Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Mom A”H
I’ve been an admirer of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for years, but I’ve felt a special connection with him and his writings since he was buried the same day as my Mom almost 2 years ago.
Before she passed away from a stroke at the age of 77, Mom had been a devoted reader of the weekly parsha for several decades. She’d also been a tirelessly determined, though not such a successful, student of Hebrew. While Mom had been remarkably accomplished in other areas of her life, having become a psychiatrist when that was still an unusual feat for a woman, Hebrew had proved more of a challenge despite decades of constant study. At one point, a few years before she passed away, Mom was even thrown out of an online Hebrew school on account of her ongoing lack of progress beyond the level of “Advanced Beginner.” But Mom was never one to throw in the towel, she was a fighter until the end. Every time we spoke, at one point in our conversation Mom would look me straight in the eyes and say, “Jenny, could I ask you a question?” followed by a query about a verb root or an unfamiliar Hebrew word she had noticed in the parshah.
I was saddened to read during Mom’s shiva that Rabbi Sacks had also passed away, but I did derive some comfort when I imagined how in the World to Come Mom would have such a great rabbi and scholar to answer all her questions.
This Yom Kippur I davened from Rabbi Sack’s exquisite machzor, and I was especially moved when I recited Yizkor for Mom and read the following accompanying commentary by Rabbi Sacks:
“Judaism gave two majestic ideas their greatest religious expression: memory and hope.
“Memory is our living connection to those who came before us. Hope is what we hand on to the generations yet to come.
“Those we remember live on in us: in words, gestures, a smile here, an act of kindness there, that we would not have done had that person not left their mark on our lives.”
This brought to mind the ways in which Mom lives on through me and my siblings. I carry on Mom’s passion for Jewish learning and Israel. My brother carries on her passion for social justice as a civil-rights lawyer. My sister carries on Mom’s tradition of sharing her gifts in a field where few women dare to tread as a chemistry professor. And all three of us carry on my mom’s dedication to family, marriage, and Judaism in our personal lives.
Rabbi Sacks’ continued:
“This is what Yizkor is: memory as a religious act of thanksgiving for a life that was, and that still sends its echoes and reverberations into the life that is.
“For when Jews remember, they do so for the future, the place where, if we are faithful to it, the past never dies.”
Yehee Zichram Baruch
