How do we mend? Yom Kippur sermon CEC 2024 Rabbi Sandra Kviat
Joshua Harrison loves his mum deeply. And as it's her birthday he picks up the phone and calls her; “I wanted to wish you a happy birthday and tell you I love you”. “Baby, I love you too.” she says. Joshua continues, “It's really good to talk to you [mum] and I miss having phone calls with you.”.
It’s a very touching conversation, between a mother and her adult son, the only issue is that Joshua’s mum died of cancer two years ago in 2022. And what or who Joshua spoke to is what's called a griefbot, or his AI mum as he calls her, one of the many forms of ‘grief technology’ that has sprung up in the past few years. Most are there to facilitate grief in the early stages, a bit like us looking at photos and videos or finding old voice recordings to listen to[1]. But in some cases, like what Joshua is trying to create is something altogether different.
For him the idea of someone who is gone forever is a concept and a tragedy that he cannot accept. “What I would like to see is the complete and total eradication of grief. The feeling of grief that comes with losing people…[2]” As technology evolves he hopes that 20 years from now robotics will be so advanced that he will be able to give his robot mum a hug, before she drives off to pick up his kids or grandkids.
The short documentary with him is heartbreaking, it is clear how much he is in pain. But there is something deeply worrying about his inability to accept the death of his mother and the reality of loss. The lack of mending, and of healing is profoundly disturbing.
Just to clarify, my discomfort here is not about AI per se, it has many important uses that can be life enhancing and help us, but in this instance, there are deep ethical, psychological and spiritual problems with his use of AI.
Refusing to accept the loss of a loved one is not new. We have plenty of mythological stories from across the world about people travelling to the underworld begging, bargaining or trying to cheat death, so that a loved one can be reached, or returned to the world of the living. In the US there is a strong cultural current of denying death, and in Britain we often find an uncomfortableness and even avoidance of saying the word, with many preferring to gloss over it and say, ‘passed’, or ‘departed’.
Grief is at its core about love that has nowhere to go, it is complicated and painful but it's a vital part of understanding what has happened and process the loss, so that we ultimately get to a point where we can slowly get on with life. Who has not wanted to have just one more conversation, one more hug, one last opportunity to be with someone who has died. The grief we feel is, in the end, a manifestation of the love we have for them. They might be gone, but our love hasn’t and so it settles in us as a companion of grief, slowly healing, but never disappearing.
Many in our community have lost loved ones during this past year, and are still considered to be within the 12 months of mourning. Some are only a week, or just a few months, in; when grief may still feel quite raw. But no doubt all carry a sense of being broken hearted. Even those who may have lost someone years ago, can still feel that broken heartedness; for we know that grief tends never to go away, it just dulls, and becomes a companion we live with.
Tradition suggests that our response when first hearing of the death of a person, should be ‘baruch dayan ha-emet’ - ‘blessed is the true Judge’, or ‘blessed is the judge of truth’. I've always found it a very stark and uncomfortable thing to say to someone who has just told you that they have lost a loved one.
Yet as we become less and less accustomed to death and dying, perhaps there is a truth in these words that we need to hear? Maybe that they are not really about blessing God, or even pulling us back into life, as some interpret them to mean. I think, in the light of the apparent wish to deny the existence of death, and with it to avoid grief; that ‘baruch dayan emet’ really is a way of saying - ‘I acknowledge that the person is dead’. Neither sugar coating it, nor sidestepping it, we say “I see your loss and acknowledge your grief, and accept it is beyond our control”.
We also say these words at a later stage in the mourning process in the ritual of kriyah - the tearing of cloth that we do at a funeral, just prior to the service. It is one of those old rituals that carry so much meaning, yet it's not being done so often anymore. When we make a tear in the fabric over someone's heart, we are in effect externalising how we are feeling on the inside. It's a way to show how broken we feel, how there are tears in our hearts, and that we are not feeling ok. It's a way to signal to others that something is amiss, and to approach us gently. We wear our hearts on our sleeves. Rather than denying the grief and creating an AI grief replacement, we show and acknowledge our heartbreak.
The painful question that we have grappled with this year has not been a question of whether to grieve, but ‘how can we grieve? How do we mourn losses on this scale? How do we mourn circumstances before us that are so big and painful, and complicated? How do we hold and care for those who have lost family members, or friends? How do we mourn a loss of safety? How do we mourn a sense of belonging and acceptance that may have been taken away from us? The times when we did not need to check ourselves before speaking, when we didn't look over our shoulders? We are grieving something monumental, and our tradition does not allow us to look away.
Grieving and the process of repentance of Yom Kippur has a lot in common, not just that on this day of days we are meant to think of death, or behave like we are somewhere in between life and death, like for example the custom of fasting and withholding sustenance for our bodies, and the wearing of white simple clothes. Or the lack of wearing leather shoes, make up, brushing our teeth, taking showers, looking in mirrors, avoiding TV and radio, all of these come from the ritual of the seven days of mourning.
The process of grieving is about getting used to a new reality, a world where there is a great big tear in it. One of the wisest things I've heard about grief, and it's not just because my sister said it, is ‘in grief we become more of ourselves’, we become stronger versions of all the good traits but also the more challenging ones. Grief amplifies who we are.
On Yom Kippur we hold up a mirror to ourselves and see all those traits staring back at us, amplified by the prayers, the poems, and our willingness to look at ourselves with honesty. On Yom Kippur we take all the small and large tears that we have carried around and we look at them. Which are the tears that we caused? Which did others cause?
But Yom Kippur also asks us a somewhat different question, rather than just ‘how do we grieve’ - this day also asks us ‘how do we mend? When our heart is rent, when the cloth of our soul is torn, what do we then do?
In our mourning rituals, a garment is torn and traditionally is then worn for the seven days of the shiva. But what can we do after that period is finished? The ancient rabbis have a moving (and rather practical) answer to this, for they were worried about what would happen to someone with few clothes, what were they to do with a torn shirt or top that they couldn’t replace? Their answer - you're allowed to stitch-up the tear, but it has to be with a different colour thread than the clothing, and not stitched well. For it is important that the tear remains visible to anyone who comes close, so that they can see that you have a torn heart, and that is only just beginning the process of mending. Once a whole month has passed can you then stitch up the tear properly, so that only someone who looked really close could see the deep scar on our clothes, and on our heart.
I find this image deeply touching, of us wearing our stitched-up hearts on our sleeves, so to speak. “The image resonated so profoundly for me[3]” Rabbi Sharon Brous explains in her moving book; ‘The Amen Effect- Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World’. She writes; “It feels impossible to imagine that we can ever stitch ourselves back together, but we can. And in some ways, it becomes even more beautiful than it was before because now it holds the history of the struggle and of the process of healing[4]”.
Yom Kippur asks us to get a needle and thread out and try and stitch-up the tears in our relationships to others, to ourselves, to God, and to the world around us. The stitch might not be straight or neat. It is not expected to be invisible, for we are not trying to erase what went wrong, or pretend it did not happen and simply replace what has been lost. We will always be able to feel the bumps of the thread under our fingers, and that is ok.
This Yom Kippur have we begun to seek the forgiveness we need or need to give to others? Though the stitches in our lives might appear neat or nearly unseen, are the tears still weakening our cloth, are the threads of previous repairs starting to show; do we find they aren’t quite holding up to the day-to-day challenges of life and the world we inhabit as well as they used to? Have others approached us, noticing our tears or offering to help mend what went wrong? And if not, then how can we begin to mend such tears in our heart by ourselves?
On Yom Kippur We grieve for the times that someone wronged us and a relationship broke, or was torn, or faded. We also grieve for when we wronged others, when we willingly or unwilling hurt someone else; when we fell short of ours and others standards. And over the past week and especially on this day, we have hopefully started the process of repair,And if you haven’t, then let's get out that needle and thread to begin the mending.
So what if you aren’t a whizz with a metaphorical needle and thread?
Well another thing that both circumstances of grief and Yom Kippur have in common is the fear of not saying the right thing. Of getting in a muddle, saying or doing it wrong and upsetting the other person. Well, the honest answer to that is that words do not always matter so much. Showing up, being present, going to the funeral or the shiva, seeking them out for a brief chat, or hug or cup of tea at the right time, showing that we care, that we know they are hurting, and letting them know they are not alone, that is what matters. Ensuring we do not allow grief to feel like a virus, it does not spread, and you can’t catch it.
For anyone who has lost a loved one, I suspect that what mattered most was that you were there when they needed you; what you said or didn’t say will fade into the background, if the mourner can even remember the words shared. What most say they remember is your face, the hug or care you gave, your tone and demeanour. And that you showed up.
And it is the same with the process of mending our relationships to others on Yom Kippur. Not acknowledging the hurt you may have caused, not approaching the person you may have wronged, that leaves the tears in the fabric of relationships unmended.
You might not have the right words, you might worry that they won’t forgive you, or that it won’t really make a difference - but reaching out and trying is like that offer of a needle and thread. It is saying that you see and understand the damage caused, and that if they are willing or will allow, then you would like to try and help mend the tear.
Sometimes all it takes is trying, and the mending can begin. Other times the issues are much deeper, much more complicated, and painful, and it will take many years for any lasting stitches to (potentially) be made.
The hurts we have endured this year are in some cases very deep. Some may not be able to be mended, even with the help of the person or people who did it. Many hurts are on a different scale, caused not by our personal relationship, or our personality, or theirs, but simply by unchanging circumstances. Perhaps us being Jewish, or living in a Jewish household, and in such cases the perpetrators might not even know us or the tears they have caused.
In cases where the tear is so large, and the burden so heavy, and yet where there is no one we can turn to and say “you harmed me, you caused me immeasurable pain”, or circumstances when the person is no longer alive, or it would be too emotionally damaging to turn to that person, then perhaps, in such cases, the question of mending becomes one of finding a way of letting go, when you are ready. Not forgetting or pretending that it didn’t happen, but at least trying to place a few stitches into the tear, however visible or differently coloured the result is, at least we can acknowledge our shiva period is over through that initial ‘tacking stitch’.
Sometimes, if there is no one else who can give you the right thread or help you to mend the tear, that's when Yom Kippur can come to help. That’s why we are all here together. All of us with our invisible needles and threads in our hands and our voices, and as we go through these 25 hours together, may you find someone who helps angle the light for you to see better, or threads the needle for you, or lends you a scissor to cut away a loose thread. Perhaps someone will help hold the pieces for you or temporarily pin the cloth for you if the tear is wide, or take hold of the needle or help to push it through when your hands are in pain, or shaking or your vision is blurred.
I hope for Joshua and other mourners like him, that he will be able to face the truth one day and accept that his mother has died. And slowly come to terms with his loss, so that eventually he can begin to mend his heart.
On this day, we must once again take up our needle and thread and look at what we need to mend before us. ‘Baruch dayan emet’ - may we find the tools and the help to mend the tears in our hearts.