Crowns of Love (Yom Kippur Yizkor 5786)

Crowns of Love
Rabbi Hilly Haber, Yom Kippur Yizkor 5786

We begin with a poignant story told by our Sages in the Talmud. When Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, he watches God inscribe each letter of the sacred text. Moses is surprised to see God adorn certain letters with crowns. “Lord of the Universe,” Moses asks, “why are you adding these crowns? Is there anything lacking in the Torah that makes these ornaments necessary?”

God replies, “One day, many generations from now, a great teacher of Torah will derive hundreds of insights into Jewish law from each crown. Akiva ben Yosef is his name.”

“Show him to me,” replies Moses. And in an instant, Moses is transported some 1500 years into the future, to the beit midrash of Rabbi Akiva. He sits down in the back row of the study house—but as the students and their teacher discuss the text, Moses cannot follow the argument, and he feels increasing despair. Then a student asks Akiva on a point of law, “How do you know this?” And Akiva answers, “Because it is was given to Moses at Sinai.” And Moses is comforted. Hundreds of generations after his death, he is not forgotten. Even the great Moshe Rabbenu, it seems, has this simple human wish: he wants to be remembered.¹

To be present at a Yizkor service makes a profound statement to all the ones we have loved and lost: you are remembered. I am here today because your life matters to me. Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur teaches that the Hebrew word for generation, dor, comes from the world of basket-weaving, “evoking rows of reeds or straw intertwined with the preceding row…each new row attached to the one that generated it.”² Today, at this sacred time of remembrance, the generations are woven together.

As a people we have always been intertwined, connected by the fibers of memory—so fragile, and so very strong. It is through memory that we also remain connected to the dead, and this has been true throughout our history. After the fall of Jerusalem, the poet of the biblical Book of Lamentations inscribed on the pages of sacred text, the memory of the once vibrant city, and those who lived there. As early as the 13th century, Ashkenazi communities compiled memory-books, like the ones you are holding in your hands, listing the names of community members who had perished during waves of persecution.

In the years after the Holocaust, these chronicles took on new meaning and a new name: yizkor bikher, Yizkor books. They were compiled by immigrant networks New York City and across the United States called landsmanshaftn, mutual aid societies made up of people who came from the same town in the old country. As members of the landsmanshaftn heard of the destruction of their communities in Europe, they created memorial books, recalling on paper the people and places they left behind that no longer existed. Hundreds of Yizkor books were published, containing vivid recollections from thousands of Jews who lived in the United States, Israel, and across the world.

The mission of these books was to preserve and honor, bearing witness to the world the Nazis had destroyed. Their contributions transcend communal divisions and ideological differences that existed within their towns. As one historian writes, contributors knew that “every religious and political faction, every individual from the 2 Delphine Horvilleur, Living With Our Dead, 55 town rabbi to the assimilationist lawyer to the ragtag water carrier, had been an essential part of the town’s genius. ‘Every shtetl had its madman,’ reads one account. ‘Our town was small so our meshuger was only half-crazy.”³

A Yizkor book from the town of Koriv is dedicated to the townspeople who were murdered and buried in an unmarked mass grave. It reads: “Beloved and precious martyrs of Koriv, we bring you burial today! In a Yizkor book, a memorial volume! Today we have set up a tombstone in memory of you.”⁴

The Yizkor books composed by the last Jewish survivors of hundreds of towns across Europe, pay tribute to the power of memory. Carefully and lovingly, just as God inscribed crowns on the letters of Torah, its authors adorned their towns with symbolic crowns, recalling the strength, the beauty, the grace of people and places that had been turned to ashes.

Each of us here today possesses our own personal Yizkor book—a chronicle we carry, in our minds and hearts, of our relationships with those who have died. Our own Yizkor books are never finished. We inscribe new pages as we hear new stories, tell and re-tell the old ones; discover photos, letters, documents, and heirlooms; gain deeper understanding; consider and re-consider what this relationship means to us. Like the Yizkor books of old, ours need not paper over conflicts and tensions in the relationship. We remember the ones we loved, including those we loved in complicated ways, in all their fullness. This honesty is an act of tribute. But tradition also encourages us to try, as best we can, to add crowns to the letters in our personal Yizkor books; to adorn our memories of the lives now ended. We can search out the goodness and beauty in those lives; recall moments of generosity and kindness, courage and spirit, humor and healing. We can be their living memorial, bringing their best qualities to life through our own deeds.

I am among those of you who mourn today. My grandmother, Alice, passed away in February. She loved our Central community and watched services every week from her home in Maryland. After giving a sermon or leading prayer, I could count on an email from her, words of praise and encouragement waiting in my inbox:

Dear Hilly,
Rabbi Buchdahl was incredible tonight. Please say hi.
Love Grandma.

Our relationship was not uncomplicated, but it was Central that brought us closer together. In 2023, my grandmother published her third collection of the many letters to newspaper editors that she wrote in her 91 years. After going through her last book, I think I understand why my grandma collected and published these submissions. Like all of us, she wanted to be remembered; she wanted to be remembered honestly, and she wanted to be remembered with love. So I honor her today, in all her fullness—for the person she was, and the person she wanted to be. You can get a glimpse of her spirit in the dedication to her last book: There are things that have made my life very beautiful, and some which have brought me much pain… But, I am still around, and I will use the rest of my days to do the best that I can.’”

Together, each of us can hold close to our hearts the beloved, precious, imperfect individuals who are woven into our lives forever. What was beautiful in their souls endures in us. We can embrace the Torah they taught us, cherish the memories they leave us, and adorn them with crowns of love.

Recalling Yom Kippur on the pages of a Yizkor book dedicated to her hometown of Zborow, Leah Gang wrote:

It's time to pray. A spirit of holiness fills the air…This mysterious spirit…evokes memories of our town and its unique magic year after year. It has taken root in my soul and connected my life with my fellow townspeople–our martyrs who are no longer with us.

That mysterious spirit is with us now. The gates are open for a few more minutes. Life and death touch. May we carry the legacies of our loved ones with us into this new year. May we find acceptance and peace within ourselves. In these moments of Yizkor, we stand woven together with all the generations of our people, grateful for the gift of life that is still ours. For the book of our life is still being written. And as my grandmother said, may we use the rest of our days to do the best that we can.

¹ BT Menahot 29b
² Delphine Horvilleur, Living With Our Dead, 55
³ Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, From a Ruined Garden; the Memorial Books of Polish Jewry, 10
⁴ Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, From a Ruined Garden; the Memorial Books of Polish Jewry, 19