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	Rabbi
	Amy R. Bernstein
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FROM THE RABBIS STUDY

Having just come through the High Holidays we are celebrating Sukkot that, like every Jewish festival, ends with a memorial service called yizkor. This service was designed by our Sages in their great wisdom so that as we celebrate our bounty we are also given an opportunity to remember those we miss so much at every important occasion in our lives. Jewish tradition went further though and made yizkor a requirement for those of us who have lost immediate family members. So at the time of our being commanded to rejoice we are also commanded to remember those who have died.

In honor of Eliana’s second birthday (which was the day after Yom Kippur) I was reviewing some footage of her naming service here at Temple. Many of you know that Eliana was named for my father and his mother, Mama Fay. That Eliana’s birthday always falls close to the memorial service in which I ritually honor the memory of her namesakes continues to be a fertile source of reflection for me.

Usually I feel a great deal of sadness that Ellie will know neither of these people who would have loved her so much. But this year I found myself thinking that since they can’t be here to know her I will give her what none of us has while we’re alive - a grandfather and great grandmother with their rough edges sanded smooth by loving memory. This is what we all hope that time and our best intentions might eventually do for us while we’re alive and I wonder how many of us will die feeling that we’ve actually achieved it. Because he’s gone I’ll be able to give (the child) Eliana the best of my father. Because he’s gone I’ll teach her only what was best in his nature and because he’s gone she will be free of the tangle of loving tensions we inevitably experience with the living. When she’s older and can learn from the more difficult aspects of my relationship with my father, I can tell her what is appropriate as it informs her life and my own relationship with her. Until then, her Grandpa will be a source of only good things, funny sayings, playful little rituals, and random pieces of historical trivia, love of Japanese art and unconditional love. So, ultimately, what is a personal tragedy for me - that he died before he knew her - may be a kind of triumph for him in the end. Maybe it will allow him to be better than his own biography (and hence his limitations) could ever have allowed him to be - or will allow any of us to be.

I think some of this may lie at the heart of the Jewish commandment to remember our dead. Maybe the Rabbis were giving all of our departed beloved a gift and in so doing giving us an opportunity to heal deep wounds inflicted by the sharper edges of our closest relationships. Their commandment yizkor, to remember, may not necessarily mean to remember exactly the way it was, all of it, but the parts that can have a real impact now, the ones that can affirm and further life now. Maybe that’s what yizkor is really all about - the commandment to remember what will help those who come after us to live better. I find myself hoping that I leave enough behind that there’s plenty of material out of which to create a better me for those who will never know me as I really am. And I hope Eliana and anyone else who honors my memory after I’m gone will do that memory and the ones who invoke it the great service of doing what I cannot while I’m alive - the loving service of sifting my character and holding the dross separate until it can be used as material for teaching. In this way we are truly remembered for life. And in this way is our memory most truly a blessing. It is this that both comforts and challenges me as we leave the Jewish holidays and approach the secular holiday of gratitude- Thanksgiving, another time which is hard for us who still love people that are gone. May the memories of everyone we have lost and who we love so much be for us and for those who come after us a real and enduring blessing.

Updated September 12, 2006