Yizkor: Life Eternal

In the coming week, when we hear the opening chapters of the book of Genesis, you should know that the most significant part of the story is not what happened, but what did not happen. We know the story well, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, invited to enjoy all the delights of the Garden – with one and only one condition. The two trees that stood in the middle of the Garden, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life – from those two, they were forbidden to eat. And, because I don’t think I am spoiling the ending for you, I will tell you that sure enough, they eat from the tree of knowledge, their eyes are opened, and as a punishment, among other things God expels them from the Garden. This much we know, but to appreciate the point of the story, you also have to remember what doesn’t happen, what could have happened but never did. It is key to understanding the whole story, not just of Genesis, but of humanity ever since. What does not happen is that the first couple never eat from the tree of life. Adam and Eve, or the snake (depending on how you look at it), claimed or stole or had bestowed on them knowledge. But the other half of what the garden offered - eternal life, immortality – that was not and is not ours to have. Awareness, discernment, a sense of self – that we have and then some, but the bodily shells which contain that knowledge are altogether fragile, utterly mortal. An asymmetry, a design flaw if you will, that makes human beings – human.

If you want a visual, think of the image from Greek Myth: the bed of Procrustes. If a guest proved too tall, Procrustes would amputate the excess length. A Procrustean bed often signals a state of affairs in which an excess of something is imposed on a template much too small to contain it. It is precisely this spiritual enjambment that is being described in the Bible. We have, as it were, gained access to divine knowledge: we love, we wonder, we cry, we are passionate, we are jealous, we blush – in other words, we have a soul. And that eternal soul is paired with a body altogether unfit to hold its splendor. The sages explain that the relationship between the soul and the body can be compared to the situation of a princess who is married to a commoner – an inseparable bond between unequals. Rabbi Harold Kusher pointed to this condition to explain God’s enigmatic declaration “Let us make man in our image” To whom was God speaking? Who is the “Us?” Kushner explains that God was speaking to both the Angels and the animals. Humanity was created in the image of both, with a bit of both, immortal and mortal. From the Garden of Eden to Moses dying at the end of the Torah having yet to reach the promised land, to you and me today as we begin the Yizkor service – it is this plain fact which we must face squarely. Nobody ever reaches the promised land, no life is ever fulfilled, young or old, there is always more to be done.

Which leads us to the crux of the matter: if to be human is to be caught in this appositional bind, then to what effect and consequence? I recently had occasion to review a book describing a widower’s year of mourning. Reflecting on the human condition, the authors asked the question as directly as I have ever seen it put: “If we are the only species capable of recognizing our inevitable death, how can we who are humans use that unique quality to make living life better?”

It is this question that we face at the moment of Yizkor, these two data points that connect us all in the room and beyond. First, each one of us has loved ones whose lives have been cut short; and second, and by extension, each one of us sits here deeply aware that we ourselves will not inhabit this earth forever. To state the obvious, Yizkor, is not an exercise aimed only at the dead. If it were, it wouldn’t be called Yizkor, which means “remember,” an act that only the living, by definition, can do. Yizkor alerts us to the fleeting and vanishing days of our lives and demands that we face the question of our inevitable death.

Such an awareness, however, does not lead us to morbidity or meaninglessness, nor does it make life purposeless. In fact, just the opposite. For us as Jews, a purposeful life is contingent on this very attentiveness to our mortality. Montaigne titled one of his most famous essays “To philosophize is to learn how to Die.” I think what he meant was that reflection and introspection can only happen when we stand squarely with the fact of death. Only the person who is aware of the hurried approach of time’s winged chariot is willing to act with thoughtfulness, purpose and alacrity. Awareness of death need not be an act of melancholy or pit gazing. This is why, I think, the prophet of Sukkot, Ecclesiastes, counsels that the day of death is better than the day of birth and it is “better to go a house of mourning than to a house of feasting – for that is the end of every man, and the living should take it to heart.” (7:1-2) In other words, it is in the very knowledge that our days are numbered, that we are extended the possibility of making those days count.

Yizkor is, of course, a time of great sadness. Here in this room so many are remembering loved ones – sons, daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters – so many, linked together by our shared wish that we had, that they had had, more time. We use this service of Yizkor to absorb our loss, to feel our grief, to honor the dead, to reflect on their legacies and maybe even to traverse the boundary of this world and the next, with quiet conversations of the heart filled with words of love and longing. We would do well to remember that most of the words of the Yizkor service exist in our hearts, not in the prayer book. Yizkor reminds us that our loved one still had so much to give.

And yet at this moment of Yizkor we know that death, though mighty and dreadful, need not be proud. The loss of our loved ones prompts us to recognize our obligations to the living, to the here and now. We focus on the world-to-come, only insofar as it impels us towards action in this world. As the Talmud teaches: “Better one hour of…good works in this world than the whole life of the world to come; and better one hour of bliss in the world to come that the whole life of this world.” At Yizkor we turn our attention not only to our loved ones, but to ourselves and the degree to which we are living lives filled with purpose.

My teacher Rabbi Dr. Jacob Schachter once spoke of a character in an Alan Paton novel: “When I shall ascend to heaven,” he wrote, “which I certainly intend to do, I will be asked, ‘Where are your wounds?’ When I will say, ‘I haven’t any,’ I will be asked, ‘Was there nothing worth fighting for?’ and that is a question that I do not want to have to answer.” Yizkor is a journey, through sadness and reflection, but a journey whose end point is not death, but life – the lives of the living, you and I, here today.

I began by mentioning the story of creation and it is by way of Genesis that we will turn to Yizkor. In his book Making Loss Matter, Rabbi David Wolpe, who will be our guest this coming Shabbat, shares the legend of the first human being, Adam, on the first evening following creation. The light and warmth had left the garden, and he did not understand what was happening. Having never experienced darkness before, Adam could not know that the sun would rise again. The world seemed permanently plunged into blackness and danger. God instructed Adam to take two stones and rub them together – and with these stones a radiant fire was first seen on earth. Written on the stones were two words: On the first afelah, darkness; and on the second mavet, death. (Wolpe, p. 195)

At this moment of Yizkor we too hold two stones, as it were, in our hand. In the one hand, afelah, darkness – painful awareness of life without our loved ones – fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, life partners and others. And in the second hand mavet, death – we are all too all too aware of the fleeting nature of our own lives. Yet we sit here on this day, and we pick up those two hard realities, and we rub them together and we look for the spark to provide us light, to give us comfort. Limited as we are, we can, in spite of it all, still push the boundaries of our humanity, we can lead lives worthy of the high ideals of those we remember, and please God, we can lead lives worthy of remembering.