Remember the Stars - A Reflection on the 100,000 Lost to Covid-19©
Yizkor sermon - 2nd day of Shavuot, 5772/2012
Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh
I wanted to begin with announcing a number that should shock us all - 100,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 since this pandemic began. The New York Times published a startling graphic - 1,000 of the names along with brief information about each one of them. I read the following in the Washington Post by a journalist named Mark Fisher. He wrote the following:
One hundred thousand Americans dead in less than four months.
It’s as if every person in Edison, N.J., or Kenosha, Wis., died. It’s half the population of Salt Lake City or Grand Rapids, Mich. It’s about 20 times the number of people killed in homicides in that length of time, about twice the number who die of strokes.
The death toll from the coronavirus passed that hard-to-fathom marker on Wednesday, which slipped by like so many other days in this dark spring, one more spin of the Earth, one more headline in a numbing cascade of grim news.
Nearly three months into the brunt of the epidemic, 14 percent of Americans say they know someone who has succumbed to the virus.
These 100,000 are not nameless numbers, nor are they mostly famous people. They are, overwhelmingly, elderly — in some states, nearly two-thirds of the dead were 80 or older. They are disproportionately poor and black and Latino. Among the younger victims, many did work that allowed others to stay at home, out of the virus’s reach.
For the most part, they have died alone, leaving parents and siblings and lovers and friends with final memories not of hugs and whispered devotion, but of miniature images on a computer screen, tinny voices on the phone, hands pressed against a window.
The dead are not equally dispersed across the land. They perish mostly in pockets — in huge, frightening outbreaks such as the one in New York City, and in smaller ones, flares of disaster around meatpacking plants, in immigrant neighborhoods and at facilities for the elderly.The demise of these 100,000 people has had strangely little public impact in a country with a long history of honoring its fallen and committing to common cause in their memory.
Americans have responded to the coronavirus pandemic with outpourings of gratitude — New Yorkers’ nightly chorus of cheers for health-care workers, for example — and widespread cooperation, including extraordinary, quick pivots to staying at home and wearing masks.But there have been few expressions of public grief — no gold stars in the windows of homes where people died, no outcry for national unity or memorials, as happened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In this trauma, the enemy is unseen; there is no one against whom to mobilize the nation’s energy, anger and frustration.”
One week ago today on Shabbat, we began the book of Numbers, BaMidbar. It begins with a census, a counting of men aged 20 years and up. Most of the commentators see the writing on the wall – the census was for one purpose: war. They did not count the Levites, the women, the children, and the elderly because they would not fight. There is a general unease when it comes to counting Jews - there is a danger that is inherently present - counting could lead to us becoming desensitized to the loss of said people. It could also lead us to come to different conclusions.
Jacob Milgrom, writes in his commentary to Numbers: The basis for the taboo against a census is not known, although one plausible suggestion has been offered: As the shepherd counts his sheep, so the counter of persons must be their owner, a title belonging solely to God and not to man.
But there is something necessary about counting, and taking note of those numbers.
A famous commentator, Rashi, gives us his view of the counting in this parashah:
(א) וידבר. במדבר סיני באחד לחדש - וגו' מתוך חיבתן לפניו מונה אותם כל שעה, כשיצאו
ממצרים מנאן, וכשנפלו בעגל מנאן לידעמנין הנותרים. כשבא להשרות שכינתו עליהן מנאן.
Because of God's love for them, God is continually counting them. He counted them at the time of the Exodus; again after so many died at the time of the Golden Calf incident. He counted them to find out how many were left; and now when He was going to rest His Shechinah (divine presence) upon them he counted them again.
At this point, when God was about to rest over them as they get ready to journey from Sinai, a high point, a point of renewed connection and relationship, he counts them again. I believe that his commentary attempts to make the counting that will dominate the next couple of parshiot more meaningful.
As we read on in the chapter, we read a series of names and numbers of the heads of the tribes and their fighting numbers. The names that are relevant to us are the ones we know like Jacob's sons, or names like Nachshon ben Aminadav. Perhaps these names matter because we have seen their good times and their bad times. When we read about Reuven, we remember that he was the one who tried to save his brother Joseph in the pit, but we also remember Jacob's rebuke of him on his death bed as the son who mounted his father's bed and brought him disgrace. We remember Judah and his relationship with Tamar, not one of his finer moments; but we also remember his courage in confronting Joseph to save Benjamin while in Egypt. Of course, we remember the Nachshon Ben Aminadav because in the midrash he took the first steps into Red Sea as a test of faith and only then did the sea split. It is because we know these names, not only the good times, but the difficult times, that they matter to us. This is what it means to be counted.
God counts them, because he loves them. After every incident when they lose people, at pivotal moments of their lives, God counts them. He has to count them in order to bring them under the wings of the Divine presence.
When I went to see the online version of the New York Times story I mentioned earlier, I noticed a difference. Instead of just names, there were silhouettes of people on a muted background. I automatically thought of stars. Jews have always been associated with stars. When God made his covenant with Avraham he told him to look at the stars, to try and count them, that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. In this way, God told Avraham to look to the future – that is what the stars were, a hope for future offspring.
The stars are not just the future, but also the past. Like many of you, we have been watching a lot of movies lately. Our family recently watched the live action version of The Lion King. It was updated with new scenes and song, but they left an iconic scene from the original, the messages that the King Mufasa gives to his son Simba is: look up at the sky, those stars are the famous kings that have passed on staring down at you. Believe it or not, it’s an incredibly Jewish message.
In the book of Daniel, the prophet tells about a future time when the dead will be resurrected. He said, “At that time, your people will be rescued. Many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to eternal life, other to reproaches. And the knowledgeable will be radiant like the bright expanse of sky and those who lead the many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever.” The middle line, yizharu kezohar harakia, shine like the radiance of the sky probably sounds familiar. The rabbis liked that image so much that they used it in the El Malei Rachamim memorial prayer, Bema’a lot Kedoshim Utehorim, Kezohar Harakia Mazhirim, amongst the holy and pure, who shine like the radiance of the sky, which we will recite in a few minutes.
Psalm 147, which we read during Psukei D'Zimrah everyday has a powerful line:
הָרֹפֵא לִשְׁבוּרֵי לֵב וּמְחַבֵּשׁ לְעַצְּבוֹתָם
(God) heals the broken-hearted, binds up their wounds
מוֹנֶה מִסְפָּר לַכּוֹכָבִים לְכֻלָּם שֵׁמוֹת יִקְרָא
He counts the number of stars, to each one of them he assigns a name.
Moneh Mispar LaCochavim – It's a message to all us – If God heals broken hearts, so can we. if God could count all the stars, and not only count them, but give them names, so should we.
We can see the names of the citizens, we can choose to see them as stars, in a sense, all equal – what they have in common is their humanity, the lives they lived, the stories they had, the relationships they left behind. We honor them, by counting them. But counting stars offers a different challenge.
Stars are distant and numerous, so on these days, we bring a part of that light into our homes when we light our Yahrtzeit candles – a light that we can grasp, that we can touch and feel. The goal of these days is to bring the distant close, to bring the past and the future to our homes, to our consciousness.
I cannot show you the entirety of their lives, but I urge you all to do something - look at their names, read the line about what made them unique. Like Alvin Elton, who died in Chicago at the age of 56, he followed in his father’s footsteps as a pipefitter. Or Donald Horsfall, 72 or Rydal, Pennsylvania, who co-wrote nine books about computing. Or George Valentine, 66, of Washington DC, a lawyer who mentored others, Rabbi Yisroel Friedman, 84, the senior rosh yeshiva at Talmudic Seminary Oholei Torah in Brooklyn for more than 50 years, and Rabbi Neil Kraft, who died at the age of 69 from the coronavirus in London, for 17 years led the Edgware and Hendon Reform synagogue. He was just weeks from his scheduled retirement date when he died March 27. May their memories be a blessing and a light to us.
A Memorial Prayer for Covid-19 Victims by JTS senior rabbinical student Jessica Fisher
אל מלא רחמים, שוכן במרומים, המצא מנוחה נכונה תחת כנפי השכינה
Exalted, compassionate God who dwells in the heavens, grant true rest in Your sheltering presence to the souls of those who have died alone these past months, without family or friends to hold their hands or sit at their bedsides, because of the dangers of the coronavirus.
Master of Mercy, please grant these souls the comfort and warmth they were denied in their last days. May their memory be a blessing and may they be held eternally beneath Your sheltering wings.
Remember, too, the souls of those who contracted the virus while caring for others--the health care professionals, those who work with the elderly, essential workers of all kinds, chaplains, and faith leaders. In their memory we pray. May our lives reflect a measure of their bravery and dedication.
May all of these souls be bound up in the bond of life and may they be remembered with honor.
ה׳ הוא נחלתם. וינוחו בשלום על משכבותיהם
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