The 27th psalm, that beautiful psalm that we add to our morning and evening prayers through the High Holy Day season, begins, "Adonai Ori v'yishi… mimi Ira? The Lord is my light and my deliverance, of whom shall I be afraid? "
The Rabbis explain why this particular psalm is associated with the High Holidays: "On Rosh Hashanah, the Lord is my light, and On Yom Kippur, He is my Deliverance" .
On Rosh Hashanah, we feel the expansiveness of creation, and the possibilities of new beginnings. The present moment is filled with God's light. But on Yom Kippur, a scant ten days later, we feel the weight of our finitude and the burden of our deeds, and we know that we are in need of God's Deliverance.
Barely a week ago, on Rosh Hashnnah, we rejoiced, " Hayom Harat Olam: Today the World is Born." Life seemed rich with new possibilities. But today, we confront our limitations: our false steps, our fears, and our failures of nerve, our missed opportunities, disappointments, and yes, even the specter of our own deaths. And so, for one day, we confront the abyss. We starve our bodies. We recite Yizkor for our departed, the Eileh Ezkerah in memory of our martyrs, and the Vidui, the confession of sins, just as we are commanded to do when we prepare to die.
It is traditional to wear a white kittel today, to remind us of the shroud in which we will be buried. The morning Torah reading begins with the death of Aaron's sons. And near the beginning of the Musaph Amidah, we recite once again the words of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer, as we did on Rosh Hashannah: Who shall live, and who shall die. But today, the words seem even more frightening then they did last week, because today is Yom Kippur.
And yet, here we are. We choose to be here because we believe that Yom Kippur, this rehearsal of death, atones; that it actually prepares us to live better, more thoughtful lives. We perceive that there are things we need to learn about ourselves, and that death itself is our teacher. Today, we seek wisdom, the one attribute we possess that increases, rather than diminishes, with our years.
In Psalm 27, there is a verse that never fails to stop me, to pull me up short, when I read it: "Ki Avi v'Imi Azavuni, Adonai Ya'asfeini: Though my father and mother abandon me, Adonai will take me in." Packed in that short line is the fear and loneliness of the orphan. It is a loss that, when we are young, is an unfathomable terror. Yet, when we grow older, we come to understand it as an inevitable outcome of a full life.
"Ki Avi v'Imi Azavuni, Adonai Ya'asfeini: Though my father and mother abandon me, Adonai will take me in." But what does it mean, that God will take me in? Is the psalmist asking that God physically shelter him when his parents are no longer there to do so? Surely, in the natural order of things, we outgrow the need for our parents' care by the time they leave this world. Indeed, for so many of us the roles gradually reverse over time, and it is we who have the privilege of caring for the beloved parents who sheltered us in our youth.
Perhaps the psalmist is saying that in our relationship with God, we can find a balm for the loneliness of loss; that faith gives us stability and meaning in a world in which we have lost our biological roots.
Or perhaps the answer is found in the verse that immediately follows:
"Horayni Adonai Darkecha, U'nechayni B'orech mishor leman Shorerai: Teach me, Adonnai, your ways, guide me in the path of integrity that I might overcome my foe. "
The word, Horeyni, "Teach me," like the word, "Torah" shares the same Hebrew root as the word for parents-"horim". Thus, the psalmist is saying, "parent me, teach me your ways and guide me in the path of integrity, as would my mother and father, if they were here now." The psalm reminds us that our parents are our first teachers in understanding right and wrong, duty and integrity.
And who or what is the foe to be overcome? I believe that the psalmist is not speaking of a physical enemy, but of despair; both the loneliness of loss and the encroaching sense of meaninglessness that arrives in loss's wake. "Horeyni Adonai, Parent me Adonai, teach me and guide me in the path of integrity and meaning so that I am not overcome by callousness, cynicism or despair.
And so, on this day of fasting and long hours of standing in prayer, a day when we confront our own mortality, we ponder the wisdom that death can teach, even the death of a parent. It is a wisdom that we want to avoid at all costs, but we cannot. When my father passed away in June at the age of 84, I finally began, like so many before me, to walk that path too.
Before I share with you what I learned through my father's death, let me tell you first a few words about his life. In broad strokes, my father was a warm and loving husband and father, a Jew who loved Judaism and the Jewish people, and a lawyer who, for more than 40 years, served the law and his clients with integrity and devotion. He was the son of immigrant parents, and the first in his family to go to college. He was a member of "the greatest generation," serving in World War II as an infantry scout in France. And he was also a passionate Zionist, who spent the last 20 years of his life living in Jerusalem, with three of his four children, and eight of his thirteen grandchildren.
Dad was an unselfish, almost unassuming person. He saw his life through the lens of obligation and devotion. First and foremost to my Mom and to us kids. He used to rant against the incredible self absorption of what people used to call the "me generation," and liked to say, "Happy? So where is it written that you have to be happy?" Well. if I could have this conversation with him now, I might argue back: The Bible says: "Ivdu et Hashem B'Simcha." Worship God in joy." And most of the time Dad was joyful. He loved to sing with us in the car on long car rides, and to dance in the kitchen with my mother. And I like to do those things too. He found joy in his professional work, and in his volunteer work, which included being President of our Conservative Shul.
Some years ago, my sister Shirah took my father to Yad VaShem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial, in order to give an oral history for their archives.
He gave testimony regarding a little known area of the Holocaust- the use of Jewish slave labor on farms in occupied France. As an infantry scout, he was often among the first to enter a newly liberated town. At each one, my father would ask, "the Jews…are there any Jews here? And each time he would be told, there were Jews here, yes, but they shot them yesterday, before you came." On one farm, they found a vast storehouse of stolen clothing- rows and rows of women's winter coats. The only worker who remained was a Polish teenage girl. It was winter and she was pitifully underdressed. "How long have you worked here?", my father asked her. "Two years." "Did they pay you for your work?" "No." Show me the best coat," my dad said to her. She took him over to a rack, and pointed to a warm fur coat." My Dad took the coat and handed it to her. "Here," he said to her. "This is your payment."
Although it was years before he began to relate these and other experiences to his family, the War clearly shaped him. He was a passionate and patriotic American, because it was America who had first given his own family a home and later defeated the Nazis. And he was a passionate lover of Israel, the Jewish homeland, where the Jewish people after the Holocaust was reborn.
My father's Zionism was old fashioned and Romantic: Hatikva always made him cry, as it does me, as well. This is my favorite story about my Dad: After my sister Shirah graduated college and made aliyah, she met and became engaged to Menachem, whose family had come to Israel from Yemen in 1949, on Operation Magic Carpet, the massive airlift that brought virtually the entire Jewish community of Yemen to the State of Israel. Now some members of my family back home were afraid that this match could never work. The culture gap, the language gap, the distance between Yemen and Long Island seemed too great to bridge.
My Dad, however, was totally taken by the Zionist aspect of it all. To him, it was "kibbutz galuyot", the ingathering of the exiles. Jews of the East and Jews of the West reunited after 2,000 years, in the personages of Shirah and Menachem! So my parents flew from New York and arrived in Israel to meet the family for the first time. Menachem's parents spoke no English, and my Dad spoke virtually no Hebrew then, so they spoke through interpreters. Addressing Menachem's father Reuven, my Dad began, "We have a Torah study group that meets each week at friends' homes, and last week, we were discussing the story about Joseph, in the book of Bereshit." He went on to lay out a problem that they had in reading the story, and asked Reuven how he would explain the issue. So through translators, Reuven gave my Dad his understanding of the Biblical story. My Dad smiled broadly, and hugged his new Yemenite Mechutanim. "We come from different corners of the world, but we share the same book!"
So these are some of the many lessons I learned from my Dad's life: He taught me to embrace duty and obligation. He taught me to be playful and loving. He taught me to love the Jewish people.
Now let me tell you some of the things I learned through his death. There is no good time to hear that a loved one has died. For me, it was on a Tuesday night, several days before my daughter Tali's wedding. Although my Mom and my sister had already arrived in America for the wedding, there was nothing to do but to get back to Jerusalem as quickly as possible. By the next morning we were on our way to the airport, and by Thursday morning, we had landed in Ben Gurion. I knew I had to be in Jerusalem for my dad's funeral, and I knew with equal certainty that I had to be in Natick for the wedding on Sunday. I was numb, on autopilot, going through each necessary step.
My dad was buried in a cemetery owned by the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel. After twenty years in Israel, Dad never really gained proficiency in Hebrew, and he used to joke that he preferred to be buried among English speakers. And so, as the sun was setting over the Jerusalem hills, he was. After a brief few hours sitting shiva with my family in my parents' home, someone was driving me off to Ben Gurion for the 1:00am flight home.
You know how when you see someone at a shiva home, or on a similarly sad occasion, a person may say before leaving, "Auff simchas," which means "For Simchas. Next time we meet it should be for simchas" Well this is my story:
After arriving at Ben Gurion at about a quarter to midnight, I checked in and reached passport control. The woman behind the counter studied my passport and gave me a puzzled look. "But you just arrived this morning!" she said. Indeed, I had been in the country no more than seventeen hours, perhaps a record. "Well," I answered her, "I was here for a funeral." Then she noticed the jagged tear in my shirt. The Rabbi at the cemetery insisted that this symbol of my mourning be long and conspicuous, across my heart. Without my needing to say anything else, she understood that I had lost someone close to me. And this stranger, this official behind the desk at Passport control, reached over the counter and touched my arm, and said in Hebrew, "Rak B'Semachot." Which in Hebrew means Auff Simchas. Next time only for Simchas. Only in Israel, I thought to myself. That simple gesture on the part of an El Al clerk at passport control touched my heart. Tears welled in my eyes for the first time during that very long day.
And that was when I learned a lesson through my father's death: Loss doesn't only make you feel isolated. It can also create an instant bond- even with a perfect stranger.
On the flight home, I wrestled with the following dilemma. Tali and Gaby's wedding was on Sunday, in the middle of Shiva. I looked at my good white shirt, its jagged tear a reminder of the funeral, and of my status as a mourner. I would wear it until Shabbat, and then put it on again Sunday morning. But I had no intention of wearing it for the wedding. Tali and Gaby's simcha had to take precedence over my mourning. But what of my unshaven face? Should I maintain my incipient beard out of respect for my Dad, or should I shave, so as not to dampen the joy of my daughter's wedding?
There is a Rabbinic answer to that. The Rabbis teach: "When a funeral procession and a bridal procession meet at a crossroads, ma-avirin et hamet milifney haKalah---the funeral procession stands aside, and the bridal procession goes first". When confronted with such a choice, the celebration of life takes precedence.
But I didn't really need to know that teaching in order to decide what to do. My Dad never stood on ceremony when it came to himself. He was always more interested in what he could do to make the other person happy, I could hear him saying to me, " Of course you're going to dance at your daughter's wedding. Of course you're going to shave, and wear your best tuxedo and be the father of the bride." It's what he would have done. And that's when I learned a second lesson through my Dad's death: You don't lose all of a person even after they are physically gone. They continue to be with you and to guide you, because you know how they would have reacted to a situation, or what they would have said to you in that moment.
Shabbat, the day before the wedding, our home was filled with bridesmaids, relatives from out of town, and anticipation. My heart hovered between sadness and joy. Friends of ours hosted nearly forty of us for a Seudah Shlishit Shabbat afternoon. I sat at the table and felt blessed, truly blessed, watching my five kids and my two daughters-in-law, orchestrating the Shabbat Zemirot, toasting their sister. With awe I watched the magic that happens when these kids get together, and I cried. I thought of my Dad, and how proud he would have been of this family. I thought of how easily my Dad cried at emotional occasions, and I realized that my tears were tears of joy, my Dad's tears. And that's a third lesson that I learned from his death: You can bring pleasure to the people whom you love, even after they are gone. When we say of a deceased grandparent that they are here with you under the huppah, or that they are present on the bima at a Bar Mitzvah, it's true.
All through the next day, I held the competing realities of loss and of joy in my hands simultaneously. And somehow they could coexist as a coherent whole. Two sides of life's indivisible coin.
The wedding, over, I sat the final three days of shiva at home, in my community, with many of you. And here I learned yet another lesson. We cannot grieve alone. How can I begin to describe the many ways in which this community worked for me when I needed it, as it has for so many others before? The friends who came to my home morning and evening to make the minyan. The food, the Leahgrams, and the many thoughtful expressions of sympathy; I have learned never to take any of these things for granted.
When some of you arrived in the evening, rather than making small talk, you skillfully asked me about my Dad, whom you did not know. You gently encouraged me to talk about him, to tell his stories. A magic took over that is hard to describe. Many times, adult children are judgmental of their parents. We look at some of the choices that they made, and say to ourselves, "Well, I wouldn't have done it that way," or, "I would have planned for my retirement better than that;" or whatever. But shiva allowed all of that to slip away, and for me to access memories and stories only half remembered, that reminded me of the essence of the father whom I loved.
And that's the final thing I learned. Shiva works. And it is essential, because mourning is a process that takes time and is done in stages. Shiva allows you to feel the comfort of your community in ways that you could never have anticipated. Shiva gives you the space to remember and to talk about your loved one to people who never knew him, so that he comes alive again in your heart. Shiva gives you a formal structure outside your normal routine, during days when you are prone to periods of numbness and physical exhaustion.
Oh yes, and did I mention exhaustion? For weeks and even months, your head may tell you that you are fine, that you are moving on, but your body tells you another story. I have heard people say that they don't like shiva because it is exhausting. But they have it wrong. It's not the people in the house that tires you out. The bone-tiredness you feel is simply an inescapable manifestation of your grief.
When the time comes to mourn a loved one, and God willing it shouldn't be for a long, long time, please remember that shiva comes from the word "seven". The relatively recent trend towards sitting only two or three days is, I believe, a tragedy that trades away the healing gifts of ritual, of sacred storytelling, and of communal embrace, for a few extra days in the office. And we suffer for that choice. When the time comes, please remember that.
On Yom Kippur, we starve our bodies and contemplate our mortality, while barely a week ago, we celebrated creation, new beginnings, and the promise of a new year. What does the Jewish tradition teach us about holding the realities of life and of death, as one?
I believe one answer can be found in the experience of Sukkot, the great festival of joy that begins four days after the fast ends. On the one hand, it is a festival of Thanksgiving so joyous, so filled with simcha that the Rabbis in the Talmud simply refer to it as HeChag- the holiday, connoting unmitigated joy. On the other hand, we celebrate it by sitting in a Sukkah, a temporary dwelling that is unintended to survive the week. Its roof is covered with cut branches that are beginning to wither and lose their vitality the very moment we put them to use.
And therein lies the lesson. The Sukkah represents a synthesis of the dichotomy posed by Rosh Hashannah at one end and Yom Kippur at the other. It teaches that life is all the more sweet in its fragility- all the more beautiful because we can't hold on to it.
The author of psalm 27 offers us the following insight:
Achat Shealti me'et Hashem: One thing I ask of God, only this do I seek-
To dwell in the house of God all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Eternal and to frequent God's Temple.
For God's Sukkah will shelter Me.
We ask for God's Temple. We ask for grandeur and substance. But we learn that it is really the Sukkah, the ability to face life's impermanence with equanimity, the willingness to not hold on too tightly, that will provide us with the protection that we need.
The lessons that I learned when my father died were not new; neither to me nor to you. But when we experience death, we see and hear those truths from a new perspective, with greater wisdom. And perhaps that's why we are here today after all. Yom Kippur, this brush with mortality, may yet teach us to see the preciousness of our lives, to see, in the closing words of psalm 27, "the goodness of God in the land of the living, …Hazek V'ya'ametz libecha, v'Kaveh el Adonai. Be strong and of Good Courage, and trust in Adonai. "