Thoughts on Our Forbears

One of the traditions of this season is the custom to visit the graves of our departed loved ones and offer appropriate prayers in their memory calling upon them to support our pleas for forgiveness and atonement of our sins. The custom of visiting the cemetery is mentioned already in the Talmud particularly as one of the practices followed on fast days. Fasts were decreed from time to time when there was an extended drought or some other disaster in a community. The Talmud gives two possible reasons for visiting a cemetery at this time, one the opinion of Rabbi Levi ben Hama and the other the view of Rabbi Chanina. One sage teaches that this practice is to remind us of our mortality, to humble us and lead us to repentance. The other says that in visiting the cemetery we call upon the departed to beg for mercy on our behalf. In either case, our visit is intended to arouse God’s compassion for us and respond positively to our prayers. Some later sources specifically mention visiting the graves of tzaddikim, righteous people, who may have greater influence on high when we pray for their intercession on our behalf. People originally would go to the cemetery and prostrate themselves on the graves of these “saints,” praying for their help. This tradition during the High Holiday season became known as kever avot, visiting the graves of ancestors. Various customs developed over time. Some communities made it a point of visiting the cemetery on the Sunday morning after reciting Selichot, the prayers of forgiveness at midnight on that Saturday night. Other communities held their communal services at the cemetery on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. Nowadays, Kever Avot is scheduled at the convenience of the congregation, either before Rosh Hashanah or during the Ten Days of Penitence. Early on, the custom extended beyond visiting the graves of Tzaddikim and came to be an opportunity for visiting the graves of loved ones, relatives and friends who have passed on and calling upon them to join us in our prayers. I recall in the first congregation I served in Dallas, TX, holding a service on the morning after Selichot. Since the old cemetery where most of our members’ families were interred was rather large, a sound system would be set up to broadcast the service throughout the cemetery. The rabbis and cantor and the synagogue choir all stood at a central location while congregants would find the graves of loved ones and stand by them throughout the brief ceremony. Once it became the tradition to visit the graves of loved ones, in places where family members were buried in different cemeteries in town, there might not be a formal service, but people would make the rounds and sometimes arrange for officiants at the cemetery to offer the appropriate prayers on their behalf at graveside. These “officiants” were generally European immigrants who appreciated the opportunity for some additional income for their services. Over the years, we’ve noticed that families of our members are often buried in distant locations that are not always convenient to visit at this season. In my own case, my parents and most of my family are buried in a cemetery in Fairfield, CT. As it happens, this cemetery is attached to another one where my mother’s parents and grandparents are buried. A third cemetery close by is associated with the Reform Temple. My mother’s two brothers and their spouses are buried there. Thus, when we all lived in Connecticut, it was relatively easy for family members to gather and visit all the graves the same day. But making the rounds has become increasingly difficult to manage in our generation. Though some of my cousins still live in Connecticut, others have moved to the West Coast or to other cities around the country. My in-laws and most of my wife’s family are buried in Dallas. Increasingly, over the years, when congregants have lost their parents or other relatives, the funerals have been held in distant places where they had grown up. It has become much less common that several generations of any family live in the same area today. Rather than doing away with the custom of visiting the cemetery at this season because of the inconvenience, I have invited people whose families are buried elsewhere to join us at our cemetery and recite the appropriate prayers as they reflect on their family members wherever they have been buried. This practice in fact is recommended even in more traditional congregations based on the Talmudic passage I cited earlier from the tractate of Taanit. There it notes that at least one of the two purposes mentioned by the rabbis can be fulfilled in any cemetery, even a non-Jewish one. Any grave can remind us of our mortality and encourage us to take advantage of the opportunity to consider our lives and do teshuvah at this season. Another reason we have urged people to gather at a local cemetery is the tragic fact that many of our loved ones who perished in the Shoah, have no designated graves. Their ashes ended up in mass graves in the death camps of the Nazis. In light of this, some cemeteries have decided to create memorials for those who were murdered during the Shoah and to encourage relatives of the victims to gather around the memorial or elsewhere in the cemetery to offer prayers in remembrance of their lost family members. These services, like the Yizkor on Yom Kippur or other holidays, encourage us to remember these loved ones, to reflect on the positive qualities that they taught us during their time here on earth. We recall good times and bad that we shared and recognize how short our own time is in this life and how best we might utilize that time in the year ahead and in the future. This year we will meet at Lincoln Memorial Park for Kever Avot on Tuesday evening, September 8^th, at 6:30 pm. We invite you to join us for this brief annual gathering for remembrance and reflection. We pray that the lives of our loved ones may serve as inspiration for us and for our children and grandchildren.