I was eight or nine years old when I first became aware of Yizkor rituals in my parents’ home. In 1933, my maternal grandfather was killed in a traffic accident, and 22 years later, his wife—my maternal grandmother—died suddenly of a heart attack. My mother, in her early thirties, became a parentless child. As a young boy, I could feel her sadness whenever she silently lit Yahrzeit and Yizkor candles throughout the year. And the way she spoke openly and longingly about both her parents helped shape the template for my own lifelong work as a death-awareness educator and bereavement counselor.
For over forty years, I have accompanied people “walking through the valley of the shadow of death”—as a rabbinic chaplain facilitating death, burial, and mourning rituals; as a spiritual director and psychotherapist companioning people in the transformation and healing of the grief journey; and as a teacher and author exploring Jewish wisdom on the mysteries of death and the world beyond. And I have discovered that Yizkor, recited four times a year—on Yom Kippur and the three pilgrimage festivals of Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot— has far more complexity to it than the sadness I would see on my mother’s face in the late 1950s.
Judaism does memorialization of deceased ancestors exceptionally well. Public recitation of Kaddish; listing names at Yahrzeit; multi-generational Yahrzeit boards in congregations; kever avot—grave-visitation rituals—between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur; and communal Yizkor services, traditionally called Hazkarat Neshamot (“the remembrance of souls”) are all part of the extensive ritual framework Judaism offers for honoring loved ones in the world beyond. This stands in sharp contrast to the surrounding death-avoidant culture, which struggles to confront mortality. We shy away from speaking directly about death, often relying on genteel euphemisms: people don’t die—they “pass away;” they “lose their battle” with illness. There is a pervasive belief that if we avoid naming death, perhaps it will simply disappear, sparing us the emotional labor of grief. This cultural avoidance has even influenced Jewish life, echoing an old Jewish superstition: If you summon the Angel of Death—Malach HaMavet in Hebrew, Moloch HaMaves in Yiddish—he may appear.
Jewish folk traditions and that old New England prim-and-proper attitude toward death have left us a legacy of a death-avoidant culture. This cultural avoidance is often applied to our views of Yizkor, as children being automatically sent out of the sanctuary during Yizkor services, with the message that Yizkor is too heavy, too sad for kids. This mindset equates death with sadness, and sadness with something bad—to be rushed through and set aside as quickly as possible.
But what if we understood Yizkor as more than just “sad,” instead as a ritual experience rich with many layers, textures, and emotional complexities? A multi-dimensional Jewish remembrance ritual, holding sadness, longing, gratitude, bittersweetness, and soul-guidance, all inter-woven into a rich tapestry of meaning. When we recognize this, Yizkor becomes deeper, more meaningful, and personally resonant.
First of all, Yizkor brings sadness. Sometimes deep sadness. When my mother-in-law died during the first months of COVID-19, one of my rabbinic colleagues offered me words of comfort on “The tragic death of your mother-in-law.” But I explained to him that she had lived to be 94, had lived a full life, and died a reasonably uncomplicated death. Her passing was sad—but it was not a tragedy.
Not all deaths are like that. Some deaths are tragic. A sudden death. A violent death. A medically-complicated death. The death of a young person. The death of a parent with young children. Sometimes in reciting Yizkor for the very first time, the pain may be raw, sharp. Sometimes, individuals reciting Yizkor may still be reeling from the sudden, tragic death of a spouse, a parent, or a child.
Sadness is the natural consequence of loving. And so Yizkor can serve as a powerful bereavement ritual—if we permit ourselves to feel the pain of loss. Sorrow and tears are not weakness; they are authentic. They are more real than enforced smiles or polite nods. And these authentic emotions—our tears, our grief, our sadness—form the bridge that connects us. They connect us to ourselves. They connect us to our loved ones. They connect us to one another.
So in reciting Yizkor at Yom Kippur (and other times this coming year), we want to make room for all emotions. If sadness is present, let it be there. That is the gift of Yizkor. That is its sacred function.
Another dimension of Yizkor is the experience of longing. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once observed that while one way of mourning is to weep—the raw, emotional expression of sadness—another way to grieve is through silence, “to behold the mystery of love, to recall a shared moment, to remember a word or a glance, or simply at some unexpected moment, to miss someone very much and wish that he or she could be here. The twinge lasts but a moment, and passes in perfect silence.” This is the essence of longing: the quiet ache of wishing we could once more be with the one who is no longer present.
Yizkor is not only recited on Yom Kippur, with its stark confrontation with life and death, but also on the final days of our pilgrimage festivals—Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot—described in our tradition as zman simchateinu, “the time of our rejoicing.” Why introduce memory of loss into moments of joy? Longing is precisely the emotion that emerges in these moments. How often at times of great celebration—a wedding, a bar mitzvah, a holiday gathering, even while traveling somewhere wondrous—we feel a sudden pang of absence: “My father would have loved this… My mother would have been so delighted… My partner would have enjoyed this moment with me.” That yearning to share joy with someone now gone is at the heart of why Yizkor is said during festivals of rejoicing. Longing itself can be a spiritual state, a stirring of the heart that opens us not only to memory but also to deeper relationship—with the dead, with the living, and with the Eternal. So when reciting Yizkor this year, if you feel that quiet tug of “I wish I could be with you right now,” know that it is natural, holy, and profoundly human.
Another essential quality of Yizkor is legacy—the enduring gifts left behind by those who have died. Death may end a physical life, but it does not end a relationship. What continues to live within us is the legacy of that person’s presence, their values, their teachings, their way of being in the world. Part of the work of mourning is to transform our longing into gratitude for the gifts we have inherited, to recognize how the lives of those we loved continue to shape our own.
For me, this truth comes alive in simple, everyday moments. My father, of blessed memory, was the quintessential handyman—always fixing, tinkering, building, always busy with some task around the house. By osmosis (though as a teenager it often felt more like oppression), I absorbed his skills with a hammer, a screwdriver, and a set of pliers. To this day, whenever I repair something in my home, I feel his presence and appreciate the legacy he passed on to me. And from my mother, I inherited a different kind of artistry—the ability to set a beautiful, dignified Shabbat or holiday table. When I prepare a festive meal and arrange the table with care, I sense her spirit alive in that act of love. Each of us carries such legacies. Reciting Yizkor gives us the space to reflect: What legacy have we inherited from those for whom we are saying Yizkor? What gifts, teachings, and ways of living do we carry from those who are no longer physically here? Legacy is not a one-time remembrance—it is a living, ongoing connection. In remembering, we also give thanks for the enduring legacies that continue to shape who we are.
Then there is yet another emotional texture of Yizkor that I would call bittersweetness, a complex and layered emotion that can bring both a tear and a smile at the very same moment. Sometimes our tears of missing someone open our hearts to the depth of the love we feel. Bittersweetness is about holding both the light and the dark together, like maror and haroset mixed on the Seder plate. In Yizkor we remember the past with nostalgia for what once was, even as we feel the sharp ache of loss for what can no longer be.
To say Yizkor is to dwell, if only briefly, in this bittersweet space of grief and love. Death marks an ending, yet endings inevitably give rise to new beginnings. Each of us knows, from lived experience, that life is fragile: we face illness and death, breakups and bereavement, wars and disasters. And yet, interwoven into these same realities are beauty, love, and blessing—the splendor of being alive on this fragile planet, the joy of relationships, the wonder of creativity and human connection. If we allow ourselves to hold both—the bitterness of loss and the sweetness of love—we create space for healing, for peace, and for deeper meaning. By accepting the bitter, we open ourselves more fully to the sweetness. That is one of the quiet but profound gifts of Yizkor. (See Susan Cain, Bittersweet – How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.)
Finally, there is one additional dimension of Yizkor—not specifically an emotion, but another way of understanding its multidimensional nature. Yizkor is, at its core, a soul-guiding ritual. It is a practice that links our hearts and minds in this world with those who dwell in the world beyond. Our tradition gives us examples of this connection: In the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 34b), Caleb, one of the spies sent to scout the Promised Land, went to the graves of the patriarchs to pray for protection against the false counsel of his companions. Centuries later, Judah Loew of Prague, the great Maharal, would send his congregants to the cemetery on the eve of Rosh HaShanah to pray at the graves of the righteous, seeking blessings and favorable decrees for the coming year. In Judaism there is a long-standing tradition of asking for guidance, wisdom, and strength from the souls of those who have gone before us. Yizkor opens a window between worlds, and if we take time not only to speak but also to listen, we may discern echoes of their wisdom, presence, and blessing.
Judaism wisely teaches that Yizkor is not a solitary practice but a communal one. We are invited to honor our sorrows and our memories together, affirming that grief is never borne alone. When we say Yizkor, we join not only with the souls of our beloved dead but with one another, gathered in prayer, in congregations across the world. Yizkor reminds us that death and loss are part of the human condition, an experience shared across generations, cultures, and communities. And as I learned from my mother as a young child, in remembering loved ones who have died, we honor our emotions and integrate their legacy. And in doing so, we bring comfort, wisdom, and peace to our hearts. This year, may each of us, in our own way, be guided by our ancestral loved ones, and signed and sealed in the Book of Life for a year of blessing, healing, and renewal.