Shavuot 5785 Yizkor Sermon – Tuesday, June 3, 2025
(written text was revised June 8th to include unscripted remarks from that morning)
Before I share the words I had prepared, I want to mention that I prepared them before I heard the news of the attack in Boulder, Colorado. I generally don’t check the news or use my phone during shabbat and yom tov, but I checked early this morning to see if there were any updates about the victims of the attack. After reading more than I really wanted to know about the perpetrator of this antisemitic act—what can only be described as an act of terror—I am heartbroken. I don’t know if I have any words of comfort or inspiration to offer. Mostly, I have questions and, perhaps, the only question I am qualified to answer is the one I’m grappling with: “What is our spiritual response to this rise in antisemitism?” or “How can we navigate these challenging and frightening times without falling into despair?”
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Today marks 606 days.
A little over six weeks ago, on the 8th day of Passover, I noted that Yizkor is followed almost immediately by Yom HaShoah on the 27th of Nisan, remembering the martyrs and heroes of the Holocaust. Then, one week later is Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, remembering Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terrorist acts.
At Yizkor on Passover, I spoke about seeking a message of hope and faith in God. I shared with you that I found myself asking, “What can we do, what must we do, to save ourselves?” and “How can we keep ourselves from losing faith in humanity?” I went on to speak about the power we have to choose how to tell our stories of redemption, how we can emerge from dark and difficult times to taste the joy of freedom.
I feel like this has been the subject of every d’var torah or sermon I have shared in the last three months. Now, in light of the many incidents of antisemitism and what seems to be an emerging pattern of an increase in violent attacks on Jews in North America, I’m surprised that on the last day of Passover I didn’t mention the attack on Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro’s home that occurred at the beginning of the holiday.
Ten or eleven days ago, on Friday night we remembered Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, who were murdered in Washington, DC, and I shared a d’var torah, quoting from my teacher and friend, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, about being careful with our words. Reflecting on the consequences of allowing coarse, violent language and volatile emotions to affect our actions, I noted how we need to find ways to let go of the things that keep us from being free from anger, sorrow, pain.
The next morning, we welcomed White Sail IDF officer Miki Mahlav and two other Israeli officer-reservists to share their stories with us at the Meyer Kotkin Donuts & Daven service. The human spirit of resilience, our capacity to face the worst challenges and still find a way forward, continues to amaze me.
Throughout all of these weeks, I’ve been thinking about the next time we’ll come together for a Yizkor service—on Yom Kippur at the Katz JCC—and I can only hope that we will no longer be counting how many days it has been since October 7th, 2023.
I’ve also been keeping up with Daf Yomi, the daily study of a page of Talmud, as part of my spiritual practice that keeps me grounded in Torah study. We arrived a few weeks ago at the Tractate Shevuot, oaths. You may know this word from Kol Nidrei. The formula, an annulment of vows, dates to the early rabbinic period and its entire purpose is to annul vows made in the coming year so we will not be punished for failing to fulfill them. Kol Nidrei concludes with the word, shevuot: “Our vows are no longer vows, our bonds are no longer bonds, our oaths are no longer oaths.”
As we began the third chapter of Tractate Shevuot, I was struck by the reminder that breaking an oath is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments (which we read from the Torah yesterday!), and is therefore taken extremely seriously by the sages. Much of the third chapter is concerned with the various punishments for breaking an oath.
We tend to think about vows and oaths as being only between us and God. In fact, we say that Yom Kippur atones for the sins between us and God. And maybe that makes the issue less resonant for some of us who are generally less observant of rituals, or who don’t observe them because we don’t believe in God, or don’t believe that God gave these laws to Moses at Sinai.
I’d like to suggest it may be possible to take these laws more seriously if we take God, Moses and Torah out of the equation, and instead focus on the issue of breaking our word—failing to follow through on our commitments—and the consequences for us and for our fellow human beings when we fail.
We tend to be very careful with our written words, our contracts and legal documents, business agreements, policies and rules. Perhaps those of us who are attorneys, magistrates or judges, are more careful with our spoken words, especially when we take or administer oaths in court. But how careful are we really about what we say to each other, about what we will do or not do, and how serious are we about keeping these commitments?
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Today marks 606 days.
What is the harm we cause to ourselves and to others when we fail to hold ourselves accountable to our oaths?
I’d been thinking about this question and thinking about the remaining hostages, who every day they languish in captivity are closer to death, every day we fail to rescue them and return them to their families, an oath is unfulfilled, a promise is broken. But in the discussion in the Talmud about a failure to fulfill one’s oath, the example given by the sage Abaye is a ritual one and, to me, a strange one: What if someone makes an oath to fast on his parents’ yahrzeit and he does not fast?
I’m perplexed. What is the harm if he fails to fast and to whom does he cause harm? I can think of dozens of failures to do what I said I would do, failures to call my dad or to visit him during the last few weeks, and I can easily identify the harm this causes when we’re talking about a living parent. But what is the harm if one fails to fulfill an oath concerning a deceased parent?
I found the answer to this question in the memorial prayers we are about to recite. We say over and again, for each person we remember, “I pledge acts of justice and charity in their memories. May their souls be bound in the bonds of eternal life.”
Yizkor is not only not only words of prayer to honor the memory of our loved ones; these words have power and meaning as they are pledges, promises, oaths that we make to perform acts of justice, charity and lovingkindness.
Yizkor is not only for the dead but also, perhaps even more urgently, it is for the living. It is for us. To ensure the souls of our loved ones are bound up with our souls and the souls of the living, we can follow through on these promises. We can help those around us who are suffering.
Please join me as we rise in body or in spirit to remember our loved ones in prayer and in deed.