Transcription:
We have very strong prohibitions about speaking of someone not in their presence. And so we say what we say in the presence because we know that the body and the soul are still separating and we’re respecting every moment of what’s happening. And so we’ll also speak psalms, which are the words of David. I always think of Psalms and I say it’s like you enter the human heart and you walk around a little bit. The Psalms are just a beautiful understanding of what goes on within our hearts and how when we face a loss like that or we feel betrayed or we feel those moments, as I mentioned before, time is something we don’t process anymore and psalms in its use of verb tenses gives us that understanding as well, that we’re not ready yet to move anywhere. We’re in this moment. And so we use Psalms and we use the words of David. We speak of the person to honour their life, to honour their contribution and to understand that transformations are taking place but bonds can’t be broken. That when we bond to someone in life and we weave our souls with another person then they don’t unweave but we will miss them every minute. So we have to learn that new relationship. We have to learn that transformed relationship and that starts at a funeral service when people are invited to speak and then we hear the endless different sides we all present. We will end with a prayer, El Maleah Rachamim, that speaks about the mercy of G-d but the word Rachamim which we always translate as mercy. In Hebrew the root of the word is the word womb and it speaks of unconditional love in the way that when a woman carries a baby it’s unconditional love. And that is our appeal to God in that moment is to say remember that You are the parent and this is unconditional love. Please take the soul, guard it, keep it safe for all of eternity. And so we’re really in that moment again the relationships we’re talking to God and we’re saying we know this about You but in this moment we’re relying on this about You. And so it becomes a very strong connecting moment and then the person is escorted out of the funeral and we move to the cemetery. Mourner’s Kaddish is it’s the Kaddish but it’s particular for someone who is mourning a loss. To me the impact of it has always been that the verbs are in the future tense and so the person who is in so much pain is standing at the graveside and saying to God, Yitgadal v’Yitgadash, one day I will praise You and one day I will make Your Name holy again but this is not that day. What I’m doing right now is I commit myself to get there. I commit and say to You that one day I know I’ll get there but You understand this is not that day. And while the mourner is saying that and everybody is answering Amen they transition to being mourners and so when they leave we make two lines and then they walk between away from the grave, they walk surrounded again by community, they’re walking between the lines as we offer them our first words of comfort which is G-d should bring you comfort among those who mourn Zion. So we’re saying to them you have G-d and you have community and you have people who have stood where you are standing. So again you are never standing alone and our focus shifts from taking care of the person who has passed to now being able to take care of the mourners who are so vulnerable.