Yom Kippur Morning 5772

Rabbi Séverine Sokol,

B’nai Chaim

A man, should remember, from time to time,

That he is occupied with death,

That he is taken a little further

On a journey everyday

Though he thinks he is at rest,

Like a ship's passenger lounging on a deck,

Being carried on by the wings of the wind.

When my own grandfather sailed from Morocco with his wife and 7 children, including my mother, in tow, they became another statistic in the mass departure of Jews from the Maghreb in the 1950s and early 1960s. Death was hard on my grandfather’s heels, but his stride remained unbreakable. His physical frame, a towering 6 foot 3, was imposing. He did not meander or lose his sense of direction or purpose. He swapped his oasis for a cramped apartment in Lyon, France. He had prolonged his life, and preserved the life of his family. He proudly marched through the streets of Villeurbanne to synagogue in order to pray. His daily pilgrimages were routine. He was a fixture on the streets, driven by his need to connect with God. He reveled in our ageless tradition, dedicating and donating a Torah scroll.

And yet, he never contemplated the course of his own life. He gave virtually no thought to how he would live out his later years. He had no expectations about our average life span.

For nearly all of human existence, people died young. The average lifespan of human beings in centuries past, has been thirty years, or less. But times have changed. Most people don’t expect immortality, they just ask for longevity. For my grandfather, being married to my grandmother was a dream. It was like living in a fantasy. So when she passed away, he could not come to grips with life without his beloved spouse. He could not accept it. He asked himself: 'Why me? Why now? What next?'When he looked to the Torah, he could find little mention of an afterlife. The rewards and punishments invoked by the Torah were to take place in this world, not the next one. Only in later years did rabbinic thinkers fill in the gaps with all manner of mystical speculations.  

In his grief, my grandfather could no longer look forward to the synagogue, but he needed a way to channel his ongoing agitation. He was haunted by this question regarding the quality of one’s later life. He feared what many of us fear: that we will die alone.  

My grandfather had turned away from the synagogue, and turned towards the cemetery. He walked everyday to my grandmother’s grave. Nothing could stop him in his tracks, not even the weather. Rabbis from his community tried to reason him. They were concerned. My grandfather would stand there in the pouring rain; he would shiver there in the bitter cold. But he would listen to no one, but her. She was his saint.

In a way, he was returning…some might say ‘retreating’, to a familiar, magical milieu where the belief existed that neglecting to fulfill one's obligations at the grave is liable to offend the dead. In Morocco, unlike other parts of the Diaspora, the Jewish veneration of saints, the tombs of holy men and women who had lived exemplary lives is common. Nearly every Jewish community in Morocco had at least one saint. There were in fact hundreds of venerated saints scattered throughout Morocco's over 200 urban and rural Jewish communities. These tombs were places of pilgrimage. They still are. In fact, our movement, the Union for Reform Judaism, is sending a delegation of Rabbis to visit Morocco next year. Muslims also frequent the graves of Jewish saints. Monuments to these holy men and women have even started cropping up in Israel.

But for my grandfather, the promised land was not his former village, but heaven by his late wife’s side. And so, he returned again and again to her grave, until his body could no longer handle the wear and tear. He could not walk anymore. He turned his apartment into a shrine to her memory. Nothing had been moved since her death.

My grandfather cared for my grandmother and his devotion extended long after her physical presence departed this world. And we cared deeply as well, but for a time, my grandfather noticed no one else. This was not his idea of a happy ending. He lay down and waited in despair and disappointment. In his self-imposed solitude his joie de vivre left him.

My grandfather always walked alone to the synagogue. Eventually, he never walked again. It was now physically impossible. He would never set foot in his synagogue, but he made personal progress towards others. He started speaking freely with his family again. His grandchildren decorated the window of his room with drawings of flowers and vines reminiscent of the Garden of Eden. It was his view of the outside world. He started telling stories, poignant ones, he would laugh, and listen and look into our eyes once more. He learned to accept the changes in his life.

My grandfather became more reflective, and focused his gaze alternating between his window to the world and us. His French would slip into Arabic without him knowing it, and then launch into a Hebrew piyyut (a liturgical poem) he was fond of from his days at synagogue. I would sit there with my husband-to-be, and we would share our good news…a wedding was on the horizon. He would offer us his blessings and advice. He confessed his sorrow for all the times he felt he wandered away from his wife, when he felt he should have been beside her. He hoped he would move to heaven soon. Still he felt excited, by our wedding, an ingathering of the exiles, so to speak, from the different parts of the world, his sons and daughters from Israel and abroad would be there soon. They would file into his room to share kisses and hugs.

This would be the last time he would see all his children. He passed quietly away two months later. My mother was the first to find him. She was always by his side during his decline, she visited and cared for him everyday. Finally, he had found his peace. The eternal peace that Ibn Ezra, our poet of the High Holy Days, had so elegantly written about:

I was stirred to visit the resting place

Of my family and all my true friends.

I questioned them, but they neither heard

Nor answered me.

Without speaking they called to me

And showed me my own place beside them.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah – A good seal in the Book of Life.