MISSING FACES IN THE PHOTOS
Yom Kippur Yizkor 5774
Rabbi Elliot Strom
Twenty feet from Stardom is a wonderful, joyous, sometimes sobering film about the lives of the largely unknown singers who backed up the great rock stars of the 60’s and 70’s. Interestingly, the opening credits appear over images of the iconic album covers from the era with the faces of the lead singers blackened out and only those of the backup singers showing. It’s a pretty stunning way to get our attention and to remind us that this film is going to focus on (you should pardon the expression) the “unsung” heroes of the music world and not the stars. For once, they are going to get their due.
I have to tell you: that image of smiling trios and quartets with one face blackened out stayed with me long after I left the theater that day. It made me think about our own iconic Strom family photos, the ones filled with the faces of those who were there with us at key moments in our lives but who are gone now, as if their faces had been blackened out, expunged by time and fading memory.
And so, when I got home from the theater, I went immediately to the shelf with all our old photo albums, those mementos of our wedding, the b’nai mitzvah and weddings of the boys, the brises and namings of the grandkids. There we were -- all smiles, dancing the hora, lighting the candles on the cake, reveling in the moment. I must tell you: I got more than a little wistful thinking about how many are now missing, how many are no longer there. My grandparents gone. My mother gone. My father now gone. Uncles and aunts and even cousins gone. It’s hard to believe. They were such a presence in my life. Now they are an aching absence.
This is true, I know, for every one of us. And it’s truer the longer we live. When we think about where we have been, about the memorable moments in our lives AND the everyday realities, we think now of those who are with us no more.
Of course, that’s what this service, Yizkor, is all about. It’s about focusing on those we loved, those we continue to love, but who have passed on from this life. Perhaps it was within the last year, perhaps decades ago. Either way, we feel their absence acutely and often painfully. I know we do. Today, this afternoon, we focus on the faces of the missing, the faces that death has blackened out of the pictures in our minds. And that is difficult to do because, after all the months and years, we just can’t believe that we can’t pick up the phone to check in with them or ask them a question or share with them some news. We know they’re gone. Of course we do. But really, deep down inside, we can’t believe it. We want them to be here with us so much it hurts.
No wonder, as we sit in the sanctuary this afternoon, we keep asking the question: are they really gone? Have their faces really been forever blackened out? Or, in some way, perhaps a way we don’t really completely understand, are they with us still?
Perhaps, we wonder, perhaps they are there in some world beyond this one, with God, or, as we so often see it, gone to be with family members who’ve predeceased them. How often do we comfort ourselves and each other by saying that at least we know Mom is now up there in the next world with Pop. She’s been waiting for him for so long and now finally, at last, they’re reunited, this time, for all time. How wonderfully comforting for those who believe in this kind of immortality, this kind of life after death.
Or perhaps, we imagine, they live on, not recognizable in bodily form but rather as the infinite souls they were before entering this world, who now, with this life over, return to pure spirit where they live on forever. I know many of us believe this and find enormous comfort in it after the loss of the ones we’ve loved.
But what about those who can’t accept either of these notions? What comfort is there for us? I always think about the phrase in the funeral service, “they still live on earth in the acts of goodness they performed and in the hearts of those who cherish their memory.” Now, this I KNOW is true. This I KNOW is real. I know it because I have seen it in my own life and in the lives of so many in this community. Even years later, the ones we love continue to reverberate in our hearts for their generosity, their delightful sense of humor, their kindness, their strength, their love. This, I believe, is a kind of immortality as well and, as long as we keep them alive in this way, their faces are never blackened out of our hearts and our minds.
One way we Jews do this is by naming our children after them. In my experience, it’s rare that a young couple comes to a bris or babynaming without having named their newborn after a beloved family member. This one will be called Max after his father’s father. This one Sophia after her mother’s grandmother. What a powerful way to keep their memory alive in our lives, to hear the names of those we loved attached now to our little ones, our babies.
I must tell you I still get a chill when one of our clan makes reference to “Emma Anne Strom” and I hear the echo of the name, “Anne Strom,” and am instantly connected with my mother, gone now for over 16 years.
But, my friends, that can’t be the end of it. Just naming a child after an ancestor is the beginning; it can’t be the end. What has to happen next is that, as our kids grow up, we have to remind them again and again about Bubbie Minnie, their namesake, who was the first female in the family to go to college and loved to read and who was active in her synagogue OR great-uncle Sid who was a terrific shortstop in his prime and who started a company that went public and who was a great older brother to his siblings.
And then, once we’ve told them the stories, we have to encourage them to follow those examples. Pop-pop was a real hands-on father. You can be that too. Aunt Honey was creative and bright and never stayed down when life brought her low. You can do that too. Cousin Loretta was a careful listener, asked a lot of questions and always tried to make sure that others were happy. Well, you can do that as well.
I think you get the picture here. We have to make sure our kids know about the people we cared enough about to name them for and then make sure they model themselves after what was best in THEIR lives. I guess you might say: they have to fill in the missing faces in the family photos so they keep them alive in this world even after we are gone.
That’s why I’m especially pleased we’ve begun, over the last several years, to ask all our b’nai mitzvah to come to the Torah on Shabbat morning and read a short piece they’ve composed about the person they are named for. It is a reminder to these young men and women – at a particularly pivotal moment in their lives – that they owe it to the ones after whom they are named to keep their memories alive, to honor them by word and deed, because, in the final analysis, this is the surest way to guarantee their immortality, the surest way to keep them alive in our world.
It’s true. This is what we do as Jews, what we do as loving family members, as caring human beings. We are the ones who fill in the faces that might otherwise be blackened out. And in doing this, we’re the ones who provide immortality for our loved ones who have passed on.
My friends, this is what Yizkor comes to remind us. That, yes, there surely is life after this one. And whatever else that might be, it is the immortality that comes when we don’t forget them, when we fill in the faces and keep them alive in our lives not just on this day but every day, every sacred day, of our lives.
AMEN
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