Saying Goodbye – Being Zocheh and M’zakeh
Yizkor – Yom Kippur
October 9th, 2000

My “Pop” said goodbye to me standing on the curb next to the car before we went home the last time that I saw him in relatively good form. He gave me a kiss on the lips and said to me “You’re now ‘Pop’.” That’s all he said. He never acknowledged to me his predicament. I didn’t want to be “Pop.” I didn’t ask to be “Pop.” I didn’t want to be the oldest male Creditor in my immediate family. I didn’t want to sit at the head of the table. That was my “Pop’s” place, and not mine. I wasn’t “Pop.” Being Abbah is different from being “Pop.” I was content to be Abbah. My grandfather was “Pop” to my father. My father was “Pop” to me. Not me. Yet my father made me “Pop.” He did it by kissing me goodbye. He did it by saying to me those words: “Now you’re ‘Pop’.” I have never shared this personal piece with anyone before. To this moment I feel the kiss and hear his voice saying it to me. I hear it every yizkor and yahrzeit and other moments too.

The last night of my his life I sat on the bed with him, taking breaks to sit on the porch, and going back into the bedroom to give my mother a break, waiting for my brother to arrive from Boston. That night my whole life passed before me.

All my father’s life that I knew about him passed before me. I remembered things that I had long forgotten, small incidents and inconsequential moments. They all flooded back to me and I recounted them to my father in the silence of the room, amidst my sobs and tears. I wouldn’t let him go. I wouldn’t say goodbye. First the megillah of our lives had to be reread.

*******

In his book Kaddish, Leon Wieseltier explores the origins of the mourners’ Kaddish and all the customs and implications connected to it. He cites the following Rabbinic teaching, brought in the name of Rabbi Akiva:

“He said: The father merits the son with beauty and strength and wealth and wisdom and years.”

In using the word “merit” as a verb, tradition understands it to mean, “Bestows merit upon.” For many pages Wieseltier struggles with these questions:

Who bestows merit upon whom?

Who shows the merit of whom?

When you translate the Hebrew word “zocheh” as “acquit” instead of “merit” the questions deepen:

Does the father’s merit acquit the son, no matter what the son does?

Does the son reflect badly on his father by his own misdeeds, no matter what the

son has done and no matter how good has been the father?

And if the father does not bestow merit upon the son by his life of misdeeds, what is the standing of the son?

For equality’s sake, please recast these questions for all genders, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons. While you really need to read these formulations in print, the basic questions are:

What is the relationship between parent and child?

What do they give us?

What do we give them in their lifetime, and after their lifetime?

How do we reflect upon them?

How did they reflect upon us?  

Though he didn’t know the language of DNA, Rabbi Akiva was correct to say that parents give their children a certain biological heritage. Over this they have no control. They may or may not bequeath to us financial affluence. This can be a blessing or a curse. But most importantly they can and should educate us, and in doing so, give us the wisdom of their years of experience and personal knowledge.

A father’s task is to be zocheh his son and daughter. To make them worthy.

A mother’s task is to be zochah her son and daughter. To make them worthy.

That night I reflected in the memories of a lifetime how my father was zocheh to me.

I remembered his stories about his military service in the Philippines and Japan during World War II.

I remembered his stories about being a volunteer fireman in Brooklyn until his entrance into the service.

I remembered the stories about the love he and my mother shared, dedicating themselves to each other at a young age, he was 20 going off to war, married on furlough, and she was 19 and became an army wife and saw her husband shipped overseas. They cut a dashing picture for the wedding, my Pop in his military uniform.

I remembered how my father served my mother, my brother and me, and my mother’s parents, and his parents, and my mother’s sister and her husband, my aunt and uncle.

I remembered the stories of how, at the Workman Circle Home for the Aged on Grace Avenue in the Bronx, he visited strangers in their rooms who never had a visitor but him, and could talk up a storm with any and everyone.

I remembered how he worked two jobs mostly, three jobs frequently, and a fourth job occasionally, so that in a declining field of factory manufacturing, my family never was without, always felt secure and taken care of.

I remembered the stories he told at the kitchen table about how he faced up to anti-Semitism in the factory, to the “German” who knew that he was a Jew. He never shirked. He never shrinked. He was never embarrassed. He was never ashamed, when the boys in the army called him a “Hebe” and his supervisors called him “Jew.”

I remembered how he grew his garden, used to rise up from his raspberry patch, straw hat, wide grin and little box with shining berries – “never pick them ‘til they’re ripe!” – or a big, big, cucumber or big, red tomatoes.

I remember how he took care of shul. How he collected the mail from the room behind the bemah, always made sure that the soda machine in the youth lounge was filled with bottles, maintained the accounts for the synagogue and Men’s Club, and was always there to schlep at bazaars and white elephant sales.

I remembered him challenging my every statement, making me run upstairs to my miniscule Jewish library to find a quote that would prove my point.

I remembered that and much more all that last night’s vigil. I cried and asked my father for forgiveness. I asked forgiveness for the little things and big things I had done, and wanted unspoken, silent forgiveness from him. They tell us that when all the other senses stop, hearing continues nearly to the last moment. I believe in that; that as he held my hand through the night, he heard me and granted me my request.

Through a stream of values and examples, in his lifetime and through the power of my memory after his death, my father was zocheh to me, transmitted to me merit in a metaphysical, unseeable way, more important and determinative than biological DNA. He didn’t teach me his trade, because he did not want me to follow him into the factory. He, and my mother, provided me with the education I sought so that I could be what I wanted, a Rabbi, and he saw me stand on the pulpit for seventeen years. They gave my brother the education he sought to be a musician. He kvelled, as does my mother, in the education of his daughters-in-law and all of his grandchildren. And he gave to all of us the immense wealth of the examples and values of his life.

*******

Wieseltier cites another dictum in the name of Menasseh ben Israel:

“The son acquits – is mezakeh the father with ten things, and they are: closing the eyes, washing the body, shrouding him, burying him, justifying the judgment – reciting Tzidduk HaDin, kaddish, charity, fasting, a candle, a eulogy.”

In counting the list I did seven. The chevrah kaddisha did two, and one, fasting on yahrzeit is not generally observed. I would like to think to myself, that I have reflected in my life certain of his values. That like he, I serve my family loyally, to my mother and aunt and father-in-law, to my wife, to my children. All of them first and foremost. I would like to think to myself, that I have followed his example in my service to the Jewish people.

The Talmud records the dictum: “B’ra mezakeh abbah.” As Wieseltier translates: “The son acquits the father.
Or, the son vindicates the father. Or, the son vouches for the father. Or, the son shows the merit in the father.”

A son’s task is to be m’zakeh, worthy of his father and mother.

A daughter’s task is to be m’zakah, worthy of her father and mother.

I would like to think, in the privacy of my yizkor prayers, that I am worthy to be my father’s son. In the privacy of standing before the yarzheit light I strain to hear him say so.

I wonder, at some juncture in time, how will my children and maybe grandchildren write this sermon?

What will they enumerate? How will they consider that I was zocheh to them?

What did I transmit?

Was I faithful to Rabbi Akiva’s dictum?

What did I do or say that affected them in their humanity, in their Jewishness,

more than just their DNA?

Will they worry about being worthy as being my children?

And if so, when I stand before the heavenly bar,

how will the deeds of their lives reflect any merit of mine?

Will I bequeath them anything that will acquit me before God?

Will I be worthy to be called “Pop?”

Those are the questions which I share this Yom Kippur Yizkor. That as we stand here in prayer, to reflect what our parents transmitted to us, how they were zocheh and zochah to us. And to reflect how we are mezakeh and mezakah to them, reflecting the glow of their merit in our own lives.

May we be worthy children to our parents.

May we be worthy parents to our children.

May we reflect the merit of our parents in our lives.

May our merit echo in our children’s lives.

Amen