Yom Kippur Yizkor 5765-2004

Sermon: Rabbi Philip Pohl

YOM KIPPUR YIZKOR 5765 – 2004

When I was a youngster growing up in Buffalo, we would travel to Canada frequently. The most common route called for us to cross the Peace Bridge which connected downtown Buffalo to Canada by traversing the Niagara River.

We would drive over the bridge and when we arrived at its midpoint, there were several flags, including the flags of the United States and Canada.

Once we would pass the flags on the way to Canada, my sisters and I began to scream, “We’re in Canada now, we’re in Canada now!”

On the way home we would perform the same ritual, and at the appropriate moment begin to declare, “We’re in the United States now. We’re in the United States now!”

In a technical sense, I guess this was accurate, but it didn’t really feel as if we were legally and formally in Canada on the way there, or back in the United States on the way home, until we went through the customs inspection.

The Ten Days of Repentance, which begin with Rosh Hashanah and conclude today on Yom Kippur, serve as the bridge from one year to the next in our lives, collectively and individually.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is similar to the experience of getting through the examination and questioning from the customs official.

In this case, the customs official who is questioning all of us is God, but the questions are pretty much the same –

Who are you, and how can you prove who you are as you enter this new land?

What do you have to declare?

Are you ready to experience this transition?

Are you ready to truly end the year 5764 and begin something new?

Will 5765 be a new year of life, or just an additional year of life?

These are the questions I ponder while reviewing a book I read this past year. The title of the book is The Way of Transition. The subtitle of the book is “Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments.” The author of the book is William Bridges.

Through his research and his writing, William Bridges has become an expert, and an author of several other books on the phenomenon of transition.

Isn’t it extremely appropriate for an expert on transition to have the last name “Bridges?” After all, very often it is a bridge that is needed to help make the transition from one place to another, as I described a moment ago.

The Way of Transition, the book by William Bridges is a worthwhile read at any time of the year.

Its themes are especially pertinent during these Ten Days of Repentance.
Listen carefully to the next several paragraphs that come directly from the author’s writing. Then I’ll comment, and eventually I’ll get to other main part of my presentation to you this morning - and that is, a prayer we all know and soon will recite.

Before I read though, let me set up the comments by William Bridges by reminding everyone of the major change we experienced here at B’nai Shalom of Olney this past year and are experiencing right now, at this moment.

This is the first time a Yom Kippur Yizkor service is being held in this Sanctuary, the first time it’s being held in the main synagogue building of B’nai Shalom of Olney ever in its history.

When we discussed the many details leading to this huge change of venue, and the new schedule for the high holy day services, frequently some form of the following statement was offered, depending upon the argument or discussion at the moment –

“Everyone dislikes change.”

Very seldom do people argue with that statement. Change is very difficult and it is one of the reasons why the high holy day services are so intriguing to us personally and otherwise.

We know we need to change, we procrastinate and we dislike it. It’s hard work despite our knowledge of its necessity.

So now let’s go to William Bridges –

“Having worked with both individuals and organizations on transition-related problems for 25 years, I would say that most people do not resist change. What we resist is transition. ‘Transition’ and ‘change’ are words that are often used as though they were synonymous, but they really aren’t.

Change is a situational shift:

Getting a new boss is a change, and so is receiving a promotion or losing your job;

Moving to a different house is a change, and so is remodeling your house, losing it in a fire; (or in a hurricane)

Having a new child is a change for everyone in the family – including the new baby, who was pretty well situated before all the change took place;

And, of course, losing a loved one is a change, a huge one.

Transition on the other hand, is the process of letting go of the way things used to be and then taking hold of the way they subsequently become.

In between the letting go and the taking hold again, there is a chaotic but potentially creative ‘neutral’ zone. When things aren’t the old way / but aren’t really a new way yet either / this three-phase process / ending / neutral zone / beginning again – is transition.

Transition is the way that we all come to terms with change. Without transition, a change is mechanical, superficial, empty. If transition does not occur or if it is begun but aborted, people end up (mentally and emotionally) back where they started, and the change doesn’t work.

In spite of the new boss (or the new house, or the new baby) nothing is really different.”

One more paragraph from Bridges for right now –

“When we resist transition, we resist one or more of the three phases of its makeup. We may resist letting go of the old; we may resist the confusion of the in-between neutral zone state; or we may resist the uncertainties of making a risky new beginning. We resist transition not because we can’t accept a change, but because we can’t accept letting go of that piece of ourselves that we have to give up / when and because the situation has changed.”

I suppose that for many of us during this past year, at least some situation has changed. For some of us it may have been a major change, such as the loss of a job, or the graduation of a child from high school or college, or a marital breakup, or the loss of a loved one, or the marriage to a loved one, or the birth of a child.

Obviously some of these events are changes we dread; others are changes we anticipate with great joy as we move through our lives.

But they are very difficult because in the transition that accompanies the change, we have to give up something from within ourselves, a piece of us that has to die because the situation has changed.

Every year on Yom Kippur I’m really supposed to think about the part of me that needs to die. That’s really what this day represents – leaving behind those aspects of my existence which stand in the way of my relationship with God and with other human beings.

We all examine ourselves, look deep inside, and say, this part of me has to come to an end and it’s time for a new beginning. But in between that end and beginning is a chaotic no-man’s land that William Bridges has so keenly identified as being the most difficult of all aspects of transition.

Have we succeeded in repenting just by beating our breasts and confessing in traditional familiar language?

Or does the success of repentance need to be determined, not by how we feel tomorrow, but how we feel tomorrow, after tomorrow, after tomorrow.

Yom Kippur is important because of the transition experienced, as we say in the Kol Nidre prayer, “Mi Yom Kippurim zeh…. Ad Yom Kippurim Ha-ba alaynu l’tova –
from this Yom Kippur to next.”

Let me share an example of transition, as opposed to change, that is related to the major theme of this day – remembering our loved ones.

I was reminded of a comment by a long-time friend and rabbinic colleague who, many years ago, shared with me the following insight after the death of his father.

This rabbi told me that as sad as he was upon the death of his father he had settled into a different sense as well, a sense of liberation, I suggested, and he agreed. He was now the father in the family.

The change he experienced was the death of his father, the transition was in becoming the father. The first happened overnight, the second did not.

Now I’d like to read two more paragraphs from the beginning of William Bridges’ book, The Way of Transition. And these two paragraphs will lead right into the theme of Yom Kippur that brings so many of you to shul –

“Tradition does not require that you reject or deny the importance of your old life, just that you let go of it. Far from rejecting it, you are likely to do better with the ending if you honor the old life for all that it did for you. It got you this far. It brought you everything you have. But now, although it may be some time before you are comfortable actually doing so – it is time for you to let go of it. Your old life is over. No matter how much you would like to continue it or rescue it, or fix it, it’s time to let it go.

Whether letting go will be entirely subjective and internal or whether it will lead to further external changes may at first not be clear. Many people leap to the conclusion that ‘it is over’ means that the life situation has to go. They get divorced. They walk out of the office, never to return. They leave the church. They abandon their education. They leave their country. They do these things, even though all that they were being called on to do was to leave the relation that they had to these things. Even when the ending is literal, as it is in death, the most important relinquishment is not of the person / but of the life that you shared with that person.”

The change is that a loved one dies. The transition is learning to live with that death.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, may be one of the reasons why the Mourner’s Kaddish, the Kaddish prayer in any of its forms, including the Mourner’s Kaddish, does not mention death. It is not about death.

The funeral is about death. Burial is about death. The ceremony of kriah, of tearing a garment and saying the blessing “Baruch atah Adonai…dayan ha-emet (translate) as …
the ultimate judge.”

All of that is about death. Mourner’s Kaddish is not recited until after the burial takes place, at the cemetery for the first time, but after burial. Mourner’s Kaddish is not about death, it is about the transition to a life after the death of someone we love.

So often people will tell me that the Mourner’s Kaddish is not necessary to be recited for any length of time because that’s not what the deceased would have wanted. I’m smart enough and experienced enough to know that’s euphemistic for, that’s not what I, the mourner, the survivor, want to do!

It may not be what the deceased wanted, but the Mourner’s Kaddish is not really for the deceased. Yes I know the teaching that every time you say Kaddish it raises the soul higher and higher to heaven.

That may be true. I’d like to believe it, and I can believe it, but I can’t prove it. What I can prove, is that reciting Mourner’s Kaddish is a statement which declares and recognizes the need for transition from life with the loved one / to life without the loved one.

It means not only that you miss the loved one so very much, which of course you do, but you now are beginning to learn what it means to live a life with that loved one no longer alive. It means you begin to recognize the impact of that loved one on your life in ways that were not discernible despite all you shared, despite all you did, despite all your love for the loved one while that person was alive.

You can never fully know what your relationship is and continues to be with your loved one, your husband or your wife, your mother or your father, your brother or your sister, your child, your friend, your teacher, your partner, until that person dies and your life has changed.

Now I’ve already mentioned that Kaddish does not include a reference to death. That is actually quite well known and many people are aware of that. Before I point out something else that seems to be missing from the Kaddish prayer, something surprising I think, let me just remind you that the Kaddish prayer occurs in its different forms throughout a traditional Jewish prayer service.

There is not just the Mourner’s Kaddish, but there is also the Reader’s Kaddish which usually comes after every Amidah, the Hatzi Kaddish which introduces a service like the Torah service or introduces the Amidah.

There are other forms as well and we recite the Kaddish often – when? We recite the Kaddish at times of transition in the service. We recite the Kaddish in its different formats when we make the transition within one part of a service, or from one service to another.

In other words, the purpose and function of the Kaddish prayer is really the same whether it’s recited by the mourner and for the mourner, or whether it’s recited by the leader of the service for the congregation. It takes us through a period of transition.

As one service or one part of a service ends during worship, we take a moment to reorient ourselves and create a transitional period before we begin something new again.

And for the mourner who is searching for God after the experience of a deep loss, Kaddish declares, for the mourner, and by the mourner, I’m in transition and I’m trying to make sense out of life that no longer includes one of my loved ones.

It is an understanding that when your loved one dies, so much else changes in your life. It is an understanding that all your other relationships will probably change as well.

When your mother dies, your relationship with your father changes and vice versa.

When your spouse dies, your relationship with your child or children changes.

When your child dies, your relationship with your spouse changes.

When your sibling dies, your relationship with parents and your other siblings will change as well.

Everything continues to be in transition long after the change is experienced.

Kaddish also doesn’t mention something else as I said earlier. It doesn’t mention God, at least not directly. God’s name is not mentioned in this prayer at all. It may say so in English, but it’s not that way in Hebrew. God is constantly and only referred to in the third person in this prayer, without any reference to God’s name. There is no word “Adonai” in the Mourner’s Kaddish prayer.

Yitkadal v’yitkadash sh’may rabbah means may his name be sanctified and magnified. It refers, in the third person, to God’s name, but doesn’t mention it.

You know I only realized that this past year. All these years of reciting Kaddish, hearing Kaddish, reading Kaddish, and I didn’t realize that God’s name was virtually absent from this prayer.

And I think I know why God’s name is missing. Because there is a sense on the part of the mourner, probably, that God is missing, and that we’re searching for God at this time.

We know that God is out there and the experience of God can be part of our lives and hopefully will be part of our lives, but we are in a period of transition, and whatever experience of God is awaiting us – it will not be the same as the experience of God we had before when our loved one was alive.

And that continues on for years and years to come, as all of you who attend yizkor services year after year will attest. The transition of living without a loved one who was once part of your daily life, continues from year to year to year in your lives. And you understand that, and you know that, and you experience that more on yizkor, than on any other day of the year.

It is something I guess we learn to live with, but never fully really get used to.

Kaddish is recited to help the transition of the soul of the deceased, and to help in our transition from mourning to healing.

Yizkor is the realization that a piece of this is always in transition, and it never fully settles.

William Shakespeare wrote, “He that lacks time to mourn lacks time to mend!”

In essence, each and every day is in itself an experience of transition. Every day has a beginning, for some of us just a little earlier than for others. And we work through the events and experiences of that day until we come to the end of the day.

And after the end, when we go to sleep and before a new beginning, there is an in-between state of sleep which is death-like.

As I have shared with you before, the Talmud teaches that sleep is actually an experience that is 1/60th that of death. And we must go through that in-between no-man’s land of sleep before another new day is to begin.

Each and every day is like that. We begin, we live our lives for that day, we end the day, we enter the no-man’s land, and we awake again to a new day.

In this way, transition is always a part of our lives and as William Bridges states at the end of his book, perhaps that is as good a definition of transition, to end with as there is: “the natural process by which one dies to a new life.”

We gather together today in prayer remembering our loved ones who have died, and who have entered a new life. That experience creates transition for each and every one of us as we recognize on this Day of Atonement that part of us also dies now as we are ready to enter and begin a new portion of life, not only a new day, but a new year.

Now perhaps we can understand what it means to declare, as we will tonight, that we shall be sealed for a new year. Let us release those parts of us which need to die. Let us be ready to welcome that portion of our life which we will need to create anew.

Then perhaps the year will be sealed for us, in goodness, in blessing and in peace.