In just a few moments, we'll recite Yizkor, a prayer which begins with the words - יזכור אלוקים - "may God remember," or as Rav Soloveitchik taught, "may God forgive" those who are no longer; which is the beginning of a process that involves the giving of tzedakah and our heartfelt prayers.
And yet, I have to admit that I never fully understood how this forgiveness can happen. After all, how can we, mere mortals, bring forgiveness to the souls of those who are already in Heaven?
But חז"ל said we can and we should - and therefore, every year, four times a year, I recite this prayer. I give tzedakah in memory of my father and my son. I pray that God remembers them, forgives them, and I take the time to remember them as well.
Which is never easy.
Because to remember someone you loved but is no longer is to remember the joy, but also the sorrow.
To think, as I often do, of what life would have been like if my father had lived to see me assume a pulpit or a principalship; or if my son, who would have been 39 years old this year, had lived long enough to be married and have a family.
To remember one you loved who has died is never easy.
Because remembering a person is not the same as recalling a historical event. Rather, to remember a person - is to relive a part of that life, to consider who that person really was, how he or she impacted your life, and what he or she would say about your life today.
Which may part of the reason why this Yizkor of Yom Kippur is so important - because remembering may be another way we seek forgiveness for ourselves. Because imagining that person who we pray for at Yizkor makes us reimagine ourselves.
It makes us think of how we can be better. How we can change, or in the language of this day - how we can do תשובה - return to what God expects of us and to what those people we remember would have hoped for us.
But that's not all.
For while I know I may be on thin ice for this next leap of logic, but I share it with you because it is a source of comfort to me - and it is… that if I can seek atonement for their souls, it means that there remains a connection, there's a bond between those who have passed away and each of us that survives beyond death, one that is real and can make a difference.
It's a connection I believe Rav Kook referred to when he wrote of the unique unity of the Jewish people מקשרת היא את הדורות כולם יחד - that connects all generations together. For, אין מובן של עבר בתולדה הישראלית - there is no sense of a past in Jewish history because the past, the present, and the future are all כרוכה - bound together. (1)
Which is an extraordinarily empowering message this Yom Kippur as we face a pandemic - with so many "never before's" attached to it.
Never before have we had to celebrate holidays, smachot, and events with both trepidation and distance. And never before have we shuttered our shuls and then reopened them only in part. And never before did we walked masked, sing muted, and spend so little time in public prayer.
Never before.
But if past, present, and future are all bound together, we can see that it HAS been before - not in our lifetimes, but during times of war and danger, during the polio epidemic, the Spanish flu, and cholera epidemic of the early nineteenth century.
Never before has this generation, but WE, the Jewish people have. And we have survived and often thrived, ready to face the next challenge that God places before us. Because WE are connected, WE remember, and WE are eternal.
It's that WE that Yizkor begs us to experience. That WE that asks us to shoulder our responsibility for generations past. That WE of the כל בואי עולם who stand in judgment before God that empowers us. And it's that WE that ensures we remain part of a continuum of humanity that defies time.
But even more, it is that sense of being bound together - that idea of a "WE" and not an "I" that offers us not only a connection to the past but the greatest hope for the future.
It's what I call the crucible of the masks - and begins with the fact that the masks we now wear, protect others more than they protect us.
And so while we can debate the efficacy of a mask, the science of COVID, or even the politics of limits to our freedoms, when someone wears a mask, it's a statement that he or she understands that WE has a responsibility to one another, that we live in a society and a community where we respect and value the bonds that exist and that traverse time and space.
It's the the יזכור - ability to reach back, to remember and even to grieve, while reaching forward with hope and with responsibility for the future, for generations yet to come.
It's the way I can look back at my son's life, grieve his loss, but celebrate the memory that is kept alive in those who remember him, and even in those who are named for him.
יזכור אלוקים - we reach back and we ask the God of justice to forgive. But as we do - we ask ourselves, do we have a right to ask?
Do we live our lives bound to the timeless bonds of Jewish experience?
Do we care about the community, the society in which we live?
And do we value the "WE" over the "I" - the understanding that God placed us on this earth, not for our own benefit, but to make this world a better place for all of humanity.
And those are just some of the thoughts that יזכור should bring to mind.
The Gemara in Rosh Hashana describes that on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, God has two books that are opened before him - the ספר החיים and the ספר המתים - the book of life and the book of death.
And while some suggest that our names will be written in one or the other - that these books are the two possible fates which await us, Reb Chaim Volozhin, (2) taught that these books represent the future year for both those who are alive and those who have passed - literally, the חיים and the מתים, and that we can make a difference with both, by what we do.
If we follow God's words, our lives will be recorded for good in the Book of Life, and if we learn from the lives of those who have passed away, their souls will be rewarded in the Book of the Dead - and maybe that is what we ask of God at this time.
Let us learn from both God and from those we remember. Let the stories of their lives be told, the joy and the sadness be relived.
And let this moment of Yizkor bring forgiveness to them, to us and to all of כלל ישראל.
(1) הראי"ה קובץ ד' ער
(2) דרשה של א' דסליחות, תקע"ב