Where Do We Go From Here?

The theme of this year’s sermons is: Where do we go from here?

Answering this question at Yizkor is relatively simple. We know where we’re all going: from life to death. What interests us more is what happens after that.

Jewish thinking about what happens after death is extremely complex. It usually involves something called the soul, the meaning of which differs from time to time and place to place. As best as I can understand it, the traditional, mainstream Jewish understanding of life after death is this:

• Those who are irrevocably evil, like Hitler, when their physical bodies die, so do their souls. Their existence is obliterated forever.
• Those who are inordinately good, saintly, their souls go immediately to heaven to await the coming of the Messiah.
• Those who are somewhere in the middle, like most of us – notice I said “us” – need to go through a period of cleansing, or purging, to rid us of our sins, hence the name of such a place is purgatory. It’s not fun, but close relatives saying Kaddish can ease the passage of the soul. Once the soul is purged of its sins it joins the righteous in heaven.

The cut off for obliteration is twelve months. Anyone needing more than that is gone forever. But who wants to say that their dearly departed just made it by the skin of their teeth? So there are some Jews who say Kaddish for only eleven months, as if to indicate that their relatives made it far under the wire.

Then, when the Messiah comes – we should live so long – all of the righteous souls in heaven will be reunited with their bodies, resurrected, and live on as physical beings forever. Don’t be upset at the word “resurrected.” We probably got it from the Zoroastrians, and the Christians – the early ones were Jewish, remember – got it from us. We Jews actually pray for the resurrection three times a day in our central petitionary prayer, the Amidah. In the second paragraph: Baruch Attah Adonai, michayai ha’maitim. Praised are you, O God, who resurrects the dead.

When we come back we will be cured of whatever killed us and all other diseases and infirmities but also at the same age at which we died. In case you’re worried about where all these billions of people will fit, no problem. Surely a God who created an entire universe can create a little extra real estate. One of my favorite thoughts in the tradition is that those who are resurrected will be able to eat whatever they want and still not gain weight.

The Reform movement believes in something called “the immortality of the soul,” which means the concept is left undefined. It can be anything from the traditional understanding to an ultra-modern concept such as each soul who lives, just by our having been here, has an eternal effect on the universe.

The Reform concept of the Messiah is, however, clearly defined. There isn’t one, at least not in the traditional understanding. For us, the Messiah is not one person, but untold numbers of persons, Jew and non-Jew alike, whose efforts help make the world a better, a more Messianic place, sometimes even without knowing it. It’s an ongoing process. The Messianic Age, we call it. When will it start? When did it start? It depends on who you ask.

How do we deal with the loss of those who, like us, at least sometimes, help make the world a better place? Over the years, I don’t know how many people have told me, at funerals and other times as well, that the most difficult moment for them was when the earth first hit the casket. It tears through them, cuts into their hearts, rings with a terrible finality in their ears.

Painful as it is, I believe it is a necessary and extremely important part of the observance. It brings a concrete, tangible reality to the death of a loved one. It helps drive home the terrible, unthinkable idea that someone as human as we are has died. I’ll never forget a funeral at which a husband had passed away and his wife was crying and wailing at the grave. When the first shovelful of earth hit the casket, the wails got even louder. A well-meaning relative shouted at me: “Stop it. Can’t you see it’s hurting her?” She stopped crying for a moment, turned around and said: “Leave him alone. I need to do this.”

It is considered a great kindness, a most meritorious act, to place some earth in the grave. Why? Because it is something that can never be repaid, something we don’t expect to be repaid, something that goes only one way: from the living to the dead.

Is that enough? Is a loving, respectful funeral enough? I don’t think so. I don’t think Judaism thinks so. Let me share with you the story of the mustard seed. Not the parable of the mustard seed; that’s in the Gospels. The Story of the Mustard Seed:

On the same day, a woman lost her husband and her only child. After the funeral, screaming in her grief, she pounded on the Rabbi’s door asking for help in dealing with this terrible loss.

“Here is what I want you to do,” he said, “it will help you with your pain. I want you to bring me a mustard seed, a little, insignificant mustard seed, from the home of anyone who has not experienced grief and sorrow.”

The woman started out, and at the first door she knocked on she found an elderly woman who could barely get out of bed. She cleaned the house, brought in food for her to eat, and even arranged for someone to come in and help her.
At the next home she found a dirty, ragged little boy of about seven or so who wailed like an animal and could barely speak.

“We have no money for doctors,” explained the boy’s mother. “My husband and I must work from sunrise to sundown just to put food on the table. We’re so tired we have no strength to deal with this strange boy.”

The woman moved in and worked with the boy. She taught him to speak, then to read. With her own money she bought him decent clothes. When the boy started attending school, his parents became hopeful for the first time in years.

Their business prospered. They prospered.

So it went for months and months. In every home she entered she found her help was needed. Helping others, she felt her own pain become, not gone, but at least bearable.

She finally returned to the Rabbi.

“Now I understand why you wanted me to bring you a mustard seed from a home that had seen neither grief nor sorrow. So here it is.”

The woman held out a closed fist and slowly opened it. Her hand was empty.

A movie came out about nine years ago – some of you may have seen it. It’s called “Pay it forward.” A social studies teacher asks his students to come up with a plan “that will save the world through direct action.” The twelve year old star of the film thinks up the idea of “paying it forward” in which instead of paying someone back for the good deeds they’ve done to you, you help three other people instead.

On this holy day I’d like to say to you, by all means let us bury our loved ones with dignity and respect. It is a mitzvah in the true meaning of the word: a commandment. But let us also, on their behalf and ours, “pay it forward.” Let us find, for like the woman seeking the mustard seed found, they’re all around us, sitting all around us in this room, let us find one or two or three or more others to help, to console in their misery, to help restore the self esteem of those who have lost jobs, to help those going through tough financial times…

We rightly vilify Bernie Madoff for his Ponzi scheme, for his pyramid of evil that even bilked those at the top, as well as those lower down. But I want us to start a Ponzi scheme of our own, a good one, a Ponzi scheme of gemilut chasadim, of deeds of loving-kindness. Let each of us be the tip of our own pyramid, helping others who will help others, who will help others.

That, my friends, is fitting way to honor our loved ones who are gone, and to help add to the goodness of the Messianic age. Come, then, let us remember them.