma for months.  To hear more of the story, you will have to read his book.  Today Eyal is in his thirties.  He is dependent on a ventilator, cannot breathe, eat, or move independently.  Yet his mind is intact.  With the determination of his family, he had a Bar Mitzvah, attended school, graduated from college.  Putting a paint brush in his mouth, he has become an accomplished painter.  He has found success in his own way.  He has redefined expectations not only for himself, but for his entire family.

Every aspect of their lives had to change.  Every priority had to be reconsidered.  Eyal has had extended stays in the hospital many times in his life.  The Sherman’s home had to be adapted.  Rabbi Sherman even had to reconsider what a Bar Mitzvah would look like--Eyal learned the Torah reading, but could not make it audible--so for that Shabbat, he put in cameras and huge screens so that the congregation could SEE Eyal’s lip read the Torah--with proper trope!

Yizkor for me, is a time of remembrance.  I think of those who I have lost, my grandfathers Artie and Benjamin, my grandma Doris, and those who are still with us, yet sometimes feel lost, my Grandma Alice post-stroke.  I think of those we have lost this year, parents of some of you in this room, people I have known and cared about.  In every family, we have a story of suffering, of illness, of challenge.  Whether it is cancer or heart disease, Ebola, AIDS or tragic accidents, we ourselves or people we know are personally afflicted and affected by challenges.

As the great shofar is sounded, as we imagine writing ourselves in the Book of Life for the next year, I wonder about how we react to all these challenges.  What holds us up when times are tough?  How do we keep our strength when we feel like we will crumble?  What do we have in our toolbox to help us manage our expectations?

At the end of the day, Gd, faith, love, one another, therapy, community are all tools to get us through our difficult times, to help us find ways to celebrate again after and even DURING times of tragedy.  One Yizkor I shared with you the power of AND, that we can be both happy AND sad, jubilant AND disappointed, sweet AND bitter.  Sadness and joy are not mutually exclusive possibilities.

As much as we like, we cannot control every aspects of our lives, every little or big thing that happens to us.  What we can control is our reaction.  How do we deal with the challenges of life?  Choosing to respond positively, with hope, with a new plan for action, that we can do.  As I said on Rosh Hashanah, today is the day Gd has made, rejoice in it.

As we prepare for Yizkor, as we think of those who we have loved and lost, let us think of the decisions they made.  Did they react well to stress and change?  How can we emulate them when they did?  If they did not, how can we use their example to react with love and hope!

Next year, when we return to our regular sanctuary, we will ask ourselves again, for whom has the shofar tolled--and how did we react?

The most powerful line of the Unetanek Tokef tells us that T’shuvah, T’fillah and Tz’dakah have the power to transform the harshness of our destiny.  Renewing ourselves/repenting, prayer/yearning and charity/deeds of righteousness do not miraculously defeat cancer or solve all our problems.  Rather, they change our attitudes; they help us gain the tools to thrive in any situation.

G’mar tov!

What is Torah? Shavuot Yizkor 2014

Rabbi Philip Weintraub

Congregation Agudas Israel

Torah of Law, Narrative or Memory?

What do you think of when I say Torah?

Do you think of the scrolls we read from this morning?

Or lists of do’s and don’ts?

How about love, of lovingkindness?

In our holy Talmud, in Tractate Sukkah 49B, there are two very powerful paragraphs about the nature of Torah.  The first we study many Shabbat mornings on  p. 69 of our Siddur.  From the translation there:

תלמוד בבלי מסכת סוכה דף מט עמוד ב

ואמר רבי אלעזר: כל העושה צדקה ומשפט - כאילו מילא כל העולם כולו חסד, שנאמר +תהלים לג+ אוהב צדקה ומשפט חסד ה' מלאה הארץ.

Rabbi Elazar said: whoever does deeds of charity and justice is considered as having filled the world with lovingkindness, as it is written “God loves charity and justice; the earth is filled with Adonai’s lovingkindness” (Ps. 33:5)

תלמוד בבלי מסכת סוכה דף מט עמוד ב

ואמר רבי אלעזר: מאי דכתיב +משלי לא+ פיה פתחה בחכמה ותורת חסד על לשונה וכי יש תורה של חסד ויש תורה שאינה של חסד? אלא: תורה לשמה - זו היא תורה של חסד, שלא לשמה - זו היא תורה שאינה של חסד. איכא דאמרי: תורה ללמדה - זו היא תורה של חסד, שלא ללמדה - זו היא תורה שאינה של חסד.

Rabbi Elazar quoted this verse: “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the Torah of lovingkindness is on her tongue” (proverbs 31:26). What is the intent of this verse? Is there one Torah of lovingkindness and another which is not of lovingkindness? Torah studied for its own merit is a Torah of lovingkindness, whereas Torah studied for an ulterior motive is not.  And some say that Torah studied in order to teach is a Torah of lovingkindness, whereas Torah not studied in order to teach is not a Torah of lovingkindness. (Siddur Sim Shalom for Shabbat and Festivals, p.69)

Our sages, our sage, Rabbi Elazar, is discussing how great a mitzvah, how great a command it is to be a good person, to treat others with respect, and to make sure that people have their basic needs met.  These needs are not only physical, but spiritual.  As Jews, we are commanded to study Torah, to teach Torah, to live Torah.  When we do mitzvot and when we do acts of lovingkindness (gemilut hasadim), we are bringing Gdliness into the world.  

In my more recent Talmud study, I have been studying Tractate Rosh Hashanah.  Within that study, there has been a discussion about life after death, about what happens to us next.  One of the conversations says that after death, we are in a type of purgatory for a year.  After 12 months, we either make our way to heaven, to the world to come, or become ashes.  From a Jewish perspective, this is one of the reasons we say Kaddish or do mitzvot or study in the name of ones we have lost.  By doing good things in their name, we help to bring them into the world to come.  This brings me to my next text, also from Sukkah 49B

תלמוד בבלי, סוכה מט:

Original Text:

תנו רבנן: בשלשה דברים גדולה גמילות חסדים יותר מן הצדקה, צדקה - בממונו, גמילות חסדים - בין בגופו בין בממונו. צדקה - לעניים, גמילות חסדים - בין לעניים בין לעשירים. צדקה - לחיים, גמילות חסדים - בין לחיים בין למתים.

Here my translation is from on1foot.org

Our Sages taught: Gemilut chasadim (acts of loving kindness) is greater than tzedakah in three ways: Acts of tzedakah involve only one’s money – gemilut chasadim can involve both money or one’s personal service. Tzedakah can be given only to the poor – gemilut chasadim can be done both for the rich and for the poor. Tzedakah can be given only to the living – gemilut chasadim can be done both for the living and the dead.

http://www.on1foot.org/text/babyloniantalmud-sukkah-49b

If you have been to a funeral with me, you may have heard me speak about what a holy opportunity it is to physically help bury someone, that the act of shoveling dirt onto a friend, loved one, or even any person’s grave, is tremendously holy.  I speak about how this is a great mitzvah because it has no expectation of reciprocity.  This is an example of how we can do mitzvot for those who are no longer with us.

To me, our holy Torah, our holy traditions can be boiled down to love.  We are commanded to love our neighbors.  Hillel taught that the essence of Torah is not to do what is hateful to us, to others.  Love is the start of ALL of our commandments.  Whether it is love of others or love of God, every command, even the ones that do not seem so are related to our love of God and God’s love for us.

When we think of our loved ones, we think not only of their love, but the ways that we showed love.  Whether it was making our beds because our spouse liked the bed made or making a special dinner or seeing a show or travelling because our parents or friends or children loved to do those things.  When we do those things without them, we are happy for the memories, but also a little sad that they are not with us.  

The same is true of Torah, of the mitzvot.  For some of us, we live Jewish lives because of our love for God.  Some observant Jews might not really care about the laws of kashrut, but they do them because they love God.  I don’t really care about making my bed, but I know that Rebecca is happier if I do!

The Torah teaches that when we show our love for others, when we help others, when we care for others, we are living the values taught by God.  We are emulating God.  What better way to show respect and love for someone but to follow their examples.

Many children follow their parents in the same way.  They become accountants or doctors to follow in their parents footsteps.  They make the same foods on holidays and special occasions, because Shabbat or Rosh Hashanah is not the same without Bubbe’s matzo ball soup.  By living our lives in the footsteps of the ones we love, in the footsteps of God, we can find great depth, great meaning in our lives.  By passing our traditions to our children, we can extend the memory of those that are no longer with us.

Today we stand together to remember, to say Yizkor, to say words that remind us of the ones that we have lost.  We remember those who have touched our lives, given birth to us or the ones we love.  They have been our partners and friends.  They have been our children and our relatives.  We are bereft without them, yet we know that by following in their footsteps we can make our lives better.  The magic of Yizkor, the magic of Jewish tradition is also the belief that we can better their existence through our actions.  By making good choices, doing good deeds, we may believe that we are not only bringing ourselves closer to God, but also the ones whom we have lost.  Now that is a powerful thought.  In the traditional prayers for Yizkor, there is a line about donating charity in their memory.  Through these donations, through good deeds, we continue to uplift their spirits AND our own.  Please open your Yizkor booklets or turn to the Siddur at this time.