מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים

Yom Kippur is in many ways a rehearsal for our own deaths. Like a dying person, we don't eat or drink. At Neila, the closing prayer we stand together and recite the verses one recites before the moment of death. The shofar blows and then there were are still standing, still breathing and still alive.

But that isn't always true. A few years ago on Yom Kippur our dear friends' child life was hanging on the scales between life and death in the weeks before Yom Kippur at Mount Sinai Hospital just across Central Park from our synagogue. It was on that Yom Kippur that his family had to make the horrible choice to allow their beloved son to die.

My thoughts during services yesterday were on that Yom Kippur, and also on the Yom Kippur of following year when my father in law who was a few months shy of his 98th birthday was actively dying.

My brain can no longer pull apart the threads of which year it was I heard the terrible news that my dear friend Racheli's husband died completely unexpectedly the day after Yom Kippur.

Last year a close friend of my sister's suffered a heart attack on Yom Kippur at synagogue and died the next day.

So there was all of THAT but along with all of that remembrance of sadness, there was also sitting next to my childhood friend through the afternoon. Knowing that by sitting next to her we had for a moment brought back an entire community of people with our combined memories.

I saw Julia who had babysat for our kids when she was at the youngest possible age you could possibly hire her to babysit holding her newborn in her arms.

I saw my friend Ruth who I had met over twenty-five years ago when she sat her elderly parents in the row in front of us on the high holidays. Her parents were old and frail both walking with canes. That Rosh HaShanah Ruth's daughter and her beautiful tiny daughters came to give kisses to their elderly great-grandparents. I loved watching how Ruth, her daughter, and granddaughters all were so caring to the elderly couple. This year Ruth is frail and walking with a cane. Her granddaughters were doting on her, making sure she was well tended to.

I sat in my seat with my family and saw in my mind's eye members of my community who were no longer living. I remember my dear friend Herta sitting next to her childhood friend Edith. You always knew it was worth sitting next to them to catch their snarky commentary on the goings on. Sometimes I was lucky and they would fill me in on their conversation.

Paul is no longer alive to sit next to his wife Mary. Both Eric and his wife are no longer among the living. My cranky friend Ernest and his even crankier wife Heidi are no longer alive. I was oddly fond of the two of them.

My wry friend Sam who was the chairman of the high holiday committee died a few years back. His co-chair is running the committee on her own these days.

My synagogue has German roots and follows the old German custom of reading the names of all of the officers of the synagogue who are no longer living during Yizkor. When I was new to the comunity it was just a list of names that meant very little to me. Now many of those named are people I knew and was truly fond of. Hearing those names year after year I have developed a certain fondness even for those people that I never met.

I used my grandmother's machzor this year. The liturgy is slightly different than the one in the prayerbook that my synagogue uses. At various points in the service, my grandmother's prayerbook suggested texts for the individual to chant as the cantor leads services. During one of the kaddishes, you were told to chant a particular Psalm to ensure that you earned a good living. I did, less because I had an actual expectation for this to be effective but more for the experience of the collage of texts.  I can't say if it was efficacious for my wallet but it was a really satisfying experience layering the two texts.

I suppose that if I were smarter I would have some sort of a concluding thought that would tie all of this together. I guess Ileave that to you.