Yom Kippur Yizkor 2026: Remembering and Becoming

It is definitely strange to be in that sandwich generation. And while I have been in it for many years now, I am feeling it more acutely now, with no one actually living here in NYC, yet I feel deep care and concern for both my parents and my children. I know that I am not alone in this moment-there are so many of us, who, think about others, both those who have been on this earth longer than us, and those whom are younger, that we feel deep ties to.

But as I get older, and I watch both sets of people I love grow, it makes me even more aware of my mortality. 

It makes me understand that, DOR HOLECH v’DOR BA, a generation goes, and another generation comes. 

I see it as I look out at all of you-it is a filled room, but what I am also seeing are so many metaphorically empty seats of members of our community who have passed away in the last few years. While I know that they would be glad to know that there are people who care as much about Judaism as they did, to fill their seats, I am also filled with a sense of sadness about what was lost in their passing. 

Being at this stage makes me think about what can be lost, “but for the grace of God” and modern medicine, what I have inherited from those that I love, and what I will transmit in my lifetime and beyond.

Anticipating a sense of loss is actually very normal, but the question is, are there moments when we feel the loss of a loved one where we didn’t realize we would recognize how acute it might feel? Is it when we wear a piece of jewelry given to us by a loved one, or hear a song that they would sing, or when you reach for the phone to call them and realize you can’t, or at least not in the way you have done in the past? Earlier this year, there was a profound moment for me and one of our members, when, she came to shul shortly after a loss of a parent, and I was doing what I do every week-read the Mi Sheberach, the prayer list. At the moment that I “should have’ said her father’s name, of course it was clear to both of us, we caught each other’s eyes, that that week, he was no longer on the list, a painful and poignant reminder of the loss and how it was up close and personal to all who had known him, and equally to all who had been paying attention. 

So it got me thinking-what is the role of Jewish liturgy and Jewish ritual and Jewish tradition, in helping us grapple with the inevitable, which is loss. 

Certainly Judaism does a good job at setting out the routine of what we should do immediately following death-there are steps to have a Jewish funeral and burial, the process of sitting shiva and shloshim, and for many, the recitation of kaddish. And we make sure to make room at our evening and morning minyanim to bring people to life, so to speak, as we share memories about them on their yahrzeits.

But the yizkor service actually comes at the perfect moment, because it is connected to our holiday observances, the moments where it is so clear that there is an empty seat beside us; our tradition is saying it is ok to mourn and to miss your loved one. You don’t need to get on with it. You can sit there and be with your grief. 

Yizkor allows us to find our loved ones again-what do I mean-

Rabbi Harold Schulweis wrote regarding Yizkor:  Looking Backward, we recall our ancestry. Looking forward, we confront our destiny. Looking Backward, we reflect on our Origins. Looking forward, we choose our path, remembering that we are a tree of life. Not letting go, holding on, and holding too, we walk into an unknown, beckoning our future with our past beside us. 

Rabbi Jay Moses asks why do people who don't come to synagogue a lot, come for yiske? He says these three reasons can be summed up with the terms-Re-living Re-hearsing, and Re-assuring. 

Reliving is the most obvious function - Yizkor serves to evoke powerful memories. reciting yizkor reawakens the emotions associated with our loved ones who have died. Rehearsing our own eventual death as much as yizkor transports us to our past, it serves equally as a signpost to our own future and a reminder of our own mortality. Reassuring-we see then how worshipers enter the sanctuary burdened by feelings of loss, grief, and the Mystery of death, This awareness leads to the third compelling function that yizkor serves in the life of a Jew in the face of these overwhelming emotions. Yizkor reassures us of the meaning in the mystery we find comfort in the community that assembles to acknowledge and support one another in the sacred task of memory. 

In essence, Yizkor begins by asking us to look backward—to search for those we have lost—but ultimately asks us to look forward and ask what we will carry forward from them. We search for our loved ones, and in doing so, we find ourselves: who we are because of them, and who we hope to become because they are no longer here to guide us.

It is these three ideas, remembering, carrying, and becoming, that are all intertwined when we come together at this moment. 

This summer, I read a memoir by Julie Yip Williams, called The Unwinding of a Miracle, it is a story of her death, and in her telling, reminds us, that though she is dying, the miracle is that she lived as long as she did. Her reflections remind us of this nexus point that we stand on between our lives and the lives of others. As she wrote: “I think I will always oscillate between embracing and rejecting hope. I think I will always live somewhere in between today and 8 years and 40 years from now, but what I do know about Hope, is that when it is an everlasting and indelible part of my spirit. It is there even when I feel hopeless; a Perpetual Flame. I have felt it's faint warmth even in my darkest moments even as I've sought to squash it. I know the flame however weak or strong will burn as long as I live and near the end of my days when it is clear that more life is not possible, my hope will evolve into something else-into hope for my children, hope for the human race, hope for my soul .”

Further, actor Eric Dane, who died earlier this year from ALS, recorded a final message for his daughters, Billie, 15, and Georgia, 14, as part of a Netflix interview for 'Famous Last Words'.

In the interview, Dane reflected on the lessons he learned during his illness. He spoke about resilience. About dignity. About choosing how you respond when life changes without warning.

He reminisced about beach days with his girls. Simple moments. Sunlight. Laughter. The kind of memories that feel ordinary until they become everything.

Then he addressed them directly.

He urged them to live fully. To embrace love. To forgive freely. To face challenges head on and fight with dignity. He reminded them that even though disease can weaken the body, it cannot erase the spirit.

He told them they carry his strength. And then he ended with words that now feel heavier than ever.

“Billie and Georgia, you are my heart. You are my everything. Good night. I love you. Those are my last words.”

A third understanding of this comes from Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso when she reflects on what Douglas Hofstatter taught after his wife died. We absorb so much of our loved ones that when they die, they do not truly perish, because they or at least significant parts of them, are still in us, in our brain. In this way they live in us. Their laughter and their joys, their hurts and their sorrows, their stories and their desires. Their own personal sense of who they are and how they are in the world are not somehow trapped solely within them, doomed to vanish. When they do die our loved ones are not simply turned into dust and Ashes-the parts that matter most are actually transportable to others. What happens is what we might call an interweaving of souls; a mutual sharing of each other's goals and identity; we literally get into each other's heads 

There is no question that when we are grieving, we feel often feel lost and alone, since we have experienced a loss. We don’t want people to tell us that they know how we feel. They don’t. But, simultaneously, as Jews, we often grieve alone, together.

There is tremendous power at the end of a funeral when we have finished the graveside portion of the service and we invite everyone to form two lines through which the mourners walk, as we recite the powerful phrase:

HaMakom Yinachem Etchem B’Toch Shaar Avley Tzion V’yerusalayim.” May you find comfort amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. We don’t mourn alone. We mourn, in community.

Rachel Goldberg Polin recounted a story from the final moment she was sitting shiva for her beloved son Hersh.

“And on the final morning after the prayers, we sat as tradition instructs, and everyone else stood there in a big clump in front of us. Two members of the community came close-each held out of hand to Jon and to me and they commanded, in unison,
‘get up from your mourning and then, Ohshrek, one of the founders of our beloved Hakhel,l our synagogue, took my broken paw in her cool confident hand and pulled me up into my new world. Her son Yuval, a friend of Hersh, had been in the army fighting to free the hostages from the beginning. Always known for being Larger than life and for his mighty and thunderous voice Yuval would shriek Hersh's name throughout Gaza. He had written to me on his own birthday in June to say that all he wanted for his birthday was to find Hersch and bring him home. Yuval roared so that Hirsch would know that they were trying to come save him. ‘Hersch, did you hear him?’ 111 days after our Shiva, I would get the call from John telling me that Yuval had been killed while serving in Gaza. At the end of Yuval’s Shiva it would be my hand put into Oshrat’s broken paw, pulling her up into the new world where we both now live.”

Last night I spoke about brokenness, and so today, I want to finish by thinking about healing not just through rebuilding but through memory, the transition of that memory, the healing in being in it together, and that we can be healed as think about the future. 

Yizkor is about searching for our loved ones and finding ourselves.

We come into this room and we notice the empty seats. We feel the absence of the people who should still be sitting beside us. We remember their voices, their laughter, their stories, the things they taught us, the ways they shaped us.

But perhaps the wisdom of Yizkor is that an empty seat is never only a reminder of who is missing.

It is also a reminder of what has been left behind and what will be carried forward.

Because dor holech v’dor ba—a generation goes and another generation comes.

We are the generation that has received. And we are also the generation that will transmit.

We cannot stop the generations from changing. We cannot hold on to the people we love, forever, at least not in the form that they have always been. We cannot fill every empty seat with their likeness.

But we can carry. We can remember. We can tell their stories. We can live the values they gave us.

And we can make sure that what was beautiful in their lives does not end with their lives.

That is what it means to mourn together and remember together.

And perhaps that is what healing looks like; not forgetting the people who are no longer here, but allowing what they gave us to become part of what comes next.

So when we say Yizkor today, let us look backward with gratitude, even when there is pain. But, let us look around and remember that we do not grieve alone.

Yizkor is about searching for our loved ones and finding ourselves

May the memories of those we have lost become not only a blessing that we carry, but a blessing that we transmit. And may we live our lives so that when our generation goes and another generation comes, something of us remains: Zichronam livrachah. May their memories be a blessing.