## Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Shaharit, Yizkor

###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Shaharit, Yizkor 6
[Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Shaharit, Yizkor 6](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Rabbi%20Sacks%20on%20Yom%20Kippur%20Mahzor/s/Shaharit,_Yizkor/r/6)

**English Edition; Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 2017:**
YIZKOR
The custom of remembering and praying for the dead is ancient. In the second book of Maccabees there is a reference to Judah the Maccabee saying prayers for fallen fighters and making a collection for the Temple on their behalf (chapter 12). *Midrash Tanḥuma* mentions the custom of remembering the dead on Yom Kippur. It bases it on the verse: “ Your people, whom You, God, have redeemed” (Deut. 21:8): *Forgive Your people* – these are the living. *Whom You have redeemed* – these are the dead (*Tanḥuma*, *Ha’azinu*, 1). Equally ancient is the custom of donating money to charity in their memory, for “charity redeems from death” (Prov. 10:2; 11:4).
We believe that the soul is immortal, that the dead live on, and that we, by our actions in the present, can confer merit on them and their memory. This is especially germane to Yom Kippur when we recall our own mortality and remember those who brought us into the world. Rabbi Jacob Weil (Germany, fifteenth century) suggested that the plural form of the biblical name for the day, *Yom Kippurim*, literally “the Day of Atonements,” refers to two atonements, for the living and for the dead.
The emotional impact of *Yizkor* deepened in the wake of the Crusades and later the pogroms, when many Jews went to their deaths as martyrs, and were remembered each year at this time. A special prayer for martyrs, *Av HaRaḥamim*, “Father of compassion,” was added to the service at that time. Nowadays, we add prayers for the victims of the Holocaust, as well as those who went to their deaths defending the State of Israel.
The formal name for this prayer is *Hazkarat Neshamot*, “the Remembrance of Souls,” but it became popularly known as *Yizkor* because of the first word of the memorial prayer. Remembrance holds a special place in the Jewish soul. Jews were the first people to regard remembering as a religious duty. The verb “to remember” in one or other of its forms occurs 169 times in Tanakh.
In Judaism we remember not just for the past but also, and especially, for the sake of the future. As mentioned in the commentary for the Ma’ariv remembrance verses, this can be seen in the three cases in which the word *Yizkor* appears in connection with God in Genesis. God “remembered Noah” (8:1) and brought him out onto dry land. God “remembered Abraham” (19:29) and rescued his nephew Lot from the destruction of Sodom. God “remembered Rachel” (30:22) and gave her a child. In each case the act of remembering was for the sake of the future and of life.
Judaism gave two majestic ideas their greatest religious expression: *memory* and *hope*. Memory is our living connection to those who came before us. Hope is what we hand on to the generations yet to come. Those we remember live on in us: in words, gestures, a smile here, an act of kindness there, that we would not have done had that person not left their mark on our lives. That is what *Yizkor* is: memory as a religious act of thanksgiving for a life that was, and that still sends its echoes and reverberations into the life that is. For when Jews remember, they do so for the future, the place
where, if we are faithful to it, the past never dies.


###### Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Shaharit, Yizkor 10
[Rabbi Sacks on Yom Kippur Mahzor, Shaharit, Yizkor 10](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Rabbi%20Sacks%20on%20Yom%20Kippur%20Mahzor/s/Shaharit,_Yizkor/r/10)

**English Edition; Koren Publishers Jerusalem, 2017:**
PRAYER FOR LIVING RELATIVES
Our Father in heaven: On this holy day, I give You thanks for my [father / mother / husband / wife / brother(s) / sister(s) / son(s) / daughter(s) / grandchild(ren)] who are with me in life, and for whose continued health and blessing I pray. Be with them, I pray You, in the days and months to come. Protect them from harm and distress, sickness and affliction, trouble and misfortune. Spread over them Your canopy of peace and may Your spirit live in the work of their hands. Prolong their days in goodness and happiness and may they and we have the privilege of seeing children and grandchildren occupying themselves with Torah and the life of the commandments. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart find favor before You, my Rock and Redeemer.