About a month ago, I met with a long-time and beloved congregant, a gentleman in his late 70s whose membership in the synagogue long preceded my arrival, a man with whom I have met on multiple occasions over the years to speak about a variety of issues of shared concern.
As soon as we sat down, it became clear that this would not be our regular catch-up. He had received an unfortunate diagnosis, a life-threatening illness, and as people often do in these moments, he wanted to meet with his rabbi. We spoke about the regimen of treatment ahead, about the support system he had in place, about the role of prayer and that, in the face of uncertainty, we are nevertheless commanded to choose life. We touched on issues of mortality. He shared with me that his children know what his wishes are and that I should know that he will leave a bit to the shul, in his words “what will be remembered as neither the largest nor the smallest bequest made to the synagogue.”
He had walked into my office carrying a small bag with something gift-wrapped inside and had placed it on the table between us. About midway through our conversation, I asked him what it was, and he replied that it was a gift for me. I asked him if it would be OK if I opened it in his presence, to which he said yes.
It was a 5x7” picture frame, understated and elegant, a thoughtful but not earth-shattering gift. What was unexpected was the photograph it held: a picture of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, the two young Israeli staffers murdered outside the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, DC last May 21. In the days and weeks that followed, we all saw that picture again and again: a young couple about to get engaged, gunned down as they left a DC reception for young diplomats by someone yelling “Free Palestine”.
Our time was coming to a close, and having shared updates about his family and my own children, my friend stood up to leave. I had to ask the question that had yet to be spoken: Why the gift? Why this photograph in particular? Did he know the young couple? Perhaps they were relatives? Maybe it was a political statement – about Israel, about the porous line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism? Of all the gifts he could give to his rabbi in a meeting such as ours, why this picture?
He answered me more or less as follows: “Rabbi, difficult as my diagnosis may be, uncertain as I am of my road ahead, of one thing I am certain. I am grateful for the blessings of my life. I have loved and been loved. I have achieved professional satisfaction and kept my good name. I enjoy the blessing of children and grandchildren. There is so much for which I am grateful.”
“This young couple,” he continued, now holding the picture of Sarah and Yaron, “I didn’t know them. But what I do know is that they had their whole life ahead of them – marriage, family, careers, and more. Their lives were cut down in their prime, a theft beyond words. I look at this picture, and I am reminded of their tragic end and the fragility of life itself. But I also look at this picture and am reminded that whatever the future should hold for me, I am grateful for all that I do have.”
I was deeply moved. I thanked him. We shook hands warmly and he left my office.
Ever since that day, the picture of Sarah and Yaron remains on the shelf in my office. It sits between the other, more conventional photographs you would expect to find: my wife, my children, my grandparents, handshakes with dignitaries, congregational trips to Israel, and because I am me, Sandy Koufax and Bruce Springsteen. Most photographs are meant to capture a moment – a wedding day, a graduation, a vacation, or a child in an unbearably sweet stage of development. We put pictures up because we want to freeze time, honor it, remember it and, in some inchoate way. express gratitude for it. On our mantels, our phones, or our Facebook pages – there for all, especially us, to see.
The picture of Sarah and Yaron functions differently. For my congregant and friend, and now for me, it is a picture marking not what once was, but what will never be. As Thomas Gray described in his famous elegy on unlived lives: like a gem sitting on the dark ocean floor, a flower born to blush unseen, the mute inglorious Miltons whose talents will never see the light of day. The haunting ache of a life unrealized, a person’s potential cut short before their time.”
For Jews, this feeling runs deep in our tradition. Many of you may know the origin story behind the name of Israel’s Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem. It comes from the book of Isaiah, who relates the anxiety of those members of the community who fear being cut off, leaving no legacy, nobody to carry their names forward. God comforts them, assuring them that they will be granted a yad vashem – literally: “A memorial and a name” (Isaiah 56:5). That is the biblical origin of Yad Vashem. A Holocaust museum, of course. An education facility to counter hate, absolutely. But the core mission of Yad Vashem is its hall of names – ensuring that every life taken in the Holocaust though cut short is not cut off. Yad Vashem, “a memorial and a name” – a legacy that lives beyond.
And here in our own community, as we look back on this past year, it is a feeling that we unfortunately know too well. I did not know Wesley LePatner or Julia Hyman personally. They, together with Didarul Islam and Aland Etienne, were gunned down in an act of senseless violence at 345 Park Avenue on July 28, 2025. Wesley was a product of our synagogue, her parents having decamped to Connecticut some years ago. As news of her senseless death rippled through the congregation, many reached out to each other and to me with aching questions of grief, sorrow in our world so lacking in justice. And while it is beyond my or anyone’s ability to explain why such a thing could happen, all the phone calls and meetings shared common themes. Wesley was a woman remembered for lifting up so many lives, a wife, mother, daughter, professional of infinite potential and a proud Jew who gave of her time and leadership to our people. A mentor to so many by way of her direct and indirect example. A woman who, for all she gave to this world, had so much more yet to give. As her childhood friend Michael Schulman concluded his remembrance of Wesley in The New Yorker, “She had a lot of living left to do.”
And along with the sorrow and the grief, many shared with me that a path forward was provided. Wesley, I was told, was a person who didn’t waste a minute. She set priorities, kept up a fast pace, and had a long list of things she was determined to accomplish. And though her life was cut short, her list and her example – a friend of hers shared with me – still exist. No words can ever make wrong right or explain the inexplicable. In all my years as a rabbi, nobody has ever told me they have “gotten over” loss; people merely learn to carry it, to live alongside it. What we can do is reflect upon, honor, and take responsibility for legacy. In Wesley’s case, putting family first, championing the Jewish community, lifting women up in an industry not known for doing so. Her life tragically ended; her legacy remains the sacred responsibility of the living to continue.
And so too for all of us and for all whom we remember today. Whenever we enter this room for Yizkor, but especially today on Yom Kippur, when we are reminded repeatedly of our mortality, our hearts fill up with the images of those whom we recall with love. Fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, family and friends always in our hearts and especially today. Some were blessed with long life, some less so, some tragically not. We wish each and every one were granted more time. Given the backdrop of eternity, on a certain level, every life is excruciatingly short, as the prayer book says, a fleeting shadow. We are all here for only a limited and indeterminate amount of time. None of us ever completes our to-do list, nobody actually makes it to the Promised Land. We look at the pictures, if you will, of those sitting on the shelf of our hearts, and are struck by the truth that in the book of life, each one of us carries the mark of incomplete. And the tears of Yizkor reflect that realization and that sorrow.
And yet, in those tears we are also granted a gentle clarity. If the only thing we know is that our lives are of limited and indeterminate length, then Yizkor is also meant to prompt us to consider how we will use our time on earth and how we will honor the lives of those whom we are recalling today. We are here at Yizkor. We need no reminders of how precarious life is; the question is whether we will treat it preciously. We are here at Yizkor. We know that we are here for but a blink of an eye; the question is whether we will we carry forward the best of those we remember? We are here at Yizkor, a service whose very purpose is to recall the legacy of our loved ones. The question is whether we will live our own lives with such fullness of spirit and deed that our legacies too, will be worthy of remembrance to be lovingly passed down?
The story is told of one of the Rebbes of the Belzer Hasidic dynasty whose life was cut short, leaving his two sons to eulogize him. The first son stepped forward to speak, praising his father for being blessed with orekh yamim, length of days. When he returned to his seat, his brother turned to him, incredulous. How could he say such a thing, when their father had died so young? The first son replied, “You did not listen closely, brother. I never said our father was blessed with orekh shanim, length of years.” I said he was blessed with orekh yamim, length of days. He lived each day fully, with depth and meaning, as if it were long and complete in itself.”
We are here at Yizkor. I would like to promise us all the blessing of orekh shanim, length of years, but I know and you know that is not a promise that can be given. The best we can do is to promise ourselves that we will lives of orekh yamim, days filled with life. We remember our loved ones, and we take on the charge to build monuments to their names by way of our own deeds.
To live with urgency, intensity, agency, and joy, in accordance with the fleeting, indeterminate, precarious, and precious nature of this gift called life. This is the we of Yizkor that we unwrap today. To laugh, to love, to give, to forgive, to learn, and to do – for ourselves, for those no longer with us, and most of all, for those whose lives are yet to come.