“Yizkor Completes the Story of our Lives”; Sermon By Rabbi Denise L. Eger

As our Yom Kippur Day draws to a close the unfolding of our life stories would be incomplete without this opportunity for Yizkor. Yizkor is a service of Remembrance. The Yizkor service helps us complete a picture of ourselves by remembering those who have died. Our stories are connected to the stories of so many others who no longer walk this earth with us. Their lives touch ours and we remain forever linked to their spirits, their souls and their legacies. As this hallowed day will soon end we recall and remember the lives of those now dead who shaped us and our narrative and now through the gift of memory continue to sculpt our the texture of our lives.

Our stories are incomplete without them. Even though they now dwell beyond our perception in eternity, our memories at this hour are filled with how they touched us; how they talked to us and laughed with us; cried with us; angered us. Yizkor serves to bring a moment filled with a flood of stories and anecdotes. “Remember the time when…”we say? Remember how her smile filled a room? Remember Uncle Harry who smelled always of cigars? Remember how we danced the night away in 1975? Remember how mom would wait up all night to hear the door unlock and you tiptoe into your room? Remember the Passover Seders at bubbe’s and zaydeh’s house? Remember the year the stove broke on Thanksgiving and we had to send out for Chinese food? Remember the year the brothers weren’t talking? Remember the year we went on summer vacation and the tire blew our in the station wagon on the road and Dad walked several miles to get help? Whatever the story—whatever the memory—it is a part of our life and our story!
Yizkor helps us make time to remember. Yizkor helps us recall that which we in our day to day, hectic lives, we suppress. Yizkor helps us organize the random flood of thoughts and feelings that at times, especially when our days of mourning and grief are still fresh that can overwhelm us. Yizkor helps us bring to the surface even that which deeply saddens and pains us -- because all of it is a part of our story. The good, the difficult, the sad and the joyous—all of it is a part of our story. Those who have died in recent years and weeks and those who died decades ago—they still shape us and mold us and yes, have a claim upon us. Yizkor helps us honor that claim and honor the ways they still mold our lives.
And let no one delude you—even those of you who have not been yet touched by grief or mourning—our dead and their absence from our lives indeed does matter. It definitely impacts how we act, how we live, how we are in the world. Even in their day to day absence, we can still feel their pull upon our souls if we remain open to it.
As author C.S. Lewis writes (Letters to Malcom: Chiefly on Prayer)
The dullest of us knows how memory can transfigure; how often some momentary glimpse of beauty in boyhood is a whisper which memory will warehouse as a shout…. Don’t talk to me of the “illusions” of memory. Why should what we see at the moment be more “real” than what we see from ten years’ distance?
Lewis understood that our memories of people and events no matter how distant in the past still live in us. Yizkor helps us bring those memories alive. Yizkor helps us be open to the growing of our soul and to the reality of seeing beyond the horizon of the present to an eternal reality. Yizkor helps us plug into the world of our beloved dead and recharge our own lives through the memory of each and every one of them.
Reciting the Yizkor prayers is as much for us as for them, our beloved dead. How can we enter this new year—cleansed and renewed, remade on this Yom Kippur Day if our stories are incomplete? This time of Yizkor helps us to complete the circle of our life- birth to death and rebirth again. Just as we remember them and give new life to the memories of those who died in months past, or years past, in turn we give ourselves new life. This is an act of holiness to remember. This is an act of holiness to recall on the holiest days of the year. That is why Yizkor is recited on the holiest days of the Year---Yom Kippur, Simchat Torah at the end of Sukkot, at the end of Pesach and Shavuot. Four times a year on holy days ---we seek out a special place to find ourselves in the grand scheme of life—by remembering those who no longer live because the holiness of memory is powerful and formative, and has the power of life itself!
My colleague Rabbi Debra Orenstein writes,
“Memory is considered far more significant and sacred. An ever lasting, renewable resource, it helps us locate ourselves, one of the central purposes of religion—because it relates the present and future with the past. According to traditional understanding, memory provides us access not just to history but to direct experience…. Memory both transcends time and endows it with meaning. Thus God renews creation each day…Memory… is a medium through which we dialogue with the past. The conversation never ends….”
Yizkor is our next installment in our conversation. So today –right now—remember. Let the flood of memories, the stories of your family take hold of you. Let the stories of past loves, and the memories of good friends, the memories of friends now gone be one in your mind. Close your eyes—see them. Say hi to them. Embrace them in your mind’s eye. Laugh with your father, your grandmother. Take a moment to recall the sparkle in the eye of your mother and your beloved aunt. Hear the voice of your neighbor call out to you again. Reach out to touch the cheek of your spouse. See the beloved teacher, grandfather. Feel the presence of your child who died too young. Remember even a beloved pet.
Each of our loved ones even in death continues to give you life, to uplift your life—to help you find your life—to locate yourself in the grand scheme of the living. Each memory of our dead family and friends enriches the arc of our life’s story and continues to give our story direction, color and depth. Thus today we remember. So that as the Yom Kippur day draws to a close you will be filled with spirit of holiness, filled with the eternal spirit of life and love and we pray for a new year that will help draw out your story –and help you to share your story with others.