Yizkor

Yom Kippur, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim

Sue Taylor Grafton, prolific author of mystery novels, passed away last year. She was 77 years old. Grafton published her first book 50 years ago, and another would follow two years later. In 1982 she published what would become the first in an extensive series of mysteries that followed detective Kinsey Millhone book after book after book. The first in the series was titled “A” Is for Alibi, followed by “B” Is for Burglar, then “C” Is for Corpse. Her obituary in the New York Times says she was inspired for the idea of an alphabetical series by The Gashlycrumb Tinies, “a 1963 rhyming book in which 26 children meet bizarre ends.”

Over the next 35 years, Grafton wrote 22 more books in the series. Her last was published in August of 2017, four months before her death. The book was titled “Y” Is for Yesterday.

Grafton’s canon fell one book, one letter, short of her goal.

Death, how well we know, doesn’t come on our terms. We die despite appointments and feuds. We die despite contracts and business trips and vacations we have planned. We die despite a long list of things to do. We die despite passions we cherish, despite marrying whom we love, despite children and grandchildren still growing before our eyes. We die at the tops of our careers, when we’re finally able to hear the accolades, or before our careers, or even the best parts of our lives, have even begun.^[1]

Kohelet wrote: “The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” (Ecclesiastes 1:8) “Young or old, those who depart this life never see enough of the world, never complete their task, never cherish their loved ones enough, before they are called home. … Whenever parting comes, it comes too soon.”^[2]

The ritual of Yizkor doesn’t gather us together because it can impart some special, secret knowledge about death. It gathers us together — we who have loved and lost spouses, parents, dear friends, children — because it can teach us who carry permanent scars on our hearts something about life. It’s a lesson everyone is meant to internalize as we face our mortality throughout this fearful day of Yom Kippur — in its liturgy, its scripture, its fasting. But we in this club of which no one wants to be a member, but everyone is eventually admitted, are naturally open and receptive to hearing it.

As we cherish the memories of those we’ve loved and lost, we know the message of Yom Kippur in our bones:

Take nothing for granted. Live every day to its fullest. Do not delay until tomorrow the love, the forgiveness, the changes that can be resolved and demonstrated today. And even as we make and aspire to achieve goals, remember that our biggest accomplishments may never have a finish line.

Why does the book of Deuteronomy, the last in the Torah, end with the death of Moses, asks Rabbi Louis Rieser. After all, the first chapters of the book of Joshua tell more of the wilderness story and see the Israelites enter, finally, the Promised Land. Perhaps to teach — as Zola Neale Hurston writes in Moses, Man of the Mountain — that though Moses may have felt he “had failed in his highest dreams, he had succeeded in others. Perhaps he had not failed so miserably as he sometimes felt.” It wasn’t deliverance to the Promised Land that sealed his stature as the greatest prophet of Israelite history; it was everything else he had done and given and achieved along the way.

“And so we understand,” writes Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, “that ordinary people are messengers of the Most High. They go about their tasks in holy anonymity, often, even unknown to themselves. Yet, if they had not been there, if they had not said or did what they did, it would not be the way it is now. We would not be the way we are now. Never forget that you, too, yourself may be a messenger. Perhaps even one whose errand extends over several lifetimes.”

With the memories of our loved ones as an abiding source of strength and inspiration, may we give all that we can to each and every day we are granted. May we build upon the achievements of those who came before us, fulfilling their dreams and continuing their pursuits into lifetimes beyond their own. May we reach for our own dreams, knowing, as our liturgy reminds us, “that victory lies not at some high place along the way, but in having made the journey.” May we live and love fully beginning with the only day we are guaranteed — may we live our very best lives starting today.

^[1] Inspired by the readings in Mishkan HaNefesh, p. 550.

^[2] From CCAR Rabbi’s Manual, p. 137.