YJN #238 - 10/21/12 - Yom Kippur Sermon

Welcome to episode number 238 of Your Jewish Neighborhood, a podcast by Temple Isaiah,

a Reformed congregation in Lafayette, California. My name is Michelle Holtz, and I'm your host.

Well, we're going to do something different this year. We had four dynamite sermons

and during the High Holy Days, and we'd like to let you experience these. You can go to any one

of the four sermons. I encourage you to listen to them all. They're all outstanding. And Temple

Isaiah is proud to present this series of sermons. As always, if you have any comments, you can send

an email to yjn at temple-isaiah.org or

post or comment directly to the show blog at www.yourjewishneighborhood.org.

And our last sermon is Yom Kippur.

With my hands firmly on my steering wheel, I can slide my left thumb to a lever, push

it down, and tell my car which person's number to dial, all while keeping my eyes on the

road.

I know it's dangerous.

I am not preaching the benefits of phones and driving.

I'm sure, in fact, it's a sin.

I vowed to do it less in the new year.

Often, my car does not even understand my command.

When I say, call home, it says, would you like to call star five nine?

I try again.

Call home.

And every so often, then it says, would you like to call mom?

And my heart skips a beat, and I say, yes.

Yes, I really would.

But I hang up quickly before it dials.

My mom, Aleha Hashalom.

Aleha Hashalom, of blessed memory, died six years ago.

My father, eight years.

I don't need the car to remind me that I am an orphan, and that it has been far too long

since I could call my parents, hear their voices, hug them, soak up their love, and

care for them as they cared for me.

I want to do all those things.

And the longer they're gone, the more I miss them.

We who live in an era of saved voices and images, in voicemail, on Facebook pages, as

contacts on our phones and email address books, we sometimes just cannot bring ourselves to

hear them.

We just can't.

Erase.

For me, it is on Yom Kippur, especially, that I most yearn for the presence of those

who have left my side.

On Yom Kippur, we gather as a community in our hunger and thirst, pray a solemn liturgy,

and step away from life, not into death exactly, but into a powerful physical life.

We are like a flower that will fade, grass that withers, a shadow moving on, a cloud

passing by, a dream soon forgotten.

We dress in the white of a traditional burial shroud as we declare in one humbled voice

our fleeting time.

Death is a presence here on Yom Kippur, so the ones who have died are here, too, very

close, almost palpable.

Rabbi Susan Schnur describes the feel of a sanctuary on Yom Kippur.

From the time I was a young child, I went to the same synagogue for 30 years.

I can tell you who sat where, a kind of emotional geography.

My grandfather and grandmother sat over against the wall on the left.

My parents sat beside them in aisle seats, and then my aunt and uncle.

The Spiegels and the Rosenthals, they liked the center.

And all the way in the front, under the rabbi's nose.

Sat my nana.

She always bought two seats, one for herself and one for Simon, her husband, even when

he'd been dead for 37 years.

Nana sat with her invisible person, her Simon, and we, the grandchildren, used this seat

as our roving spot.

Every few years or so, someone would be missing, and we knew that something had happened to

that person during the year.

So we kids learned that everyone, not just Nana, came with their invisible person, even

if they did not pay for an extra seat.

The man who always wore sneakers on Yom Kippur, he had his wife as his invisible person.

The man who...

The man who was so fervently and never sat down.

His invisible people were from a lost world, some little shtetl in Poland where the roofs

leaked and the shul was falling down.

And now, all these years later, Rabbi Schnur continues, every Yom Kippur there is an empty

seat beside me.

There is one next to us all.

A presence that we miss.

An absence from which we will never recover.

A wound that will always feel fresh to the touch.

Do you know to whom we pray during these holy days?

Not only God.

We pray as well to people who were sacred to us from our childhood.

To the people we love who are no longer living.

To the people whose values we adore and cherish.

Whose way of life we strive for.

To the people who were to us what we hope to be for our children.

Isaac Bischewa Singer once wrote,

When a person who was close to you dies, in the first few weeks after that person's death,

they are far from you.

As far as a near person can ever be.

Only with the...

And then you can almost live with them again.

In other words, as Schnur says,

you can almost sit next to them in their empty seat.

That seat now somehow full.

Here, beside me.

How do we fill all the empty seats?

How do we bring our beloved ones back and keep them close?

Ikadal v'yikadash shemei rabah.

You live still in my heart.

Ikadal v'yikadash shemei rabah.

You will never be forgotten.

Ikadal v'yikadash shemei rabah.

Your memory strengthens me.

The words of the mourner's kaddish spill out of our mouths the first time,

barely audible, whispered at the graveside.

The rhythmic chant gives us something to do, something to say.

The traditional, the right, the Jewish thing to say,

when we, we mourners, have no words.

Like pearls knotted one after another on a string,

adding one kaddish to the next,

we get through Shiva a week.

And then, somehow, a year, marked by kaddish,

said daily by some of us or on Shabbat and Holy Days,

until it is time to light the candle for Yartzai.

Somehow, to mark a year of loss.

Another year passes, kaddish to kaddish,

yizkor to yizkor,

remembering, remembering.

When on a Shabbat evening here,

someone who is a grandfather himself,

announces that he is remembering the Yartzai of his grandmother,

I think to myself,

that could be 50, 60, 70 years of kaddish,

said for that one woman.

Such a long and beautiful string of pearls.

What is kaddish?

What is this rhyming,

rhyming,

echoing drumbeat of a prayer?

Why does it have the power to connect heaven and earth,

to hold us up when we are most likely to fall,

to help us remember and draw close to those who are gone?

In truth, the kaddish is a Jewish mystery,

one we will probably never solve.

It is written in Aramaic,

the vernacular, the street language of the ancient Jews.

The prayer in ancient times was only recited at the end of a Torah study session.

Said as a litany of praises to God,

may God be extolled, hallowed, glorified, honored.

One of my colleagues jokes it is a political commercial for God.

The kaddish never mentions a word,

not one word,

about death.

But at the end of all the praises,

we also pray fervently in Hebrew now,

for peace.

Ose shalom bimramav.

We pray for that great day yet to come

when all the world shall know only peace,

just like the peace that we imagine reigns in the heavens above.

In Jewish mystical thinking,

this prayer for redemption is,

what creates a bridge between the living and the dead.

We know too well that the messianic era

yearned for in the kaddish prayer

is not, sadly, just around the corner.

One generation after the other,

Lador Vador,

must take up the mantle of tikkun olam,

of repairing a broken world.

And just so will each of us be a story,

a story of a new beginning,

be a story unfinished when we die.

No matter how hard we study and work,

or how well we live,

we will die with tasks incomplete

and dreams unfulfilled.

We pass on to the next generation

the sacred responsibility of being our kaddish,

the ones who grasp the baton of life

just at the moment.

Just at the moment.

Just at the moment we reluctantly let it go.

The kaddish is the spiritual hand clasp

between the generations.

So when sons or daughters,

nieces or nephews,

husbands and wives,

siblings and friends

come forward to say kaddish,

they are living witnesses

to all that the person who died

did accomplish.

The beauty, meaning, and substance

of a singular life.

And the mourner takes the baton

into his or her hand,

declaring through the kaddish,

she did not live in vain.

His life made a difference.

She, he influenced so many.

They changed their corner of the world

for the better.

But most importantly,

through the kaddish,

a vow is made.

I will continue the work.

For he recruited me.

She mentored me.

His legacy is a part of me.

Her soul animates my own.

What better consolation is there

for a mourner than the knowledge

that the ideas, hopes, concerns,

and commitments of the world

are the result of the work of God.

and commitment,

of our beloved one,

will continue to live.

Yitka dal v'yitka dash.

I will carry forth

your dreams.

When at the Yizkor on Yom Kippur

we read the long list of those

who died in the past year,

each name is an empty seat filled,

each name a world unto itself.

The names bring to mind

the funny and funny

and poignant stories,

the family dinners,

career highs and lows,

grandmothers and bubbies,

patriarchs and Zadies.

He died so young.

She did not deserve her suffering.

He made the most of every day he had.

Each name a reminder of accomplishments,

successes, disappointments,

and work not completed.

The names fill the many pages

of the Yizkor book

to create a communal embrace

of the eternal soul of your mom,

your dad,

your grandparents,

siblings, teachers,

cousins, your children,

and your friends.

We invite them all to enter

to take the empty seats

reserved just for them.

Knowing this,

please consider participating

with us during this morning's

Yizkor service

as together we remember

those we knew

and those our friends loved

with all their hearts.

Even if it has not been

your custom in past years,

join us today

when as a community

we can fill the empty chairs

with those who may have

no one left in the world

to remember them,

including the six million souls

who must not be forgotten

or neglected.

And when you are reminded

that it is time to come

into this sanctuary

to say Kaddish for a Yortzay

in the coming year,

remember that it is a privilege,

an obligation to cherish,

an opportunity to give something back,

to express our gratitude

to those who gave us

the legacy of our lives.

Saying Kaddish allows

soothing tears to fall

and to be able to say

and love to abide.

Saying Kaddish charts

our journey from grief

towards healing,

from the darkness

of the valley of death

back towards the light.

Saying Kaddish can even

sometimes heal some of the hurt

that those who went before us

may have caused.

We can remember the goodness

of their lives.

We can forgive their limitations

and let go

over time of resentment

or at least feel less pain

year by year.

Ikadah v'yikadash.

I am here

standing as I say your name

to celebrate everything

that was good in you

now in me.

I remember.

Memory is the Jewish community's

unbroken grasp

of its past

and the remarkable assurance

that one's life

has meaning

beyond death.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

has said,

when my father died

over two decades ago,

I cried a lot.

My children were

of enormous comfort.

I remember the way

my daughter held me

and the way my oldest son

took a shovel at the gravesite

and helped my brother

and me cover the coffin

with earth.

On the morning of the funeral,

my then 11-year-old son

came and sat in my lap

to console me.

We cried and we hugged

and we sat in silence.

And then in a moment

of great insight,

the little one burst out

crying again

and through the tears he said,

the hardest part, Daddy,

is knowing that someday

I'll have to do this for you.

I replied,

I only hope

that you will have

such a wonderful son

to help you

the way you are helping me.

Come,

it's time to say Kaddish.

Yikadal v'yikadash.

May God's holiness

be evident in the work

of our hands

in the name of God.

Amen.

In the coming year,

may we continue

the acts of justice,

goodness, and love

of those who came before us,

who left their world to us,

whose voices never leave us,

who are here somehow

when we call out their names,

and who through memory

give us strength.

Who through their memory

give us strength.

Kanyi Hiratsan,

Damar Khatima Tova.

Kanyi Hiratsan, Damar Khatima Tova.