“In Your Reflection, They Live in You” Rabbi Oberstein’s Yom Kippur Yizkor 5786 Sermon
Rabbi Andrew Oberstein
Yom Kippur Yizkor, October 2, 2025
Temple Israel of Boston
Last week,
I had the privilege of sitting with a cherished congregant in hospice just a few days before she passed.
This congregant was an artist –
an astounding one at that.
Her home was filled with paintings:
brilliant,
colorful canvases that told stories without words.
As I looked around the room at the gorgeous works she had created over the years,
her wife shared something with me that I’m not sure I’ll ever forget.
She shared how important it is to let other people see her beloved’s art –
to let the art speak volumes about the person who made it.
She told me a story about sitting together on a beach on Cape Cod,
looking out at the sand dunes and the glistening ocean.
Not being an artist herself,
she turned to her wife and said,
“Tell me what you see.”
At that moment,
the artist began to describe all the details that, to most of us, remain invisible:
the shifting shades of blue in the water,
the play of light on the sand,
the subtle movement of the grass on the dunes.
And as she spoke,
her wife began to see what had been there the whole time,
just hidden.
The world opened up,
refracted through the vision of someone who trained her eye to notice.
And now,
because those moments have been captured in her paintings,
the details are preserved.
Through her art,
we too get to see the world through her eyes.
What an enormous gift:
the gift of vision,
the gift of detail,
the gift of seeing the world through another person’s eyes.
And by sharing those gifts,
they actually become eternal.
They transcend the temporal and enter into the infinite.
When an artist’s eyes close for the last time,
their art is what keeps their vision alive.
It is what cannot go away.
*****
This summer,
as a community,
we collectively read Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Sabbath.
Rereading the book,
I was still deeply struck by the way Heschel articulated the Jewish people’s relationship to time.
He wrote that our job on this earth is “to work with things of space,
but to be in love with eternity.”
He described the Jewish people as being “engaged to eternity.”
That phrase has been echoing in my mind: engaged to eternity.
What a stunning way to describe our spiritual lives.
We work with things of space –
food,
money,
houses,
clothing,
books,
paint and canvas.
But these things,
as important as they are,
are not where our deepest loves lie.
We are in love with eternity –
with the moments of love,
of memory,
of vision,
of faith,
of spirit,
that cannot be bound by time.
That’s why Yizkor is so important.
Today,
on this holiest day of the year,
we don’t just pause to acknowledge death.
We pause to affirm eternity,
to remember that bodies die but souls live on.
In our greatest book of ethical wisdom,
Pirkei Avot,
Rabbi Shimon teaches us:
“There are three crowns:
the crown of Torah,
the crown of priesthood,
and the crown of royalty,
but the crown of a good name supersedes them all.”
What is a “good name,”
then?
It’s the echo of a life lived in the kind of way that when others speak your name, they smile.
It’s the way that a life continues beyond its years.
******
We’ve all known people like that –
loved ones who are no longer here with us in body but who are so deeply alive in our voices,
our kitchens,
our photo albums,
our family stories.
They live when we cook their recipes.
They live when we quote their jokes,
no matter how dumb they might be.
They live when we teach others what they once taught us.
This is how Judaism understands eternity.
It’s not some abstract metaphysical realm –
it’s the real ways that human lives ripple forward through time,
carried in memory.
******
This is so deeply ingrained into Judaism that we might not even recognize it.
Just think of the words we use when someone dies:
Zichronam livracha,
may their memory be a blessing.
And notice that we don’t say,
“May they be a blessing,”
but rather,
“May their memory be a blessing.”
Because memory itself is holy.
Memory itself is eternal.
*****
And so I think of the artist.
Though her eyes are now closed,
her vision remains.
Her wife –
and all of us who have seen her work –
carry the gift of her way of seeing.
That is eternity.
******
What does this mean for us in this Yizkor moment?
It means we are invited to do more than mourn.
We’re invited to remember actively –
to take the vision,
the teaching,
the humor,
the faith,
the love of those who have died,
and let them live in us.
After all,
in the Talmud,
in Tractate Berakhot,
we read,
“אֵלּוּ צַדִּיקִים שֶׁבְּמִיתָתָן נִקְרְאוּ חַיִּים” –
these are the righteous,
who even in their death,
are called living.”
So take a moment,
even now,
to call to mind a loved one.
What is it that you carry from them?
Is it a recipe?
A turn of phrase?
A melody that hums in your head?
A story?
A piece of advice?
A bad joke?
A certain way of looking at the world?
*****
This is the work of Yizkor.
To remember and to carry it forward.
We can’t hold onto life forever.
But we can be engaged to eternity.
We can hold onto the gifts that our loved ones placed into our hands,
into our minds,
into our hearts.
*****
And so,
as we turn to our Yizkor service,
let’s remember that,
in a Jewish context,
death truly is not the end.
The artist’s painting,
the teacher’s lesson,
the parent’s love,
the friend’s laughter –
all of these still endure.
The Jewish people are engaged to eternity.
Let’s live that engagement by remembering with love,
by carrying our loved ones with us,
by letting their vision shine through our eyes.
Zichronam livracha –
may their memory be a blessing.
May they stay alive in us.
And may we too,
one day,
leave behind an impact that others will carry forward into eternity.
And let us say, Amen.