Keepers of the Story (Yizkor 5776 Service Sermon, 9/23/15)
Thu, September 24, 2015
In 1951, John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara and their director, John Ford, traveled to Ireland to film the movie, The Quiet Man. It was a story about an American of Irish descent returning to his ancestral home after a successful boxing career. He meets and falls in love with the spinster sister of the local squire, who refuses to grant them permission to marry. You can rent the movie to find out how it ends.
What we don’t see on screen, is how the little town of Cong, on the border of County Mayo and County Gallway opened its homes, hearts, and local pub to the cast and crew of The Quiet Man. Not liking the name of the local pub, for instance, Ford renamed the pub Pat Cohan’s, which is the name of the pub to this day. In fact, the owner was our tour guide, and there are pictures of me pouring beer behind the bar. You know me, I thought the pub had been owned by a Jew…Cohan. But, Ford made the name up and it has stuck for the past 64 years, even though the pub has changed ownership many times.
A visit to the charming town of Cong reveals A Quiet Man Museum, numerous Quiet Man shops, a Quiet Man restaurant and even a place in the town square with a life size bronze statue of John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. And throughout Ireland, Quiet Man calendars and memorabilia abound. Our hotel ran the move 24/7, so we watched it straight away.
People left their homes so the movie could be filmed totally on location, to capture the beauty of the western Irish countryside. One of the homes still stands on the property of Ashford Castle.
Wandering the back roads of the Castle one day, the day after we had watched the movie, we came upon a beautiful house. Over the front door are painted the words, “Squire Danaghers Home” and behind an abundance of flowers in pots is a metal plaque on the house to pay tribute to its role in the movie. We were thrilled.
But, nothing could have prepared us for what happened next. A grey-haired woman came to the door as we were taking pictures. She opened the top of the Dutch door, just as they had in the movie and asked, “Have you seen the movie?” Those were the magic words. The next thing we knew we were being ushered into her dining room, which is still exactly as it was in 1951, except for the fact that the walls and shelves were adorned with Quiet Man memorabilia. Mae showed us the suitcase John Wayne gave her father to thank him for use of the house. She showed us a picture of her mother with Maureen O’Hara, and each subsequent picture or object came with a story. We had been transported back to 1951 and this grandmother, whose grandchildren could be heard in the background, showed us a picture of a beautiful six-year-old girl talking to John Wayne. “That’s me,” she said proudly. “I don’t remember what he was saying, but that’s me with John Wayne.”
We stayed and talked with Mae for quite some time. She spoke of her parents and their six-year-old who gave their house to the filming of The Quiet Man, as if it were yesterday, and we were transported back to 1951 on the wings of her memory. Mae is the Keeper of her family’s story, as the town of Cong remains the heir to her nation’s story of Hollywood coming to Ireland.
On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, one perfect fall afternoon in September, almost 30 years ago, I sat with a vital woman in her sixties. She was elegant with the most beautiful smile and a captivating Hungarian accent. I can still hear her say, “Rabbi, thank you so much for coming.” She wanted to share her story with me.
We sat for hours on that deck, as she described Auschwitz, her number 23212, and how she and her three sisters, and her cousin, stood in the back row to avoid Dr. Mengele’s eye.
She described her transfer to a dynamite factory, where she was chosen to work in the kitchen, because she spoke German. She vividly remembered how she was hit if she gave a hungry person a little extra soup, and how she stole food from the kitchen to keep her sisters and cousin alive, Five beautiful young girls, lived through starvation and horror, thanks to this woman’s strength, courage, and determination. They all lived to share a long lifetime of family togetherness, but not before suffering a second time at the hand of the communists and losing everything all over again.
In my early thirties, I knew what we were sharing was so much more than a Rosh Hashanah afternoon. She was the keeper of her family’s story, and our Jewish family story. And I was given the privilege of inheriting her story and memories that afternoon. We bonded that day and spent three more decades sharing Rosh Hashanahs, joys and sorrows, celebrating B’nai Mitzvah, and weddings, and the birth of great-grandchildren. She graced this sanctuary for decades and I will treasure every call, every letter, and every moment we shared.
I will never forget the day she stood on this bimah, in April of 1998, telling her story, as every child in our religious school that Sunday morning wore this yellow star with the word “Jew” in Hungarian. Her story became their story.
From a blonde beauty saved to work in a concentration camp, to a professional woman working in one of Manhattan’s most exclusive stores, to the deck of her daughter Julia’s Fairfax Station home, Irma Illes was an inspiration, a gift from God. When she died this year, we all became Keepers of her Story, which she wrote down by hand for her descendents, and shared with Steven Spielberg’s Shoah project. High Holy Days will never be the same for me without her.
It is a sacred responsibility to be the Keeper of the Story. In our Jewish tradition, we cherish the Torah in such a sacred way because it is our story, the story of our people’s first encounter with our God, our values, and our destiny. Passing the Torah has become the quintessential act of sustaining the story in our congregation. We are born to be Keepers of the Story, and our God-given task is to share it with those who come after us.
In April of 2010, Rutgers University sent a young interviewer to the home of one of its devoted alumni for its Oral History Archive project. Just as Spielberg has interviewed Holocaust survivors to capture their stories forever in his Shoah project, oral history projects abound throughout the world. These stories – these histories – recorded for posterity, capture the memories of ordinary people who did ordinary and extraordinary things.
Our 1941 Rutgers graduate sat for hours at the age of 84 sharing his memories, from the names of his elementary school teachers to growing up as the child of a single mother, to his entry and contribution to the care of our troops in WWII, as an officer in the Pacific Theatre. I spent many hours with Dr. Howard Goldberger before he died, becoming one of many keepers of his story. But, being able to read the transcript of his oral history was a true gift in getting to know details of the younger man.
A visual and artistic family, Amy Arons and her daughters have also captured the Goldberger’s family’s history in pictures, l’dor vador, as they are keepers of Howard and Ruthie’s memories and stories, and as they pass on their own stories, as well.
As keepers of the story, we remember. Yizkor is a Jewish value that says to our loved ones, we are here to affirm your life. I am, and will forever be, the keeper of your story.
When his son, Marc, went off to college, Harold, ever the devoted father, sent him postcards weekly, and sometimes daily, for all four years. What a testimony to the love between father and son. And even as a young college student, Marc kept those postcards, saving every one.
When we touch handwriting and words, we are transported through time and space. For a moment we can touch and relive the moments we shared with those we love. Marc Goldman is the keeper of the story of a loving father.
Marc’s children will forever tell stories of their Zayde. Each of Harold’s grandchildren now have yarmulkes, made from their Zayde’s collection of Ralph Lauren shirts. Those beautiful heads of his grandchildren, wearing those one of a kind kipot, have memories of love, and stories that will forever be shared. They become keepers of the story. Blessed be the keepers of the story, young and old.
Each person we lost this year has a story. Some so painful that we are not just keepers of the story, we are left trying to make sense of it as we grieve. Every person who has died had a story. Some stories are lost with them, but we must hold on to the stories we have and share them, to live the values of Yizkor (memory) and L’dor vador (from generation to generation), and Kavod, (honor). We show honor to our dead when their stories, and the goodness of their lives, are able to live on through us. We are the keepers of the story and we can’t rely on anyone else to do it for us.
There is much pain and suffering in life. There really is never a good time to die. But, it is particularly hard when life is cut short. We grieve not just for the memories we have as keepers of a life story, but for all the memories we wish we could have had as parents, spouses, children, grandchildren, family, and friends. We grieve for our broken hearts and shattered dreams. We grieve for good, kind, generous people who we wish could be here beside us. We mourn for loved ones who suffered in life and whose death causes us to suffer, too.
The human brain is truly amazing. When a loved one dies, the brain spends at least a year sorting through the visual and auditory memories we have, deciding what can be discarded and what we wish to keep. The brain even processes smells that will immediately transport us to being with our loved ones. Smell is our oldest and most primal sense and evokes powerful memories for us. Every sense mourns. Every sense remembers. As keepers of the memories, our brains are responsible for crafting the loved one we recall as we say Kaddish.
And we are drawn to Yizkor on Yom Kippur, like bees to our hive, our sanctuary, because it is not enough for our brains to remember alone. As Jews, as members of this loving temple family, we know that comfort comes and honor is bestowed when we remember together, and every time we hear our loved one’s name called, yahrzeit after yahrzeit.
The irony of our time with Mae in Cong, Ireland, is that most of the things she told us about were actually not her memories. She was only six-years-old, after all. She has become the recipient of her family’s history, a town’s memories, and her country’s happy legacy. Mae taught me an important lesson about how we hold on to our family stories and make them our own. She also reminded me that stories and pictures can make us all time travelers. There is comfort in going back in time, and comfort in carrying our loved ones into our present.
Our Yizkor this Yom Kippur is a meditative process that can’t be rushed. Each of us becomes that “quiet man or woman,” listening to the music and the words and letting them flow through us, so that we can have time to place the memories of our loved ones on God’s altar, and into the living well of lasting memory.
We say to our loved ones, “You are not forgotten. Your story is in our hands, our hearts, our minds.” For we are, forever, the keepers of your story.