Shemini Atzeret / Yizkor 5781: Rabbinic Intern David Chapman

Four times in the Jewish year, we have the opportunity to recite the Yizkor prayers, the prayers of remembrance.  One might have expected those four occasions to be equally spread out throughout the year, perhaps one in each season.  But no, in fact, we recite yizkor today, on Shemini Atzeret, and the last time we said Yizkor was just 12 days ago on Yom Kippur.

Why so close?  What could be the reasoning behind two opportunities to say Yizkor, less than 2 weeks apart, and then not again for almost 6 months, at the end of Pesach?

I believe we are being given an opportunity to draw from the different holidays that include a Yizkor service to bring a special dimension to our remembrances.  The Yizkor of Pesach, of springtime, of coming out of the narrow places into freedom, might have a different sensibility from the Yizkor of Yom Kippur, the Yizkor of reflection and teshuva.  

Today we recite Yizkor on Shemini Atzeret. But what is the Yizkor of Shemini Atzeret?  It’s hard to say because it’s hard to say anything about Shemini Atzeret. It is somewhat obscure holiday tacked onto the end of Sukkot. But Sukkot is a festival deeply suffused with memory.  The sukkot themselves, the fragile structures we construct outside, recall God’s loving care of us in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. Every day during Sukkot we recite the psalms of Hallel, including the verse from Psalm 115, Adonai z’chranu yvarekh.  Adonai remembers us with blessing.

But there is another element of Sukkot that is even more relevant to Yizkor, and that is ushpizin.  Ushpizin is the aramaic word for “guests,” and it refers to a tradition, dating back to the 16th century, of inviting significant figures from Jewish history into our Sukkah.  

This idea - of inviting in guests so that we can learn from them, and emulate their traits, has deep roots in Judaism.  The list of Ushpizin includes our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our first prophets Moses and Aaron, and two additional ancestors who represent royalty, Joseph and David. 

Each one of the ushpizin embodies a specific trait or characteristic that we try to incorporate into ourselves.  

The first ushpiza we invite is Abraham -- our ancestor who embodied hakhnasat orchim - welcoming guests. Abraham along with Sarah welcomed wayfarers into their tent -- and would literally run to serve them and feed them. Their tent offers a model for the chuppah, the wedding canopy which is also open on all sides to symbolize how the couple will open their homes to their families and their community. Abraham is a paradon of chesed, the attribute of love or benevolence.

The second ushpiza, Isaac, teaches us the quality of gevurah, discipline or restraint. Jacob teaches us Tiferet, beauty, and so on, all the way through to David, who represents malchut, or leadership.

Over the years, we’ve added Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, and Leah, along with Miriam, Abigail, and Ester -- our Ushpizot -- as they also have plenty to teach us about how to live.

Rabbi Adin Steinsalz, z”l, who died earlier this year, and who Rabbi Ain spoke about during Yom Kippur, wrote that these ushpizin represent the “shepherds of Israel,” in that they guide us and nourish our souls. As all the ushpizin assemble, Rabbi Steinsalz writes, “we should be willing to receive them, to integrate within ourselves all these parts of our being.”

In the last few months, we’ve mourned the loss of some major figures in American life, including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Congressman John Lewis.  Many people much more eloquent than me have, including Rabbi Ain, have reflected on the impact they had during their lives.  If we were making a list of ushpizin for the United States in 2020, I would argue that John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsberg belong on that list.

But there were a few other individuals that we lost this year who I would want to invite into my sukkah.  Their deaths might not have been headline news in the same way, but each one offers us a Jewish value that I think is worth holding up.

The first ushpiza I want to talk about is B. Smith.  When I moved to New York in my 20s, I worked as an assistant director on Broadway. I was part of a community of fellow assistants -- assistant choreographers, assistant designers, and so on. None of us had any money.  If you were really lucky, once or twice during the project the person you were assisting would take you out to dinner.  And if you were extremely lucky, they would take you to B. Smith’s in the theater district. People talk about Sardi’s but Sardi’s is for tourists. If you really worked in showbusiness, you want to B. Smith’s. And it wasn’t just any old restaurant.  B. Smith’s was the flagship restaurant of Barbara Smith, the model-turned-lifestyle guru who passed away earlier this year. Barbara Smith was a black, female entrepreneur in the restaurant business, a field dominated by white men. But perhaps her most significant legacy, and what I want to hold up today, is her bracing honesty about early onset Alzheimer’s, which claimed her life at the age of 70.  Smith wrote a book, with her husband Dan Gasby, about her struggle with Alzheimer’s, called Before I Forget. The book describes with candor and humor Barbara and Dan’s efforts to maintain Barbara’s dignity as she declined. But even the act writing the book alone conferred on her so much dignity in the eyes of her countless admirers.  And that is the value I wish to take from B. Smith -- the quality I hope that she brings in our Sukkah -- kavod habriut, human dignity.

My second ushpiza is Larry Kramer.  In the early 1980s, AIDS was beginning to turn into a major health crisis for gay men and many others.  Many of my friends who lived through those years have described having flashbacks during the first few months of the Covid 19 pandemic back to those fearful early years of AIDS.  We know that, sadly, our national leaders at the time were far too slow to respond to the disease, a crime that might have cost thousands of lives. The national silence was deafening.  One person, however, was never silent, and that was Larry Kramer, z”l. Kramer was best known as a playwright for The Normal Heart, which is about a man dying of a puzzling disease his doctors have no money to research.  Kramer, who was Jewish, was inspired to write the Normal Heart after he visited Dachau Concentration Camp and learned how little other nations including the United States did to stop the Holocaust.  Kramer’s tagline in those years was “silence = death.” From Larry Kramer, I take the value of shmirat halashon, of guarding one’s speech.  Often this is used to mean using words with restraint… Bu Kramer reminded us that there is such a thing as too much restraint. Words have great power in our tradition, and in society at large.  Shmirat halashon also means to use your words when they count.

And lastly, I want to speak about Reverend Robert Graetz.  Rosa Parks took her bus ride in Montgomery, Alabama in December 1955, launching the now famous Montgomery bus boycott.  Very few whites in Alabama, and no white members of the local clergy supported the boycott, with one exception: Reverend Robert Graetz.  Graetz not only supported the boycott, he became secretary of the organization that helped amplify its message.  He urged his congregation to join the boycott.  During the boycott, he drove black residents of Montgomery to and from work.  He was a friend of both Parks and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. For this, he was targeted by the KKK and other white surpremcist groups. Twice they tried to bomb his home, including once while their newborn baby slept inside.  Arrests were made but the all-white jury acquitted the alleged attackers. Fortunately, Rev. Graetz and his family survived these attempts to silence him. He died last month in his home in Montgomery, at the age of 92.

Rev. Graetz was known to quote Psalm 27, which we know as the Psalm for the season of repentance:

Im takhaneh alai makhaneh, lo yirah libi -- Even though armies are arrayed against me, my heart does not fear.  

Im takum alai milchamah, b’zot ani boteach.  -- Even though wars threaten me, nevertheless I trust.  

As a future member of the clergy, and as a white person in a country still, sadly, confronting racial injustice, I see Rev. Graetz as a model of allyship, steadfastness, courage, and faith.  Rev. Graetz embodied the value of achreyut - our moral responsibility to care for one another.

B. Smith, Larry Kramer, and Reverend Robert Graetz would be on my list of ushpizin this year.  I pray that I will merit and that we all merit in this coming year to embody their virtues of Kavod Habruit - human dignity -- Shmirat Halashon, using our voices, and Achreyut- inter responsibility , so that their legacies can live on through our actions.  

As we recite our Yizkor prayers today, I invite you to think of your loved ones as ushpizin.  Imagine, if you could invite them into your sukkah, what would you want to learn from them?  What lesson would you hope they would impart?  How can you honor their legacy through your actions?

May memories of our loved ones be a blessing.  Shabbat shalom.