UTJ Viewpoints

My Rabbinical Council colleague in Ohio, Rabbi Hanan Balk, reports a story about a student in a Cincinnati Jewish High School who had an acquaintance, who went to sleep one night but did not wake up in the morning. Candy was placed at the cafeteria table for the girls to eat after the horrible news became known, in order to elicit the following blessing:

1. baruch atta ha-Shem Praised are YOU, God

2. E-loheinu Melech ha-Olam The God Who is king of the world

3. she-ha-kol nihyeh bidvaro For everything occurs by His word

Realizing and believing that God is real and behind, under and above everything that occurs, we find a measure of consolation, a small comfort, a perspective whereby we live with the pain of creation, the angst of the human condition, and the bumps of the days of our lives.

Candy is sweet and the Yizkor of Shemini Atseret is bitter sweet. We do not mourn on Holy Days, especially on the season of joy. But as we age, there are losses that we suffer, holes in our lives that are covered with scars but can never be fully healed. If we say Yizkor, it should be sweet and not sad, with appreciation of good lives lived and not depreciation of our loss, of charity being given and offense no longer being taken.

The Jew tries to say one hundred blessings a day, and at least ten of them will likely be this nine word formula, a verbal affirmation that enables and empowers the religiously sensitive Jew to go and grow from the grave after the grave is covered and return to the living community. Between death and burial, the she-ha-kol blessing may not be uttered, because we are in despair. When the grave is covered, with setimat ha-golal, we turn from death and chaos to live and le-Hayyim, to life, and the she-kol formula is recited, usually and appropriately over the round, whole egg. We rise from shiv’a, the week of mourning, and from sheloshim, the thirty day mourning period, and the shanah, the year, saying everyday the blessing that God made it all, from fish and fowl, beer and soda, milk and cheese, juice and soup, and yes, most candies. What were our rabbis not tiring of teaching us by reminding us to say one hundred statements praise and acknowledgment a day and that special blessing, she-ha-kol, which not a liturgical statement, but an attitude affirmation?

1. baruch atta ha-Shem - Praised are YOU, God

The Hebrew word, baruch, really carries two meanings. When humans speak to God, ti means “praise”: when God bestows a gift to humans, it is a blessing. We are encouraged to develop the attitudeofgratitude that gives us patience, the latitude to cope with the human condition. We then turn to God in the second person singular, YOU, not a being with a body, not a “to whom it may but probably does not concern,” not “the finite fiction of the power we would like to think makes for salvation,” and not a figment of our own finite imagination. This “ YOU” made the real world and gave the Torah to real people.

2. E-loheinu Melech ha-Olam - The God Who is king of the world

The “YOU” is king of the world. If we say this phrase one hundred times a day, perhaps we will take the meaning to heart once every day. It is not the mayor, governor, President, Prime Minister or any consensus who is king. The civil commander collects taxes; the “YOU” of the Torah is the melech malchei ha-melachim, the king who is king over the king, and the emperor, who may rule over kings. Pagans are told that kings are gods and they act accordingly and badly. This idea, that God is king liberates the thinking, praying and feeling Jew. God owns us and no person has a right to command our conscience; the commands of the real Commander trump the terror of tyrants, the precepts of the ultimate Power in the world preserve us, the perspective that faith makes us free of fear, though we walk in the shaded valley of deep darkness, we fear no evil, because YOU are with us. We can be exiled for two thousand years, ve-lo aveda tiqvateinu, our hope is not lost, like a Phoenix that is no myth, and with a desire that is no mere legend, we, the Jewish people, udim mutsalim me-esh, firebrands spared incineration, are the children who returned to their home, shavu banim ligvulam.

3. she-ha-kol nihyeh bidvaro - For everything occurs by His word

We do not understand the divine timetable, but we come to realize that there is a time to laugh and a time to cry, a time to live and time to die, a time to dance and a time to eulogize, because everything has a place in the divine scheme of things, “for everything occurs by His word.”

Among the “everything” that occurs by God’s word are [a] others and [b] ourselves. We live our lives being impacted by and by impacting others. Like God, Who is king of the world, we too are moral agents; everything is in the Hand [ = power, God does not have a physical hand] of Heaven except the divinely endowed human capacity to acknowledge, accept, and most importantly, act in harmony with that Hand, which is the awe that accompanies the appreciation for the King who is king of kings, the Holiness that is to be praised, ha-Qodesh baruch Hu.

Since other human beings have the capacity to be moral agents, carrying the King’s image, we are duty bound to be gracious to the King’s creatures and creation. In his wisdom, King Solomon taught lo’eg la-rash heref oseihu, one who meanly demeans a carrier of God’s image denies the authority, power, and privilege of the God that made that carrier of care.

For everything occurs by His world, except our choice to stray or obey, to acknowledge the King or make a god of bling, to be aware that all is occurring by His word or to pretend that we do not want to care, that we do not wish to see, that we do not want to care.

One of the “everythings” made by God are each one of us, commissioned by our Creator to care for God’s creatures, including ourselves. Human rulers tell us to be modest to them, to defer to politicians who claim speak in God’s voice, who assume the right to determine who will live and who will die, who in one’s time and who before one’s time.

If we are the moral agents charged with recognizing the King Who sits on High, we are commissioned to live the laws of the One for Whom everything occurs by His word, to place little sweets in God’s creation the task of which is to chase the bitterness of the human condition, to console the mourners, to look death in the face with faith and not fear. so that this season will enchant the world as the season and the world of rejoicing, so that we remember that everything occurs by His word, including that day when the all powerful and all merciful One and only one grants us the inheritance, yanhelenu, a day, an era, an epoch and an eternity, she-kullo tov, that is entirely good without evil, peace without war, love without hate, where there is light without darkness, and ultimately, life without death. God promised no less, because “everything occurs by his word.”

Our learned colleague, Rabbi David Willig, correctly bemoans the fact that Jews enter the synagogue for Yizkor, and then leave, emptying the sanctuary, depressing the communal mood, and diminishing the impact of the sacred Yom Kippur day upon those who observe it. I suggest that we view Yizkor, with all of its challenges, not as a threat but as the generative instrument that it potentially may become. Thank God that Jews walk through our doors for Yizkor, that the ever ha-meduldal, the Jewish identity hanging by the thread, is still connected. In many Conservative and Reform communities, Yizkor no longer carries a draw for the young people. Empty pews make empty coffers, and empty coffers close synagogues.

Yizkor is not a Halakhic requirement. Sefardim do not observe the rite and with good reason. Rabbi David HaLevi, former Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, argues that Ashkenazim would do well to abolish the rite, and with good reason. We do not mourn on Jewish religious holidays, en aveilut be-yom tov. Consider the anomaly that we do not say the Maleh memorial prayer during the happy month of Nisan except for the eighth day of Passover, a yom tov.

Practically, I observe Yizkor and say selected piyyutim because they are part of our folk religion and are not technically forbidden. I recommend that Yizkor be recited as a grateful commemoration, without tears, thereby conforming to the law while not doing violence to the ethnic religious social glue that Yizkor happens to provide.

When Jews of Ashkenazi background stop saying Yizkor, as nostalgia wanes and memories of tradition lapse, Jews forfeit their background. So I welcome Yizkor Jews because they are still coming through the synagogue doors, they are still open to being welcomed. We have to consider strategies of accommodation, which are honest to halakhah, Jewish law, and are appropriate to the spiritual space of those for Yizkor is the thread by which their Judaism hangs.

King Solomon suggested that we cast our bread upon the water. If we have not lost the memory, the embers of identity may yet be salvaged.