By DAVID IZRAELEVITZ
Los Alamos

The anniversary of my father’s passing, or Yahrzeit in Yiddish, is a date that I have to track carefully on the Jewish calendar. On this modified lunar calendar, the observance of June 6, 2009 changes a few days forward or backward each year, and I have to look it up regularly.

But for my mother’s Yahrzeit, there is no tracking required. She died on October 3, 2016, the first day of the Jewish year 5777. So, when we set the dinner table last Sunday night to observe and celebrate Rosh Hashanah, “the Head of the Year,” with the two lit tall candles, the ceremonial glass of wine, and the braided bread, we also lit, in memory of my mother’s passing, a Yahrzeit memorial candle which is a squat version of a devotional candle you may have seen in the kosher aisle, Although the bright candles at the center of the table will shine for a few hours, my mother’s less ostentatious candle by the kitchen window will persevere through the whole night and the next day.

If my father was the bright candle that illuminated my family, who charted our path and led the way, it was my mother who was the Yahrzeit candle, that steady influence spending most of her time in the kitchen. While Simon was the man of dreams and adventure, Clara was the anchor to tradition and family. When I visited my parents from college, my Dad wanted to know about my grades, my research, and my future job prospects; my mother wanted to know if I had been eating healthily, did I need clothes mended, and how I handled my laundry.

Now, with both of them gone, I celebrate the progression of life, our children, and now grandchildren, and yet feel that hollowness that my parents are not here to rejoice in these milestones as well. The connection to them is now through their memory, and I feel now responsible for sharing those heroic stories and comfort food recipes, for in the Jewish tradition, immortality lasts for as long as there is someone to remember your good deeds.

Maybe that is the connection between the beginning of a new year and the end of a life that I feel at Rosh Hashanah. For the end of life becomes the beginning of a legacy. However long we can still hear the whisper of those who touched us, we can remember that we are here and on life’s path through and because of them. We rely not only on those whose life we now share but also on the support, guidance, and inspiration from whoever helped us get to where and who we are.

I have learned from my astrophysicist friends that much of the light that brightens the night sky comes from those stars that have already been extinguished. Those persistent photons continue on their path to our eyes even after their origin has exploded or withered. If it is true for stars, why can’t it be true for candles? And if true for all sources of light, why can’t it be true for that brightness and warmth from friends and relatives whose memory still comforts and inspires us?

Our tradition is that Rosh Hashanah is not the anniversary of the birth of the universe, but the birth of the first man and woman. We remember not the creation of stars and planets, but the beginning of family and love; not the creation of physical light, but the emergence of the light of human relationships.

This year, instead of going to synagogue after dinner, we view it via zoom. It feels remote and lonely to be reciting prayers at our dining table instead of being surrounded by fellow congregants, and it is hard to feel attentive. I am startled when the service is about to end and the Mourner’s Kaddish is announced. Terry and I rise quickly and join in, as those observing Yahrzeit are called to stand.

The theme of the Kaddish is to thank God for having created the world according to the Divine Will. It is a prayer of gratitude and hope, not bitterness about loss, for if we are to value something or someone, we have to contemplate the possibility of its loss, and thus sometimes to experience that loss and grow beyond it. So, I add my own sentence of gratitude. I thank that, according to Your Will, loss begets remembrance, remembrance begets consolation, and from consolation, we might come to wisdom.