Many of you will remember that Yom Kippur 2022 was really quite extraordinary for me. As Rabbi at EHRS I didn’t turn up here for the day of Yom Kippur.
At 7:15 that morning I received the call from Watford General Hospital where I have been on the afternoon before leading Kol Nidre here at Shul, that my dad, Walter had died. Z’’L. He was 84 years old and had been living with dementia for the past five years, becoming increasingly frail.
For those who knew him in his lifetime it was very tough to witness. He had been such a vigorous man through his life, making a real difference in business and in the Jewish community. Without a moment’s hesitation my Clergy colleagues and the lay leaders of EHRS said – go be with your family we’ll cope. And more than cope they did – making a beautiful Yom Kippur day for the community.
My dad through his life liked to be in control of most things around him – perhaps somewhere up there dad was quite impressed at what he had done. There is an old Jewish tradition that to die on Yom Kippur indicates that you were a Tzadik, a righteous person in your life, but I’m not sure that was the reason for him. He was just very organized. It meant that our mum Rosemary, his wife of 61 years, and all of us children could then spend the whole day together, with no calls that we could make, no interruptions and not even worrying about food. Thank you Dad.
What did we do that day and for the days of shivah afterwards? Australian educator Ruth Wajnryb writes in her book ‘The Silence’: ‘It has often struck me that after someone dies—I mean a normal death, of old age, in peaceful circumstances—the close family needs to tell and retell and retell the circumstances of the death, and this is what they do as people come to offer consolation. The same story gets told, many, many times. Perhaps this is what grief needs to do to enable the bereaved to reach acceptance.’ That is just what we did.
Why does Ruth Wajnryb use the word ‘acceptance’? It is from the classic analysis of the five-step process of grieving for loss that was set out over 50 years ago by Elizabeth Kubler Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
We don’t all move through these stages in order and they are not meant to be prescriptive but they do help us to expect the jumble of emotions that we are going to feel in bereavement. And indeed we do hope to get to acceptance in the end. Dad’s not coming back and the rest of my, my mother and brother and sisters lives will have to be lived without his presence. In the end we need to accept this.
But there’s more, which brings us right here to Yom Kippur and to the process of the High Holydays. My colleague Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg’s father died a few years ago. He was grandfather and great grandfather to a number of members of the EHRS community. Jonathan writes (Listening for God in Torah and Creation, p370) that ‘Teshuvah, repentance, entails not just reflection on particular wrongs, but on the whole course of our life.’ He continues: ‘ That’s what my teacher meant, when at the [Shivah] prayers after my father died, he quietly said to me, ‘This is about Teshuvah’….This was time to ponder the big questions: Who am I? What am I doing with my days? Where’s my life going? This is why the Talmud describes Teshuvah as a process of healing, of learning from the past and turning our wrongdoings into signposts towards a more considered and generous way of life.’
This teshuvah process which bereavement begins is not just about ‘could I have done more for Dad in his last years’, though for many of us that question can be around. No this is about what the end of a loved one’s life asks us about our life.
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, here summarised, by Rabbi Aharon Ziegler, taught that the observance of Shiva, sheloshim [30 day period], and the year when one traditionally says kaddish for parents is not only a catharsis of sorrow, but also an expression of self-judgment and penitence.
Aveilut, the process of mourning, is intrinsically an expression of teshuvah [repentance]. The broken heart is a grieving heart, and a grieving heart seeks atonement.
As mourners we reflect on the moral tenor of our life, noting its shortcomings, and repenting for its failures. We think of our mortality and of our accountability and of the pressing need for a spirituality that includes our loss.
Upon completion of our self-judgment, our reflection and our teshuva, we then have the ability to request from God that “Bila HaMavet La’netzach, U’macha Adonai Dim’ah Mei’al Kol Panim” [May God swallow up death forever, and wipe away tears from all faces] (Isaiah 25:8)
Israeli educator Yael Shachar teaches that ‘In Teshuvah, we go through some of the same stages as in mourning. The stages are: acknowledge the mistake—it was the wrong thing to do; experience (but really experience) regret—I understand the full import of it and how great a mess I have made of things; reach a point where all of the regret, despair, grief, and longing to make right can find expression; become someone else, someone who even if brought to exactly the same circumstances, would not make the same mistake again.
And, like one in mourning for a part of ourselves—for the missed opportunity—we retell. We express the inner turmoil and make it concrete and real, and at the same time reach closure, or acceptance, with it. This is the last stage of teshuvah—the viddui. By telling we acknowledge our mistakes and their consequences, our wrong-turns and blind alleys, and by speaking them aloud, we take possession of them. But more, we bring them from the private space of our regret into the public space of communal existence, allowing them to enter the memory of our community. [All day today we have confessed ‘ Al Chet Shechatanu L’fanecha’ the sin that we have committed against you.] It takes courage to do this, but it is also supremely healing.
Pirkei Avot (2:15) teaches us to “Make teshuvah the day before your death.” Rabbi Rachel Barenblat comments – ‘But who among us knows when the day of our death will be? Therefore Judaism calls us to make teshuvah everyday. To do the inner work of self-reflection, and the outer work of changing and making amends, all the time.’ The bereavements that we have commemorated and recognised today here in our Yizkor remind us that we do not have forever to change, to be at one with ourselves and God.
Above our Ark in the Beit Tefillah at EHRS the words da lifnei Mi atah omed say ‘know before whom you stand.’ As Rabbi Wittenberg says: ‘If we stand before God then don’t intentionally hurt anyone, don’t shut people down, don’t be silent when you should speak out, ask gentle questions (Isaiah 40:2), have the Torah of loving kindness on your tongue (Proverbs 31:26), be open to feedback. I would want a conscience that does not self-deceive – not to aim to get away with it, I would want a pure heart (Psalm 51:12)’ – and let this teshuvah reconnect us with the Source of all life, my dad’s, mine and all of us.
