Joan and I recently heard a string quartet concert devoted entirely to elegies. The music was so moving, the audience so quiet, I thought about how we give voice to support each other at the time of loss.
At TE, our custom is to stand together alongside mourners, and recite the Kaddish together. This ancient prayer was written in Aramaic, the common language in Talmudic times, so that everyone would understand what was being said. It is a prayer of praise for Adonai. In most traditional congregations, reciting the Kaddish is an obligation of a male mourner, or close male relatives. Others are not obligated to recite the Kaddish, but TE’s custom is for all to stand with the bereaved, in memory of the departed, and in support of those remaining.
In our wider culture, the elegiac tradition recognizes that mourners, sometimes wordless, receive critical support from others who stand together and share the sorrow. Elegiac poems and music move each of us as we think about the one who has died, our own mortality and beyond to the miracle of our short lives.
Mary Frye wrote this elegiac poem for a Jewish girl who had fled the holocaust, only to receive news that her mother had died in Germany. Frye saw this girl weeping inconsolably because she could not visit her mother’s grave to share her tears of love and bereavement.
Do not stand at my grave and weep
by Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep:
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starshine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry:
I am not there; I did not die.
By Olga Markus
An annual musical weekend in memory of Rabbi Jerry Brieger z”l
Saturday, November 3
Come celebrate Shabbat with Rabbi Michael in the beautiful TE sanctuary with songs and stories! Perfect for children under 5 and their families. Members and non-members welcome!
As I write this column, our nation continues to reel from the pain of another devastating school shooting, this time in Parkland, Florida, that claimed 17 lives. As always happens after such tragic events, we engage in fierce debates and discussions, in person and increasingly online, on how best to prevent such tragedies. As always, there is not much listening going on in these debates – but quite a lot of shouting. The issues are real, the pain is real, and the frustration is real. It is hard to talk about difficult issues, amidst communal and national pain, when we are so divided in our opinions. It is obvious that people are finding it increasingly hard to even acknowledge the humanity of anyone holding an opinion that differs from his own. And yet also we must acknowledge that unless we find a way to listen to each other, and to really hear each other, the solutions to this and many other of our problems, will continue to elude us.
As you will see elsewhere in the Shofar, our Scholar in Residence this year is Rabbi Larry Englander, a wonderful teacher and a colleague, who co-edited the recently published ‘The Fragile Dialogue: New Voices of Liberal Zionism,’ a collection of essays presenting a wide variety of modern liberal Zionist ideas and challenges. While we will have an opportunity to learn so much from Rabbi Englander during his time here (see the full list of events in the Shofar and online), I am particularly looking forward to continuing our conversation on how to have these ‘fragile dialogues,’ addressing some of the most difficult, most challenging questions of our generation. I look forward to this continued journey of learning and listening with all of you and with Rabbi Englander on April 12-14, as well as during a special session on April 8th where we begin to look at the ideas presented in the book. In the meantime, I wish you a Chag Pesach Kasher v’Sameach – Happy Passover, and I look forward to seeing many of you at the TE Seder (first night, March 30) and the Passover Morning Service on March 31st.
As part of TE’s social action program, Nancy Weber and Max Case have organized a group of TE members to serve dinner at the Beth El Center soup kitchen in Milford on the first Tuesday of each month.
