A New Prayer/Poem for Yizkor: Together
This is a prayer I wrote on the morning of Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s funeral. Jewish tradition does not have one set idea about what happens after death, so the first part of this prayer-poem explores that question: is death the end? Do we reincarnate (gilgul – the rolling of souls along a cosmic wheel of reincarnation, a Kabbalistic concept)? Or do we go to a mystical Garden of Eden? Regardless of what happens to the neshamah (soul; plural is neshamot) after death, we say our prayers for departed souls’ elevation (aliyah/aliyot) and tradition teaches that they are in the sheltering presence of God, sometimes called Shechinah.
The prayers we say at Yizkor four times a year, including next month on Yom Kippur, largely developed during The Crusades, when many Jews were wantonly killed. Whole villages were wiped out in one go. Over the years, the Yizkor prayers have been updated in many congregations to include a word for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. This poem is suitable for adding to your personal prayers at Yizkor this year, or incorporating into Selichot prayers.
As we navigate dark days and deep emotion, may we never give up hope. — Shari Berkowitz
Together
When a group of people die in violence
Do their neshamot stay together?
Are the Sandy Hook kids playing kickball on some astral plane, lovingly in view of their teachers?
Will Hersh, Carmel, Eden, Alexander, Almog and Ori gilgul along into some large hospital and be reborn as infants? Might they kick a soccer ball around on the beach in Tel Aviv, in a time of true peace?
Or is it all over for them?
Are they just cold dust and ashes now, after all that suffering, all that waiting?
Are they only for blessings on their families, friends, on all of us?
This is my prayer:
May their neshamot have aliyot.
May they be wrapped in the wings of Shechinah.
May their mothers and fathers reach a place where they are blessed by memory
and not tortured by it.
May a way to peace be found.
May we never give up hope.
Shari Salzhauer Berkowitz, creator with Steve Silbert of the contemplative spiritual-creative volume Color the Omer and a regular contributor to Builders Blog, is a professor of Communication Disorders and a speech-language pathologist. She serves as a lay service leader, shofar blower and Vice President of Temple Beth El of City Island, NY, also known as “your shul by the sea.” She studies at Hebrew Seminary’s (Chicago) pararabbi program. Her work appears in in Bayit’s Visual Mahzor and AJR’s These Holy Days: A High Holiday Supplement After October 7.
