What Do You Do When You Go To A Cemetery?
Yizkor - Yom Kippur - 5770
September 28th, 2009
What do you do when you go to a cemetery? Especially when it isn’t an unveiling and I’m not there to conduct a service. What do you do?
My earliest memories are of going to Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, New York where my maternal grandfather, Abraham Liebhoff is buried. We would pick up my grandmother in Boro Park, Brooklyn and drive to Queens, across the highway from the 1964/1965 World’s Fair. We used to joke that he had the best seat in the house. We walked the short distance from the road. First, my parents and grandmother would ‘inspect the stone.’ Nothing ever changed. Then my father would pull any weeds growing in the bed of ivy. My brother and I just stood and watched. Then my brother and I were prompted to talk about what had happened in our lives since we were last there. My parents would ask us about this and that. It was as if my grandfather was listening in. It would be a long time until I learned a relevant Talmudic teaching. God forbid if we left out any details. In the early years, when there were still empty plots, my parents and grandmother would discuss if they knew those recently buried. We didn’t say any prayers. Just stood there. By some unwritten code, they decided that it was time to leave. My father always kept a bag of rocks from the backyard in the trunk and we would take a stone and put it on the top of the monument. I always wondered what happened to the ones we had put there the last time. That’s a subject for another sermon. Then we walked back to the car.
It was later that I learned that the mitzvah we were fulfilling has a distinct name: kever avot. It is a mitzvah enfolded in a minhag, custom, to do this not only before the Yom Tov season but also at yahrtzeit and before most important events in one’s life. Before I left for Israel in 1968 and 1973, before Ruby and I were married, and before Tzeira left for Israel in 2007 I visited the graves of my grandparents, my paternal great grandparents, my father, Ruby’s mother and grandparents, my uncle and other family members. After getting to New York, it is a full day’s drive from cemetery to cemetery to ‘do‘ kever avot.
At all but one, we follow the family pattern that I learned at my grandfather’s grave. I sometimes even remember to bring stones from Richmond to New York. I now include some prayers, Psalm 23, and El Moleh for each one. All their Hebrew names are engraved so I can say it easily. ‘Doing’ kever avot for my father is, eighteen years after his death, still not easy. After relating all the important events of my life since I stood at his grave last, I cry. I don’t do it at the other graves, but at my father’s grave I cry. As I stand there and think of the special moments in my life: when I was a little boy; when I assumed my student pulpit; of the births, brit milah and naming of Menachem, Yonina and Tzeira, I see every moment. When I think of his death at the age of 67, and all that he missed since then, my neshama is provoked to endless tears.
My father is not the youngest person I ever buried. My mother-in-law was younger. Perhaps, besides our own bond as father and son, and that I missed having my father at my side for so many special moments in my life, thinking of the prematuredness of his death brings me to recall so many of the young people for whom I have officiated and the injustice of all their early deaths, and further provokes my tears. I miss my father dearly. Through the years of my Rabbinate I particularly miss and am pained by those who died, in the words of the Unetaneh Tokef, “before their days.” I don’t know how we are supposed to calculate “in their time,“ but I can certainly calculate when it is too soon. It is difficult for the religious person who accepts the belief in a good and just God as a fundamental axiom of a life of faith, to stand before the ‘early’ graves. I have no words to assuage the pain, and so I cry. It expresses all the feelings and all the emotions for which I have no words, that for which words can do no justice.
Maybe tears are meant to be therapeutic. Not only do they literally wash my eyes, trying not to rub them red, but they figuratively ‘wash my soul.’ The act of crying releases my pent up feelings of anger, of disappointment, of longing. My internal compass fluctuates wildly and then, after the tears, settles down in a steady place. When Ted Kennedy died and was buried 100 feet from Bobby and 200 feet from John I was transported back to the days of their deaths, and felt again the pain that I remember from my youth. I could not restrain the tears. Not so much because of Ted Kennedy, but his death was the doorway to events of yesteryear. I felt that ache when I stood before the eternal flame on Arlington Cemetery. There is something unresolved, unfinished, imperfect, unacceptable, and there is nothing that I can do to balance history, to right the wrong, or rewrite the script. Tears are the only tool in my human arsenal.
Tears and stories. Stories can express ideas better that philosophical tracts. Stories can allow our imaginations to roam; they can propose responses to our existential dilemma that are not bound by fact or logic. Stories help me cope with life. I share this with you.
The story is by Shloyme-Znavel Rapaport, better known as S. Ansky. It is entitled:
“Dos Lebn fun a mentsh,” - “A Person’s Life.”
When the time comes for a person to be born, God calls the angel named Night and says, “A person is going to be formed from such and such a drop. Bring the drop to the Throne of Glory.”
The angel brings the drop to the Throne of Glory, and God decides whether the person will be male or female, weak or strong, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly. But God doesn’t decide whether the person will be good or bad.
Then God calls the angel in charge of souls and says, “Hurry and bring me such and such a soul from the great storehouse.”
The angel brings the soul to the Throne of Glory, and God says, “Soul! Go into this drop. This will be your home as long as this person lives.”
The soul says, “Lord of all worlds. I am very satisfied here. Please don’t bring me into this drop. I want to stay where I am.”
And God answers, “The drop that I am bringing you into is also an endless world. And I created you for this very drop.”
The soul cries, and all the other souls and the angels cry, too. But God forces the soul to go into the drop. Then He calls the angel named Night and commands him to return the drop to the womb of the mother, and that is the moment when the baby begins to be formed.
God gives the unborn infant two guardians, and angel of light and an angel of sadness.
Every day they carry the unborn infant with them and show it all the joy and suffering in the world. And every night they light a candle over the unborn infants’ head. They teach it the entire Torah and tell it all the secrets of creation. And when the nine months are completed, the angel named Night comes and says, “Do you know me?”
“I know you. Why have you come?”
The angel says, “It is time for you to be born. You have to go into the world of human beings.”
And the unborn infant says, “I am very satisfied here. Please don’t take me into the world of people. I want to stay here.”
The angel answers, “The world that I am taking you into is a world of life and good actions. God created you for this very world.”
The unborn infant cries, and all the other unborn infants and the angels cry, too. But God calls the angel named Night and he extinguishes the candle. Then comes Purah, the angel of forgetfulness and as if he were flicking a stone off his thumb with his forefinger taps the unborn infant just over the lips, and it immediately forgets everything it saw and heard. It forgets the Torah that it was taught and all the secrets of creation. But an echo of all that it saw and learned stays with it in the deep stronghold of its heart.
Then the person is born and passes through seven worlds.
In the first world, the person is like anew emperor, greeted with joy and gifts.
In the second world, the person is like a goat who feeds in the muck at the riverside; jumping for joy, without a care, and eating grass that he didn’t plant.
In the third world the person is like a young colt who feels free and happy. Nothing holds him back.
In the fourth world the person is like a fast horse that trots easily pulling a wagon behind him. He doesn’t feel the weight of the people in the wagon.
In the fifth world the person is like a donkey heaped with burdens. He moves slowly and is whipped by his driver.
In the sixth world, the person is like a dog that drags off everything he can get and barks at everyone who comes near him.
In the seventh world the person is like a monkey, human in appearance, but not quite a human being. He loses his good sense, everyone laughs at him and no one obeys him.
Then comes the time to die. The angel named Night comes to the person again and says, “Do you know me?”
“I know you. Why did you come?”
“I came to take you away from this world.”
The person doesn’t want to leave the world and says, “You took me away from two worlds against my will. I want to stay in this one.”
And the person cries bitterly, but no one living hears him because every heart would break if they did. Only the rooster that crows at night hears the person’s cries and answers.
And the angel named Night says to the person, “You were created against your will, you lived against your will, and now against your will you have to die and give a reckoning to the King enthroned above kings of kings, blessed be His Name.”
And the angel takes the person’s soul.
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This story is instructional and even inspirational.
We don’t ask to be born and we don’t ask to die. God is there from before the beginning. God is there after the end. It is God who sent us to this world and it is God who summons us back to Him. Between beginning and end our decisions and our deeds are in our hands. We cried not wanting to enter this world. We cry not wanting to leave it. And the angels of heaven cry with us. Perhaps when I cry at my father’s grave, I am not crying alone. Maybe his neshama and the angels are crying with me too. And even if all the tears in heaven and on earth cannot change history, I feel better believing that I am not alone. I feel better having released the pent up emotions, having opened my heart. Perhaps even God cries with us. It is our tears that reveal our deepest humanity as we yearn for eternity.
So what do you do when you go to a cemetery? This is what I do and why I do it. But it is a question that each of you can answer with your own personal story. We remember. We pray. We put rocks. We cry. Yet there is another minhag when we visit a cemetery. As we leave we pull a few strands of grass and toss it away to remind us of the verse that our lives are as grass that exist briefly. But in this brief lifespan, as measured by the stars, as measured by God, we find the loves of our lives and perform beautiful mitzvot and exquisite deeds. Between the two eternities of past and future, we live purposeful and meaningful lives within the unknown but allotted span. As the Psalmist says, “Hazorim b’demah, b’rinah yiktzoru.” “Those who sow with tears, will reap with joy.”
May we know fewer tears and greater joy.
May we cry with those who cry.
May we give them our shoulders and they share theirs with us.
May we find peace and tranquility. Amen.