Yom Kippur, Yizkor 5769: We Need You O God of Compassion - El Maleh Rachamim

The El Maleh Rachamim prayer is the centerpiece of the Yizkor service this afternoon and the centerpiece of a funeral service as well. Today we will explore this prayer, its meaning for our time and the hopes it expresses to us about life and death and yes, about Compassion, Atonement and Redemption and about what it teaches us about the nature of God in Judaism.

Haunting in its melody, the words-El Maleh Rachamim means God Full of Compassion. We address the Divine Source of Life and Death by this Name of "Compassion" to remind both God and ourselves that we are fragile beings. We address God this way when we mourn and grieve and remember because we need compassion and tenderness from all who surround us including and perhaps especially from the Divine and Holy Presence, from our friends and coworkers. We want our sorrow alleviated when we grieve. We want to be comforted when we feel such sadness. We need understanding and we must find compassion in ourselves and for those who have died.

On this Yom Kippur afternoon as we begin this service of Remembrance-we too want God's Compassionate Presence to be near to us and to our loved ones who have died.

For so many of us this year has been filled with the deaths of parents and grandparents and friends and co-workers. In truth many of us are getting to an age when we see the generations before us leave through the door of death never to return to us except at these moments of memory and recollection.

Some of us we have walked down the mourner's path before. We experienced our lovers and friends, our parents and aunts and uncles, even our children's deaths from years gone by. But this Yizkor time too—is how we help them to return to our lives even if it is but a brief memory. And so we address El Maleh Rachamim—God full of Compassion to be with us at this hour of memorial. Rachamim from the Hebrew word for womb—Rechem—Mother of Compassion- comfort us we pray on this Yom Kippur Day.

Late in this afternoon of fasting—we are so fragile. We are tired and cranky and hungry. And Yizkor is a complex time fraught with so many complex memories and feelings. We feel our own mortality on this Yom Kippur day looming before us. And so it is natural to remember the dead. But we need a mother's love and comfort at this time—So we cry out to El Maleh Rachamim—the Loving Mother of Compassion to bring us comfort in our grief, our sadness when we remember and recall those who have died this year and at years past.

Even Compassionate One as you dwell in heaven's height in a place beyond our imagining—–even as you Eternal One—dwell beyond our comprehension—even though you seem so far away from us— we say , "Be close to us and our loved ones who have died. Even if we have doubts about Your existence, about whether or not there is a place we go after we die, we hedge our bets at Yizkor and pray in this prayer that our beloved dead rest peacefully beneath the wings of Your Shekhina."

We know suffering and dis-ease. We know dis-comfort and restlessness. But we pray through the El Maleh Rachamim prayer that our beloved dead know peacefulness and painlessness. And we hope too that the knowledge that they are at peace helps us to be a peace today at this Yizkor hour.

Posted by Eric at October 8, 2008 09:13 AM