- 5786/2025
- Rabbi Leder
Yom Kippur 5786/2025
Rabbi Steve Leder
Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Los Angeles
For 38 years I have written my Yizkor sermon last. It’s hard to face so much sadness.
So many of us have watched people we deeply love face the doctors, the needles, and the tubes. The twisted car wreckage, the images of metastatic cells gone mad, a mental illness no less mad. It is so hard to watch the journey from independence, to assisted living, to memory care, to a final, eternal sleep.
Some of us have buried a parent--the rock of our lives, gone.
Others of us, our husband or wife; our perfect fit, keeping us warm tucked beneath the soft covers of so many years.
Our Nana’s soft arms, our Papa’s whiskers. Our friends. Brothers and sisters. For a few, even our children, the light of our eyes—gone. Like a shadow, a breeze, a dream.
No matter how long ago, the weight of grief descends upon us in these Yizkor moments.
The awkward funeral greetings, the tearing of the ribbon, the turning of the spade, the thunk of earth upon a casket.
But to remember is not only pain. Memory bring us so much beauty too.
Yizkor is meant to help us carry our loved ones with us into the new year. It recognizes our pain, and reminds us too of our gratitude and love for the ones we miss so much.
At nearly every Yizkor the rabbi preaches about death and memory, but that is very different than actually remembering.
I am going to ask you to go with me now on a journey from the world that pressures us to accomplish, and pretend, and preform; to the world within, where memory dwells. I'm going to ask you to do Yizkor.
As you are seated here, close your eyes, all of us; let's close our eyes and breathe in deeply.
Breathe out and relax.
Breath in deeply again.
Breathe in peace. Breathe in quiet.
Now, place yourself in a comfortable room in your home or wherever you choose and invite into that room a loved one or loved ones who have died. Bring them to life again in your mind--in your memory.
See them. See their skin, their eyes, their smile.
Be with them.
Speak to them.
Tell them what you wish for them.
Now give them your blessing.
Now allow them to leave the room.
Breathe deeply.
When you are ready, open your eyes.