Rabbi Ilana Garber’s Sermon with a Tribute to her Uncle Giggy

Shavuot – Ruth Sermon 5767
And a Tribute to Uncle Gilbert Garber z”l
Rabbi Ilana C. Garber
(with help from Lori Lefkovitz)

The story we just heard is about moving on in life and through life. From loss, desperation, and pain, a woman who calls herself bitter in place of pleasantness, we eventually reach hope, love, faith, future, redemption, and the birth of a child.

I am struck by how far this story stretches into the past before and the future beyond these episodes in the life of a widow and her daughter-in-law.

Consider Naomi, a woman whose past we know little about. She becomes a widow within the first few sentences of the book. We have only to imagine the characters of her husband and two sons in order to fully understand the void their deaths leave in her life.

And for Ruth and her newborn baby, Oved, we must imagine the fullness of his life, blessed to have a mother and a surrogate mother in Naomi. All we know about him is that he becomes the grandfather of King David.

It is as if, on this long timeline, someone placed a magnifying glass on a single tiny dot on the line, on a time in which two women who survived great personal losses befriended one another and found a way to move on, redeeming us all through their promising new baby.

Isn’t it just amazing how compressed a life becomes after death. Just weeks or months after a person dies we no longer remember the subtleties of their life. Instead, we report the same little stories, the funny character traits, and the oft-repeated phrases. We reduce a person to loving a certain color, always eating the end of the brisket, or never missing a football game. We tend not to dwell on the person’s past – what came before. And in our loss, we tend not to focus quite yet on the future, the legacy that person has left for us.

And yet, that is what we ultimately must do. We are all tiny dots on the timeline that extends far into the past and far into the future. We may be ultimately compressed into trite details, but we represent so much more and that is what we value in ourselves and our loved ones.

When we come together for Yizkor we affirm this. Like Ruth and Naomi, we comfort each other, proving to ourselves and each other that we all suffer loss, we all know pain at some time, and yet, we all live to endure, to move on, to live, and to see the future carried on in our name and our legacy. That’s why we have children, or become teachers, or write books, or whatever else you have done to leave a legacy. That is why we all cling to life.

Imagine what it would be like to tell Ruth and Naomi what they eventually become, that they lead to King David and then eventually to us? What if you could jump into the book of Ruth to encourage them in their time of great loss and pain that their enduring it all will one day be “worth it.” To convince them that their rich past does not end with them, but that their strength leads to our future. For instance, I’d love to show Ruth how countless Jews by Choice see her as a role model.

And how often do we wish we could tell our deceased loved ones what we have become, that we could show them diplomas, pictures of grandchildren, and other forms of accomplishment that they did not live to see? When we continue to live, to move forward, to dance through life, we are ever more aware of those who are no longer with us. And that pain is felt even as we celebrate life’s happier moments.

Moving forward, we look to the past. We give our children the names of their ancestors and then we see characteristics develop that remind us of our loved ones. Knowing that history repeats itself we notice family trends, relationship patterns, even common interests spanning generations. Life is enduring, God is enduring, memory is enduring in one way or another. We are but a speck on this long line, this chain of tradition.

I must pause in my written word for just a moment. When I was writing this on Tuesday, I received a call telling me that my great uncle had died. While he was blessed to know his wife for 70 long and wonderful years, it is hard to believe this patriarch has died. It was too new and too raw for me to formally insert details about him into this sermon, as his funeral is going to be held tomorrow, but it seems so fitting to share with you something about my Uncle Gilbert, Uncle Giggy as we called him, in order to illustrate the points I have been making.

My uncle was a historian. But not the kind of historian that reads lots of books. No, my uncle had one primary book – the phone book. Wherever he went – from Virginia to Vilna – my uncle would open the phone book, look for anyone with the last name Garber or Gawenda or Galinsky, our other family names, and he would call them up – every person he found – and invite them to his hotel lobby so they could meet, share family histories, and so that he could take a swab of their cheek cells so that he could test their DNA to see if we were really related. My uncle did this for his whole life – and he linked the family together in so many ways through this project.

Uncle Giggy then took all of the names and put them on a family tree – a big scroll that runs from one side of this sanctuary to the other. He has, at times, shown me where my name is, and he recently told Adam, my fiancé, that his name would be added to the tree after our wedding. The gift Uncle Giggy gave us all by this genealogy project and family tree is to show us that we are all specks on that timeline. We know who came before us and that there is room for many more to come after us. We have the gift of an extended family, and the blessing of someone who cared so much for family and taught us all to care. That is what I have learned from my Uncle Giggy, and in this holiday of Shavuot, when we joyously celebrate so much, I am keenly aware of these blessings as well as of the pain of not seeing him in this world again.

In the midst of our joyous holiday of Shavuot we pause, we interrupt our joy of receiving the Torah, to acknowledge the absences that may compromise our celebrations. Just like the shattering of a glass at a wedding that reminds us of pain amidst great joy, we are reminded of our loss even while we celebrate. And in that, we are reminded of our own frailty, our mortality, and how life is so short, so precious.

Naomi and Ruth left behind the remains of husbands and children in order to start over, and what they carried in their hearts and bodies we will never know. What we know that they never knew is that their moving on in life carried the promise of blessing for all of us. The Book of Ruth triumphs over death by giving us the widest possible perspective on life. The way we honor the dead is to live with the conviction that our lives are infinitely promising no matter how grim things may seem. We live knowing that the promise of our own futures is partly owed to the many, often intangible ways that our departed have shaped who we are.

And so we remember them, pausing in the joy of our holiday to acknowledge from where we have come, what made us who we are, and to ponder what we one day might leave behind to others. Yizkor. We remember. Please turn now to your Yizkor booklets, page 4.