I'm in love with my grandchildren. I'm enamored of their every twitch and glance, and I've become as obnoxious as other grandparents in telling everyone all about it, whether they want to listen or not. When those three little girls ( and of course, their parents, who I also love) come over for dinner, an atmospheric disturbance of hurricane proportions descends on our household. And when they leave, the silence is deafening, and utterly welcome.

But that silence is unusual, and short-lived, and exists only in contrast to the cacophony that preceded it. Most of the time I'm just like the rest of you. I create my own noise, with the TV on, the cell phone or the regular one stuck to my ear, music playing in the car and in the office and at home... As that famous author, Anonymous said,

… today's world… loves noise. Why? Because it doesn't want to stop and think. It doesn't want to stop and meditate. It doesn't want to stop and pray. It doesn't want to stop and listen. What would it be like… if some kind of solar ray suddenly caused all radios, tape players, stereos, VCRs and televisions to stop working? Trembling hands would immediately begin to twist dials, adjust knobs and flip switches. Eyes would begin to dilate with fear of silence. Terrorized people would be running in the streets or fleeing in their cars. "Karl Marx was wrong," someone has said, "religion is not the opiate of modern man, incessant sound is. People will listen to anything to avoid silence." [The Preacher's Illustration Service, Voicings Publications, Vol. 8, No. 4, July/August, 1995.]

How many of us get up in the morning, turn on the TV or radio, and leave it on all day, just to have some noise in the house? For the life of me I don't know how it might even be possible, but my daughter Pamela claims she was doing her homework with the stereo blasting, the TV on, a telephone in one ear and a friend or two sitting nearby.

"People will listen to anything to avoid silence." But Judaism, like most other religions, values silence. Traditionally, the most important petitionary prayer of the service, so important that it is known simply as "The Prayer," is said silently. An invitation to pray silently at any point in the service is an indication that this is a moment of great solemnity and importance. And of course, when we remember our loved ones who have died, we do so in silence.

We Jews agree with the Indian poet Tagore who wrote,

The water in a vessel is sparkling;

the water in the sea is dark.

The small truth has words that are clear;

the great truth has great silence. [Rabindranath Tagore, quoted by Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro, The American Rabbi, Spring 1998, page 41.]

The great truths, the most profound learnings that move us to deeper wisdom, are found in silence. It is in the silent places of our hearts and souls that we may truly meet ourselves, our fellow human beings, and our God.

There is a wonderful little story about…

… a Japanese Emperor who spends most of his days attending ceremonial occasions and participating in meetings and making speeches. He is constantly on the move. On one such occasion, it seems that the Emperor's planning committee made a colossal mistake with his itinerary. He was taken by limousine to a huge meeting hall where he was to deliver a speech to a very large gathering. But when he entered the hall, it was empty. It was the wrong day. Whereupon the Emperor walked into the center of this great hall and stood there for several minutes in complete silence, and without moving. Then he bowed to the empty space, and he turned to his aides and he smiled, saying, "You must schedule more appointments like this. I haven't enjoyed myself like this for a long time." [Sunday Sermons, Voicings Publications Volume 28 , Number 3, May/June 1998. ]

The enjoyment we can easily understand. The relief from the rat race of constant motion and busy-ness we can empathize with. But why did he bow to an empty room? What was that all about? I have a theory. In Asian cultures bowing is a form of greeting, similar to our shaking hands. OK, so who was he greeting? Who was he meeting if the room was empty? Who could it have been other than himself! In the silence of an empty room he met himself. When the noise and bustle of the ordinary were hushed, he was able to come into contact with his deepest self, the person he really was. In the silence we can meet ourselves.

In the silence we also meet other people:

A nursing student named Jo Ann Jones reports that during her second month of nursing school, her professor gave a pop quiz. She was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions. That is, until she read the last one: "What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" You could tell when each student got to that particular question. The writing stopped and they sat there in stunned silence.

Well, she knew to whom the questions referred. She had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s. But she had to hand in her paper leaving that last question blank.

When one student asked if the last question would count toward the quiz grade, the professor replied, "Absolutely. In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you can do is smile and say hello."

It was an example Jo-Ann never forgot. And she learned the cleaning woman's name: Dorothy. ["LectionAid," Jan/Feb/Mar 1998.]

In our heart's and our mind's silence we are able, if we let ourselves, to comprehend the most important truths, like the significance of all people, whether the cleaning lady, the residents of group homes, the waitress who brings us our coffee, or our own loved ones.

In the silence we can finally admit what we need to get from, and give to, the people we love:

In Ernest Hemingway's short story, "The Capitol of the World," a father comes to Madrid to find his son. His son, Paco, had left the farm after a misunderstanding. If you have ever been to Spain you would know Paco is a very popular name there. The father, in order to meet his son, put an ad in the newspaper which read, "Paco meet me at noon, Tuesday, at the newspaper office. All is forgiven. Signed your Father." In the story, there were 500 young men named Paco who came the next day and stood silently in line, waiting to see if it was their father who had granted them forgiveness. [King Duncan, Lively Illustrations for Effective Preaching, Seven Worlds Pub.(Knoxville, Tenn., 1987),"Repentance".]

In the silence we can still be inspired by those who live on only through us:

A bus was bumping along a back road. In one seat, an old man sat alone with his own silence, holding a bunch of fresh flowers. Across the aisle was a young girl whose eyes came back again and again to the man's flowers. The time came for the old man to get off the bus. Impulsively, he thrust the flowers into the girl's lap. "I can see you love the flowers," he explained, "And I think my wife would like for you to have them. I'll tell her I gave them to you." The girl accepted the flowers, then watched the old man get off the bus and walk through the gate of a small cemetery. [Sunday Sermons, Voicings Publications, Vol. 25, No. 4, July/August, 1995.]

Isn't that a good deal of what goes on here at Yizkor? In silence we give, or get forgiveness, approval, thankfulness, love, from those who are no longer physically present but who will always be alive in our memories. It is in the silence that we approach them so that these crucial, life-enhancing encounters can take place. It is in the silence that we finish those unfinished conversations we began so long ago. It is in the silence that we still receive the wisdom our loved ones gave so freely while they were yet alive. It is in the silence that we hold on to what we've had. It is in the silence that we let go so that we can move on.

And it is in the silence that we meet our God.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav used to recommend that every person set aside once each day a "dead hour." During that hour, one should be "dead to the world" - unavailable for business or social obligations or family duties or small talk. It must be an hour, or even half an hour, or a quarter of an hour, which one devotes to silent introspection, to quietly probing, to contemplation in utter stillness... The dead hour refers to the inner silence and privacy in which we confront ourselves and open up to God. [Rabbi Morris Shapiro, in Elkins, op., cit., pg. 104.]

We are so used to doing, to responding. We're awful at being passive. We receive news of a medical condition, and we're on line in two minutes, researching what every authority has to say about it, from the finest doctors in the nation to quacks peddling amulets or tea leaves. We can't even allow ourselves to experience the terrible grief at the loss of a loved one that is the necessary pre-requisite for healing. Instead, we often feel compelled to get up and say something, to do something about death, which is the one thing that we can't do anything about at all.

To meet God, to confront the awesome power of the universe, to allow ourselves to experience just how small we really are in the face of infinity, we need silence. These are not things for everyday discussion with others, even if we were able to find the words to express them. Our relationship with God is intensely private and intimate. It blossoms in the still, small voice of the soul. It withers in the noise and hubbub of the everyday.

There is a rabbinic legend that if all things in the world were quiet for a moment, we would hear the sound of God's voice reverberating from Mount Sinai. It would pronounce… the words of the Ten Commandments.

This midrash teaches that the formative words of the universe never fully disappear. They are always there, and if we become good listeners, if we listen to those we love and to those who need us, if we listen to our Jewish past and to our soul, we just might... we just might also hear the word of God. [Rabbi Charles A. Kroloff, The American Rabbi, Fall 1997, page 81.]

We do not know about the rest of the world, but in our world, in this room, for the next few moments we will share the quiet that shouts silently within our souls. In that silence, may we meet our own true selves, meet those we love who have gone from life, and meet our God. Let us continue now in silent remembrance…