YIZKOR: AN ESSAY
By: Suri Davis
It has been a year and a half since my father, ZTL, passed away, and since I started saying Yizkor for him. As Orthodox Jews, we are taught that the soul is eternal. We know from the Book of Jeremiah, and Rachel’s tears upon the horizon, that her soul is eternally begging G-d for the Jewish redemption, for the return of her children to their historic Jewish homeland.
Yizkor reminds us that we are part of a Jewish and family continuum. Let me share my thoughts in this regard.
In the beginning, G-d created man out of dust from all the four corners of the earth, so he would lead the creations, and feel responsible for sustaining earth.
G-d blew into man a soul.
During his life, man lives with this conflict of body and soul. The body realizes its time is finite, a speck in history and wants to party like its 1999.
The soul knows that it is eternal.
The body races to its trajectory returning to dust, while the soul’s job is to aspire higher, to return to G-d, leaving the world a better place, and the soul elevated and more perfect.
The body is hedonism and entropy,
The soul is the Jewish concept of Tikun Olam, repairing society and leaving the world a better place than when it entered the body and re-entered this physical world.
The body is selfish
The soul, universal, communal, causing flight in spirituality.
I am an Elder Law Attorney. I have many clients who survived the Holocaust. I asked them what motivated them to get up each morning. It wasn’t happiness, nor contentment, nor satiation,
IT WAS HOPE.
Their senses felt torture, they saw their landsman go up in flames in crematoria, they smelled the burning bodies, they heard torture and tasted doom.
We say that hope springs eternal, what we might consider is that the soul is the source of hope and hope personified, and it too springs eternal.
Hope is the other side of the Emunah coin. Emunah is the umbilical cord of our soul attached to G-d, hope is how we survive here on earth until our soul is able to return to its creator. Not coincidentally, it is the title of the Israel National Anthem. For in every generation there are enemies who rise up to destroy, and our hope emanating from faith, is that G-d will repeatedly hopefully eventually, will save us from their plans and hands.
Some of you will not believe that there is life after death, while all is in G-d’s hands, our ancestors can pray on our behalf and in their own merit. We go to the graves of righteous people, not to pray to them, but to pray to G-d, using the merit of the deceased righteous Rabbi or family member.
I have many stories from my law practice from clients where souls are connected, as an example, Ida was married to Adam, they were both Holocaust survivors. Adam died twenty years before Ida, and Ida became terminally ill. Her children decided to place Ida on hospice and told her so the week before. She had been mostly incommunicative, but when was told about hospice, replied, there was no need for hospice because Adam informed her, they were going to see each other soon. Two hours later, she died. There are many other stories.
Souls are connected here on Earth. We are used to our souls coming and going, for each night, the soul returns to heaven, and each morning we thank G-d, via the prayer of Modeh Ani, for returning our souls to us. What’s interesting is that for many years, I thought the last two words, Rabbah Emunatechah, meant we have great faith in You, G-d. Not so. The words mean that You, G-d, have great faith in us, i.e., that you have returned our soul to us having great faith that we will continue to use our souls to increase our own merit here on earth and the merits that the soul collects when it is returned to earth, that which it needs to perfect itself and maximize its potential. The souls remain connected when they return to HKBH in heaven.
The Torah discusses the wise heart. One wonders, isn’t wisdom in the brain? Rationalism is in the brain, true great wisdom is tempered by a knowing heart, knowing what is right and wrong, knowing what is beyond the physical senses, battling the physical desires to aspire higher and actualize our and our soul’s potential here on earth, which isn’t merely the self, but what we were placed on earth to accomplish for the collective.
Jews have a prayer for departed souls which is said on Jewish Festivals, Yizkor which includes the following:
- G-d, what is man that You recognize him? The son of a frail human that You reckon with him
- Man is like a breath, his days are like a passing shadow
- In the morning it blossoms and is rejuvenated, by evening it is cut down and brittle
- According to the count of our days, so may you teach us
- Then we shall acquire a heart of wisdom
- Safeguard the perfect and watch the upright, for the destiny of that man is peace
- Thus the dust returns to the ground as it was, and the spirit returns to G-d who gave it.