Bring this to synagogue on Yom Kippur

These Jews died during the past year. Each one wrote a Book of Life for the ages.

Leonard Cohen, singer-songwriter (1934-2016)

When Jews enter a sanctuary for the yizkor memorial service on Yom Kippur, they carry a goblet of tears for those whom they love, and who have died.

During this past year, we Jews lost many people who left their fingerprints upon our culture.

Let me begin with some obvious ones – well known celebrities whose lives have something to teach us.


During this past year, we lost three comedians.

  • Bill Dana, a man of Hungarian Jewish parentage whose broken English portrayal of Jose Jiminez would, today, be considered ridiculously politically incorrect.
  • Don Rickles, who elevated the insult into an art form.
  • Jerry Lewis, who was both funny and complex.

Why mention comedians? Because the Talmud has something to teach us about comedians – or, actually, clowns.

There is a story about a rabbi, walking through a marketplace. He runs into the prophet Elijah, who has this sweet and unsettling habit of coming back from the dead and hanging out with mere mortals.

The rabbi asked the prophet: “Who, among all the people in this marketplace, will have the merit of enjoying life in the World to Come?”

Elijah pointed to two men. The rabbi approached the two men and asked them: “What do you do for a living?”

They replied: “We are clowns. When we see people who are sad, we cheer them up.”

That is the deep theology of comedians. That is why they merit a place in the World to Come. (I have been trying to imagine what Don Rickles has been saying to God, and it is not pretty).


There were other Jewish entertainers who died this past year: Carrie Fisher, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Martin Landau, and Judge Joseph Wapner.

But, let me draw your attention to three other people who died. One was obscure. The other was less obscure. The third was famous and fascinating.

Yisrael Kristal, who died at the age of 114 years old. Poor guy; only six years short of 120. He was the oldest man in the world.

Yisrael Kristal was a survivor of the Lodz ghetto and of Auschwitz. He had owned a candy factory in Lodz. His first wife died in Auschwitz. After the war, he moved to Haifa, and he re-married, and he had a family.

He could have spent his remaining years, screaming at God. He didn’t. Every day, he woke up, and he put on his tefilin.

Yisrael Kristal was not only the oldest man in the world when he died. He was also, obviously, the oldest survivor of the Shoah — and perhaps, one of the most faithful.


Judith Jones, who died at the age of 93. She probably was not Jewish — but perhaps you don’t have to be Jewish in order to be a modern Jewish heroine.

Judith Jones worked at the famous Alfred Knopf publishing house; in fact, she discovered Julia Child, and she was also a writer and a major foodie.

One day, she was going through the pile of manuscripts that other editors had rejected, and a particular manuscript that caught her eye. It was The Diary of A Young Girl – which we know as the Diary of Anne Frank.

And so, Judith Jones pulled the diary out of the reject pile. How had it wound up there in the first place? Alfred Knopf had said: “Who would want to read a diary written by a young girl? If it sells, I will eat my hat.”

Within a short period of time, Alfred Knopf was inquiring what kind of wine goes well with hat. Anne Frank’s diary – perhaps the most famous literary artifact of the Shoah – might have never seen the light of day. It would have wound up in a waste basket in a New York publishing office.

Judith Jones was an obscure woman. But, she is also one of the greatest heroines of twentieth century literature.


The third person who died this past year was far from obscure — the Canadian Jewish writer, poet, and songwriter, Leonard Cohen, who died at the age of 82.

Leonard Cohen was not only a singer and a songwriter. He was, for many of us, a rabbi, as well – a man who freely incorporated Jewish images into his music, and who lived in the world proudly as a Jew.

Cohen was an unapologetic Zionist. During the Yom Kippur War, he traveled to Israel to entertain the Israel Defense Forces. In 2009, he gave a concert in Ramat Gan. He spoke to the audience in Hebrew. He opened the show with Ma Tovu — “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob …” He ended the concert with the priestly blessing —aware that as a Cohen, a descendant of the priestly class, it was, in fact, his prerogative.

But, consider the words that he sang on his final album which was released just weeks before his death.

The title song of the album is “You Want It Darker.”

In that song, he re-states the Kaddish:

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name

Vilified, crucified, in the human frame

A million candles burning for the help that never came

You want it darker – we kill the flame.

Leonard Cohen knew of the darkness that he sang about. To this day, it is not just a million candles – it is multiples of millions of candles – that burn for the help that never seems to come.

What other rock star has ever invited a Jewish choir to appear on an album? It was the men’s choir of Shaar Hashomayim, the traditional synagogue in Montreal that his family belonged to, and generously supported over the generations. He invited the congregation’s cantor to sing as well — these words:


Hineni, hineni

I’m ready, my Lord…

It was as if Leonard Cohen, months away from death when he recorded the album, knew that he was going to die.

Let us pray: that whenever we face our own mortality, that we will have the courage and presence of mind and spirit to stand before God and to say: Hineni, hineni – I’m ready, my Lord.

 

A list of other Jews who died since last Rosh Ha Shanah:

Meir Banai, one of the icons of Israeli rock music, 55

June Foray,  the voice of dozens of famous cartoon characters, including Rocky and Bullwinkle, and Boris and Natasha, 99.

Betty Friedan,  feminist thinker and leader, 94.

Ruth Gruber, chronicler of the plight of Jewish refugees, 105.

Henry Heimlich, whose maneuver saved countless lives, 96.

Nat Hentoff, the journalist and First Amendment activist, who first inspired me to be a writer, 91.

Esther Jungreis, rebbetzin, Holocaust survivor, and leader in Orthodox outreach, 80.

Goldie Michelson, the second oldest person in the world, who endowed the drama program at Clark University, and who taught theater to Jewish students at Temple Emanuel in Worcester, 113.

Otto Warmbier,  the University of Virginia student who was tortured in North Korean captivity, and who died as a result of his wounds, 22.


Edie Windsor, fighter for marriage equality, 88.

May all their memories be a blessing.

 

 

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