Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story, Yizkor 5787

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Rabbi Daniel Gropper

In his classic work on these Holy Days, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik notes how the biblical prophet Samuel served the people of Israel in an annual circuit. Every year, he went from Ramah to Beth El to Gilgal to Mitzpeh and then finally back to Ramah again. And the Rav noted, "The moment he left Ramah, he was already returning there. Everywhere he went, he was heading for home."

If you've been following the journey of my sabbatical trip this year- the one that began in Raduti, Romania,went to Israel and then down to Egypt - you know that there was one more base to cross. We had to get home.

We flew from Sharm el Sheikh to Milan and flew home the next day. Almost as soon as we landed, my dad said, "You should share what you did with our family. You should tell them the story of the Megilah." Three weeks later, we gathered our family on Zoom.

Because the family tree stretches out horizontally, there were relatives on that call who had never met each other. Faces from Los Angeles to Vancouver, New York to Toronto, and Boston to San Francisco filled the Zoom screens. 

We told the story. How a man from Campulong named Michel came to marry a woman from Berchichesti named Mariam. How their six children all immigrated to Canada–and then they joined them there.  How one of those children - my namesake Menashe - married my great-grandmother Feige who was originally from the next hamlet, a distance from Harrison to Rye. He literally married the girl next door. Before we went to Romania nobody knew the geographic connection. 

As the Zoom ended, I couldn’t help but think of the final song in the Broadway show Hamilton “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story.” In its final lines, various characters reflect on Hamilton's legacy. Jefferson says, "I'll give him this: his financial system is a work of genius. I couldn't undo it if I tried. And I tried." Madison says, "He took our country from bankruptcy to prosperity. I hate to admit it, but he doesn't get enough credit for all the credit he gave us." Then comes the question left for all to ponder, "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?"

For Hamilton, it is his wife Eliza. She interviewed every soldier who fought by his side. She tried to make sense of his thousands of pages of writing. She raised funds for the Washington monument. Her greatest pride? To honor her husband, the orphan whose image graces the $10 bill. she established the first private orphanage in New York City It’s now known as Graham, and it still operates today. But what about us? Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

Yizkor is one of those moments where - despite the liturgy of who will live and who will die -  we confront the fragility of life in ways more personal and perhaps more fully than at any other time. Who lives? We all do. Who dies? Each of us. But the larger question, the invitation that Yizkor offers us is this: who tells your story? When I meet with b'nei mitzvah students I ask them to tell me their Hebrew name. Many answer quickly. Some have no idea. I ask them who they were named for. Some know, some don't. 

For those named for someone, I ask what they know about that person. I am amazed by how little they know. We know who lives. We know who dies. But what about their story?

That, I've come to believe, is what Yizkor is actually asking of us: to re-member them, to make them, once more, a limb of this body, a member of this family, this room, this people. Real memory takes more than just looking back; it takes learning someone’s story and then re-telling it. In that way, we graft that person onto our lives. 

That is what my father was actually asking of me, three weeks off the plane from Milan, he wasn't asking me to entertain the cousins for an hour on a Tuesday night. He wasn’t asking for story time.

He was asking me to re-member Michel and Mariam, Menashe and Feige, the six children of Berchichesti - to take people who had become no more than a name on a family tree and put them back into the body of this family, limb by limb, story by story. On that Zoom, I watched it work. Some who had never met one another - and others who spoke daily - suddenly understood why they had the same forehead, the same stubbornness, the same drive. The story didn't just inform them. It re-membered them to each other.

Eliza Hamilton understood this, too, whatever the show simplifies for the sake of a rhyme. She didn't only mourn her husband for fifty years. She built him back, piece by piece, interview by interview, orphan by orphan, until telling her late husband’s story became her life's second marriage. That is the only honest answer Yizkor has ever offered to the fear of who shall live and who shall die. Not comfort that pretends dying isn't real. Comfort that insists that dying is not the last word - if someone is willing to do the telling.

So here is what I am asking of you. Almost everyone in this room is carrying a name right now - 

a Hebrew name, an English name, a nickname that outlived the person who gave it to you. Some of you know exactly who you're named for. How many can tell one true story about them, can tell what they were actually like? 

You do not need a trip to Romania. You need one phone call. One conversation with the aunt, the cousin, the old family friend, the parent who is still here to ask. Ask the question: what was she like? What did he love? What kept him up at night? 

I must admit, I know certain facts about my namesake Max Gropper but those pieces that will re-member him to me? They are scant and few. 

We must ask about these family members before the last person who could answer is gone - before the silence becomes permanent.

Who lives, who dies? We already know that answer; 

it is all of us, and it is each of us, and no liturgy on earth changes it. But who tells your story - that one is still being decided. This year. In this room. By what you are willing to go find out, and by what you are willing to pass on.

When Solevetchik said that everywhere Samuel went he was heading for home he meant it more than just the description of a route through the wilderness. For Soloveitchik, Samuel’s wandering was a spiritual journey. Coming home was Samuel’s quest. It was his intention. These days are all about homecoming, returning to community, to God and to ourselves. How do we do this best? By re-membering, by telling someone’s story. 

As we continue in silent remembrance - I invite you, if you choose, to come forward, to take a stone from one of these bowls and to place onto the table - when you bring to mind the names of your loved one, don't only remember them. Re-member them. 

Bring them back into the body of your family’s larger narrative. That way as we live, they too shall live. Their story lives on in you. Who lives, who dies, who tells their story? 

You do.