memories

So much of Jewish prayer takes place in community. For some prayers like Mourner’s Kaddish, we need a minyan (prayer quorum) so we can say our individual prayer; for others, like the Barechu, we respond as a group to the prayer leader’s call to prayer, and in still others, like the Shema, which affirms the oneness of God, we pray together in unison. Of course many of our prayers are said silently, but we all follow the same script—the written liturgy of our prayer book.

It occurred to me that one of the most personal moments we have when we pray is when we say Yizkor. Although it is true that we are all together in the same space during the Yizkor service, there are parts of that service in which we go our separate ways. The most emotional part of the Yizkor service for many of us is when we as individuals say the Yizkor prayer for each special person who is no longer with us and we take the time to remember them, not just by saying that prayer, but by letting our minds make a journey to the past. We each remember in our own way. Some of us conjure up a picture of how the person looked; others may remember a humorous event, words of advice, wisdom, or warning that were repeated many times as we were growing up. Maybe these were words we stopped listening to because they were so predictable and we heard them so often. Some of us may have a silent conversation with ourselves to say the things we wish we had said to the person while he or she was still alive.

Although Yizkor is said four times a year—on Yom Kippur, Shemini Atzeret (the day after Sukkot), and the last day of Pesach and Shavuot—it is perhaps on Yom Kippur that we have the most intense experience at Yizkor because we are engaged in three time zones. First is the memories of the past in which our loved ones lived. We think of the lessons we have learned from their lives. Second is the present. We have spent the last ten or so days going through a process of self-examination and we have made resolutions to change our lives for the better. Third is the future in which we will try to act on our promises. Our future actions will be making memories for those who survive us.

For many of us, memories are the nostalgic recollection of things that happened in the past that we return to time and again. Some of us knew our parents better than others and have many memories.

I have a friend who is incredibly generous and caring. When she hears that someone is ill and cannot cook, she brings food. She opens her house at Passover for those who have no place to go. She acts as a substitute mother for the children of her friends who have died. She calls to chat so that people won’t feel forgotten. And she never talks about what she does. The woman was very close to her parents and she remarked to me recently that she learned how to behave from her parents’ example. At holidays, her parents would prepare food baskets for those who might not have enough and left them on doorsteps. They rang the bell and ran away so as not to embarrass the people who were in need.

But I think that the process of reconnecting to or rediscovering the person who is no longer living is also an on-going process that takes place in the present. We can discover new information or we can see the recollected past in a new light. Let me give you two examples, one from my own experience and one from the experience of a friend of mine.

My friend is a retired rabbi who has written moving sermons about remembering his parents. But it turned out that those memories were not a closed book. He discovered that his deceased father had kept a secret diary usually written on scraps of blank newsprint paper in an almost microscopic handwriting, wasting no space and using a pencil so that the writing had smeared a bit and faded over time. There were thousands of pages with the smallest details about his father’s daily life. In his retirement, my friend has been copying them in a bound book for the last several years and has only recently finished that transcription. He had an opportunity that few of us have—the opportunity to meet his father again and to hear his words. What he learned about his father was much more than what he had eaten for lunch and what he had paid for prescriptions, or what the grandchildren had said when they visited. For example, he learned that his father, who himself had not grown up in an observant home, talked a lot about God on those pages. He did such and such a thing with God’s help. He asked that God be kind to his wife and so forth. My friend never had a conversation about God with his father. Imagine, since he became a rabbi, how interesting that conversation might have been.

In my own case, I began to remember things about my father and to understand them after I had started rabbinical school. My usual memories were of shared birthdays—his on March 17 and mine on March 15; his teaching me to swim and play tennis; and his telling me bedtime stories that I later learned were drawn from Shakespeare’s plays. When I started saying the Motzee (blessing over bread) before eating, when I studied the mitzvot (commandments) and Jewish values like visiting the sick and helping the poor, suddenly long forgotten recollections from my childhood came to me. My father always kidded my mother that the meal was not complete if she forgot the bread. And now I remembered that he used to break off a small piece of bread and hold it for a moment before beginning the meal. I think he was making a silent blessing. When I was little he used to drag me on Sundays to visit infirm aunts so ancient that they scared me. And then after he died, members of my family told me how when their spouses died, he volunteered financial aid until they could figure out how to manage in their changed circumstances. He never mentioned this to us. And by the way, he was not rich. Our house was kosher, but when we went out to eat, my mom enjoyed her lobster, but my father never ate treif (non-kosher food). My father sometimes went to shul on Friday nights and I went with him, but I never thought he was particularly religious. Now I realized he was indeed silently observant and very conscious of living by many of the mitzvot. Now at Yizkor time, I think more about this side of my dad and wish he could have known that I became a rabbi—he would have been proud.

Not all of us are fortunate enough to find a diary or to have a profound life experience that opens a window on the past, but all of us are able to review what our parents did and try to know them better. Sometimes when we remember we can become more appreciative of what they did. But perhaps sometimes things a parent did seemed harsh to us. However, if we think about it in the context of our own life experiences as we become older, we may find more understanding, have more compassion, and be more forgiving.

Our parents live on in us just as we will live on in those whose lives we have significantly touched. So at this Yizkor on Yom Kippur, when we intensely examine ourselves, let us take some extra time to probe our memories of our parents. Let us continue to learn from them—it is not too late.

They are not dead who live

In hearts they leave behind.

In those whom they have blessed

They live a life again.

And shall live through the years

Eternal life, and grow

Each day more beautiful

As time declares their good,

Forgets the rest, and proves

Their immortality.

( “They Softly Walk” written by Hugh Robert Orr)

Rabbi Peggy de Prophetis