Living Monuments
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Memorial Day, like many American customs surrounding death and dying, grew out of the aftermath of the Civil War. Both the North and the South were forced to deal with death and dying on an unprecedented scale. More Americans lost their lives in the Civil War than in all other wars the United States has fought combined. Communities that were ravaged by the death of their youth created the custom of caring for the graves of soldiers. All the members of a community would go out to the cemetery on the same day and as a community they would tend to the landscaping of the cemetery, clean the tombstones, and decorate – place flowers on – the graves of all the soldiers. This custom became known as “Decoration Day” and came to be observed across the country. Unlike most other national holidays, this one wasn’t mandated from the top down. By the time Decoration Day was declared a national holiday, it had been observed informally for years and years. Each community adopted the custom on their own because they had nowhere else to go with their grief.
The Americans of the 1860s were shocked by the prevalence of death in their world, and that may have led them to cling to the graves of the dead. But even when death comes from disease and not war, or is expected and not sudden, it is no less of a shock to the loved ones left mourning. The Decoration Day custom of caring for gravestones seems like an altogether reasonable way of trying to extend one’s relationship with the deceased. When my loved one was alive, I showed them care and affection; now that they are dead, I will treat their physical remains with the same love and affection. The Memorial Day custom of beautifying graves comes from the same place in the human soul as leaving a stone on the tombstone of a loved one in a Jewish cemetery.
Caring for the physical remains of a loved one in an effort to stay connected is not limited only to graves. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch lost his son in the Civil War. As related in a PBS special:
[Henry Bowditch] would spend the rest of his life trying to hold on to his dead son, Nathaniel. To console himself, he compiled four large memorial volumes and scrapbooks – a “collation,” he said, “of the letters, journals etc. illustrative of his dear young life. … The labor was a sweet one. – It took me out of myself.” From a ring given Nat by his fiancée, together with a “cavalry button cut from his son's blood-stained vest,” he fashioned an amulet that he attached to his watch. “There,” he said, “I trust they will remain until I die.”
For Bowditch, the best way to keep his son’s memory alive was to care for his son’s physical possessions. If he could keep the physical souvenirs of his son’s life close to his touch, then it would be as if he still had his son close to the touch. This is an impulse that I imagine we can all understand as we do this today as well. My wife is wearing the diamond that my grandfather used to propose to my grandmother, and I have the American flag presented by the U.S. Navy at that same grandfather’s funeral. Someone told me that on special days when she wants to feel her parents’ presence, she makes sure to wear something that belonged to them. In order to remain close to our loved ones, we keep winding our great-grandfathers’ pocket watches, polishing Great-Aunt Frieda’s silverware, using a mother’s tea set, wearing their artifacts as jewelry. Heirlooms are a powerful way we connect to our loved ones and to the past by touching what they touched and loving what they loved.
Such customs are not unknown in Judaism as well. Often at a wedding, the Kiddush cup used under the huppah is a family heirloom. A tallis may be passed down from one generation to the next. We even have a custom similar to Decoration Day, known as קבר אבות, kever avot, “our ancestors’ graves,” the custom of visiting the graves of one’s ancestors and loved ones before Rosh Hashanah each year. These customs are real; these physical remnants have power. Some of us may even have come to Yizkor today wearing items of meaning and connection. But here in this room preparing ourselves for the Yizkor service, we know that heirlooms and tombstones aren’t everything. The rabbis of the Talmud remind us that all our physical remains ultimately return to the ground but our souls are צרורה בצרור החיים, tz’rurah b’tzror ha-hayyim, “bound in the bond of eternal life.” (Shabbat 152b) If it is only the soul that remains, then how are we to extend our relationships with our loved ones? How do we care for them if not by caring for what they leave behind?
The answer comes a few chapters after today’s Torah reading in the book of Dvarim. Moses is about to die, and the people are about to enter the Land. Before Moses dies he gathers all of Israel together for one last speech. He begins …אתם נצבים היום, atem ntzavim ha-yom, “You are standing here today, all of you before the Lord, your God …” Moses continues that he is making this covenant with more than just those present “but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day.” (Deuteronomy 29:9, 14) In this moment Moses is effectively trying to gather every Jew that has ever lived, and every Jew that will ever live, standing together in one place and in one covenant. What is interesting to me is the choice of words when Moses says “standing.” The more common word Moses could have used for “standing” is עומדים, omdim, but instead he says נצבים, n’tzavim, which comes from the same root as מצבה, matzeivah, and a matzeivah is a monument … or a tombstone.
Moses gathered everyone together, even those yet to come, and called them monuments because this touches the Jewish heart of remembering our loved ones. We are the monuments. I am a monument to my grandparents, to my great-grandparents, to my aunt.) We the living, we are the מצבות, matzeivot, the monuments, to those who came before us, gave us life, and touched our lives. How then is our Memorial Day best spent? Our Yizkor? It is by holding the memories of our loved ones close and ensuring that we are monuments to what they lived for. What spiritual heirlooms do you carry inside you? What attributes of our loved ones are still alive in us, that we memorialize through our actions? Today, I remember not the flag that my grandfather’s service earned him but the pride he took in fighting for his country, his care for manners, and his strength of character. We remain connected to our loved ones as we live with them, their spirit, their beliefs, their values in our hearts and minds. This may be the fundamental difference between the secular Memorial Day and the Jewish service of Yizkor.
There may be a difference between the Jewish Yizkor and American Memorial Day, but even the secular world knows this truth – that our actions do far more to memorialize our lost loved ones than physical monuments ever could. No one other than President Abraham Lincoln acknowledged as much when he dedicated a cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 152 years ago:
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
We cannot hallow the ground; we cannot immortalize someone through physical things alone. We can hallow a person through our actions. What we can do as we say Yizkor is hold the memories of our departed close and let those memories guide us to follow the examples they set. Today, we care not for the monuments made of stone and stuff, but the monuments made of flesh and blood, the monuments made by our incorporating the values and beliefs that our loved ones left behind. We tend those monuments today, we live our lives to memorialize those we love who are no longer with us. Through our actions and our memory we ensure that the souls of the dead will be bound up in the bond of life as they are bound in the bond of our lives.