Kol Tikvah - Parkland Temple

September 3, 2010
25 Elul 5770

In a famous passage in the Talmud, we are told that we have to walk in God’s ways. The rabbis then anticipate our follow up question: How can we, mere mortals, be God-like? They offer us a litany of activities that include acts of great kindness—Chesed—towards our fellow human beings depending on the moment in their lives and their specific need. Included in the list is the idea that we are to accompany the dead for burial. What’s the proof text? How do we know that God accompanied the dead? We are told that Moses was to die alone in the wilderness, but to the Rabbis, it was unfathomable that Moshe Rabbeynu, Moses, our greatest teacher of all, would be allowed to die unattended. Of course God must have “personally” seen to the burial of Moses.

In this week’s combined Torah portion of Nitzavim-Vayelech, Moses reminds the people that he knows he is at the end of his life. He will not be permitted to lead them across the Jordan, into the Land of Israel. In fact, in just a few weeks when we get to the end of the Torah, Moses has died, and the people mourn for him, crying for a full thirty days. But that’s the national mourning. Where is Tzipporah in all of this? Where are their sons? What’s happening for them privately? Who has held their hands through the mourning process, watched over their home while they are occupied with the public mourning rituals? Who has prepared a meal to help console them on their return home, seen to every detail for a simple yet plentiful reminder that our lives must go on even as the life of a loved one has ended?

Just a few weeks ago, members of our congregation experienced three losses within less than a week. In each case, I called the chair people from our Temple sisterhood to see to the Seudat Havra-ah, the meal of consolation. I knew that they would do so with gentleness, grace, and class. I knew that from the time they placed the first phone call to the families, the families would know that they were in good hands.

Sadly, our Bereavement Committee has had lots of practice. In my seventeen years in Lancaster, they have done this hundreds of times, and they were functioning long before I arrived. Personally, it gives me great comfort to know that I have a team of people who function as my partners in being present in the lives of people who are experiencing what might well be the most traumatic moment of their lives.

Accompanying the dead, Lvayat ha-met, is one mitzvah. After we’ve done that, we immediately engage in the mitzvah of Nichum Aveylim, comforting the mourners. Recently I received an e-mail from one of our congregants. She had been to a funeral in a community with a significantly larger Jewish population, yet there was no structure in place to see to this mitzvah. I was proud that our congregation didn’t leave this to chance, or to the hope that some good friends would take care of the details. I am proud that through our sisterhood, we can answer Hineinu, here we are, to those in mourning in our community.

May the light of the Shabbat candles brighten all of our lives.

Please share this e-mail with your sisterhood.

Warm regards,
Rabbi Jack Paskoff
Congregation Shaarai Shomayim, Lancaster, PA.

Rabbi Jack Paskoff is the Rabbi of Congregation Shaarai Shomayim, Lancaster, PA.