(A previous version of this text was published on this blog in Portuguese under the title "Lendo nosso Livro da Vida a tempo de poder mudá-lo")
This morning, we explored a powerful and challenging idea: what if we could read the Book of our Own Life from beginning to end, seeing all its joys and sorrows at once? We asked ourselves if, knowing the inevitable pain that accompanies a full life, we would still choose to love, to connect, to embrace it all.
Now, as we gather for Yizkor, we shift our perspective. We are no longer looking at the book we are still writing, but at the completed, cherished stories of those we have lost. We hold in our hearts the books of their lives.
This morning, I spoke about a short story I read a while ago: Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang. The story’s central idea is that a life's meaning is found not in its sequence of events, but in its totality. It contrasts the human perception of time as a chain of cause and effect with a simultaneous awareness, where past and future are known at once. From this perspective, a life is understood by its ultimate purpose. The story’s power comes from posing a profound question: if you knew the entire story of a loved one's life—knowing both the immense joy it would bring and the inevitable, heartbreaking pain of its end—would you still choose to live it? The narrator’s decision to embrace that beautiful, tragic story affirms that the joy and the sorrow are inseparable parts of a meaningful whole.
As I mentioned this morning, in the story, the protagonist learns that she will marry a man she hasn’t even kissed yet, and that they will later get divorced. Their daughter will suffer from a rare, incurable disease and die young. And even with this foreknowledge… she chooses to love him. She chooses to have that child. And she loves them as though she didn’t know how the story would end.
This, in its essence, is the bargain of love.
I once asked a dear friend, who grieved her grandfather deeply, whether she would still have been that close to him, knowing the pain she would eventually feel. “Absolutely,” she answered, and added, “Only those who live, grieve.” In her next message, she wrote: “Only those who experience happiness, suffer.”
Her words are the heart of Yizkor. Our grief is the measure of our love. We are here today because the people we remember chose to love, and because we chose to love them back. And we would make that choice again.
Yizkor is our chance to read their stories again. If we could read our own Book of Life, what role would they play in it? If we had known, while they were still alive, what we know now, how might we have changed our relationship with them?
This moment of memory invites us to focus not just on the loss and the ache of their absence, but on the light they brought into our lives, the good moments we shared, and the values they inspired in us.
And perhaps the most important—and most difficult—question to ask now is this: knowing how these people touched our lives, and acknowledging on Yom Kippur that our own lives will one day end, how can we live differently from this day forward in their honour—and for the sake of those who will still be here after we’re gone?
May the light of their souls continue to illuminate our paths, offering us inspiration and comfort. May their presence be felt in our happiest moments and in those when we need their support the most. And let us say, Amen.
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