Sermon – Yizkor – Weeping Together

Written by Rabbi Hannah Kingston — 7 October 2022

When someone dies, ancient routines shaped by centuries of mourners before kick into action, to carve out a pathway for the mourner to walk, held metaphorically by a safety net of tradition.

 

We are familiar with the rituals of Judaism. From the moment someone dies we surround the mourners with ritual designed to parallel the psychological stages of the emotional process of grief. A shiva house is one filled with noise, with the coming and going of people bringing food, memories and an outlet for emotion. Death is not something faced alone.

 

We are not the only culture that prescribes a strict routine around death.

In Ancient Rome relatives gathered immediately around the body to recite lamentations before a funeral procession accompanied the deceased and the mourners to the funeral.  Following this there was a ritual feast where family and friends would gather.

 

In Hinduism the mourning period lasts between ten and thirty days. During this time, visitors come to the house, where pictures of the deceased are displayed, to chant hymns and offer support. On the first anniversary of the death, a memorial event is held to honour the life of the lost loved one.

 

In Islamic tradition, the mourning period lasts for forty days, during which the family will gather in the home and receive guests. The community provides food for the bereaved.

 

Although the details vary from tradition to tradition, the pattern is undeniable – we find value in being together in a period of bereavement, in building a sense of community around the bereaved. We sense the need to take the hands of those mourning and lead them from isolation.

 

In the words of author Anita Diamant:

“The enduring wisdom of our tradition helps us face death squarely and make time to feel the full range of emotions – grief, anger, fear, guilt, relief – that follow, accept the fact that we need other people to bear the pain of loss; do the same for others when they lose a loved one…”

Simply stated, this is why we need a minyan to say kaddish. We need to grieve with others. Because when grief weighs heavy, others hold you up.

 

We need each other. Our collective mourning brings the individual comfort. Because it is through being together that we keep the memories of a person alive. We remember as a collective, each of us holding the disjointed fragments of a story. And we need to remember, because as our beloved former Rabbi, Rabbi Dow Marmur wrote:

“We are not commanded to believe, but we are commanded to remember…it is a theological category, a covenant made with Israel long ago.”

 

On your chairs as you came in you would have found our Alyth Yizkor book, telling the stories of those we have lost over the past three years, bringing them back into our sanctuary. Those we mourned when we were not able to walk the familiar structures of grief.

 

Three Years…

 

It has been three years since we were last together for Yizkor, last able to stand with our community in their loss. The past two years have led us to the privatisation of grief, we have been forced to grieve in isolation.  Our lives were transferred to screens, we lived online and we faced death online. The routines of death were lost, shiva houses remained empty and noiseless. Funerals were done in the grounds, a rabbi, a coffin and a phone with zoom. Condolences were left in a zoom chat room as shiva was livestreamed.

 

In our Reform community, we were at least able to provide a virtual minyan for those who wished to say Kaddish amongst their community. Within other parts of the Jewish world, mourners were left without the familiar rhythms of the daily Kaddish due to the inability to provide the physical presence of a minyan.

 

And within our own community, the Alyth Bereavement Call Group, a dedicated group of Alyth volunteers, continued to call all those bereaved during the pandemic, to let them know that they are not alone in their darkest of moments.

 

But the grief faced during this time was extraordinary. Because it was not just grief for our loved ones.

We grieved for their deaths, sometimes alone, cut off from the care of those they loved.

We grieved for the fragility of the human body.

And we grieved for our own lives, stripped of the normality of our ritual and routine in a time of great personal fear and anxiety.

 

For whilst we recognise that all grieve differently, the pandemic robbed us of even our simplest source of comfort, the ability to walk the familiar pathway of grief. Covid accentuated loneliness in the community, and loneliness in grief.

 

The loss of our ritual around death is perhaps one of the greatest loads that we had to bear during pandemic. For this is not normal – we need to be together in grief and loss. Our tradition dictates it. Alone a loss can feel too much to bear, but community helps us to carry the load. It is why when someone mourns we wish them the traditional words of consolation:

 

Hamakom yinachem etchem, b’toch sha’ar ha’aveilim – May the Everpresent comfort you together with all those who mourn.

Covid may have impacted our rituals, but our grief itself has not changed. Our grief is important because it is how we heal, how we change the relationship with the person we have lost and learn to live again in the world without them. And the comfort for our grief is something we are told to find in each other.

 

Now we are living in a world where Covid is just a part of our ongoing reality, it is time to step back in, in to a time where we shoulder one another’s grief, in to a time when although we are lonely from the person we have lost, we are never alone.

 

The rituals around grief practiced by all faiths are not passive. They require the community to be active partners in supporting those in mourning.

 

And pre pandemic, we were all well trained on how to be present for those who needed us, we knew when to rally round. We were well versed with how to batch cook, so that mourners do not go hungry. We knew precisely when to station ourselves at the urn of a shiva house so that no one is left without a cup of tea.

Yet over three years of separation, when our grief was done in isolation, we have forgotten…

 

At the beginning of our High Holy Days, Cantor Tamara spoke about avodah she’ba’lev – service, work of the heart. She urged us to put our whole hearts into our High Holy Days, to approach them as sacred work. And we pledged to make a renewed commitment to the work of our hearts, knowing that we have to put the time, intention and work into turning our prayers into a reality.

 

Now, we urge you to continue that avodah she’ba’lev into this year. Because the network of support created by our ancient grief rituals is not something that happens automatically, but is something that requires effort and work.

 

Our tradition offers us the structure of support, but it requires us to meet it with intention. Now is the time to step back in to the structures already in place and to reach across the chasms created by grief, to hold those in mourning, to be a community once again.

 

Judaism offers us the framework. But we need to bear the responsibility to do this for ourselves and for others.

The responsibility to be present for those in mourning, in the days around the funeral and shiva.

The responsibility to come shul to stand in solidarity with those saying Kaddish.

And the responsibility also to allow others to do this for us. By coming to shul for yarzheit, as we did before pandemic and not just to acknowledge it in the privacy of our own home.

 

And we need to bear the responsibility not just to step in, but also to step up. To say, as Rabbi Colin said on Rosh Hashsanah, Hineini, here I am, if we feel able to offer our skills in community. As callers, as makers of food, as shiva leaders.

 

Because grief is not something faced alone, but faced in community. And to be a community we need not to believe that the responsibility falls on others but to take it on ourselves.

So before we begin our Yizkor service, I invite you to look around the room, at your fellow mourners. At the shoulders upon which we can lean when our grief becomes too heavy to bear. At the arms held open for embrace, when we need physical touch to pull us back into reality. At the faces open and accepting, ready to share a memory, or a smile.

 

And as we do so, we hold the tension of those who are unable to step back into the room, just as we always have. And we pledge ourselves to not just consoling those we can see, but also those who need us to reach out further to them.

 

And to you all, in different stages of grief, in different places, we wish you the traditional words of consolation:

Hamakom yinachem etchem, b’toch sha’ar ha’aveilim

May God, and may your community, be a source of comfort to you, amongst all those who are in mourning.