Two years ago Sunday, our daughter Emily died and her funeral was today on one of her favorite holidays, Cinco de Mayo.  It was also her first wedding anniversary (her husband, Jeremy Shrader, is in photograph).

The world as we knew it changed that day, and we have to come to grips with the reality that it will never be the same again.  It seemed that our hearts were going to break, and then, we realized they already had.

We don’t usually post personal items on this blog, but it’s just impossible to ignore this day, and the Internet is a modern form of immortality, so we pause today from worrying about urban issues and politics to remember someone special.  We remember her today and follow that post with Friday’s sermon by our rabbi, Micah Greenstein, because of its relevance to all of us gripped by grief.

Here’s what I wrote two years ago:

Emily was a remarkable person. She was vivacious, exhuberant and charismatic.

She seemed to make every room that she entered a little brighter and crackling with energy.

She believed earnestly in karma and the cause and effect of putting good out into the world with no expectation in return.

She believed passionately in social causes like feminism, human rights, justice and equality.

She also believed convincingly that all things have a purpose, and in the midst of turmoil or an ordeal, she could always tell us how something positive would come from it.

But most of all, Emily believed in Memphis. She loved this crazy, gritty city with all her heart. She could tolerate almost anything, except someone running down her city or her University of Memphis.

Several years ago, somone asked me why I was so passionate about this city and why it mattered so much to me. I said: “Two reasons – my daughters Emily and Adrienne.”

As so many in their age group left Memphis, they stayed, and there was not a day that passed that I did not know how lucky I was to have them here. But so was the city itself, because like so many of her generation, she was not interested in anyone’s race, sexual orientation or background. She was only interested in working with them to make Memphis better, so that more young people would choose to stay here for their career and that fewer children would grow up in poverty.

the paperweight on her bedroom dresser bore a quotation by Helen Keller. It said: “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”

That seems the perfect thought for us today, because that’s where we find her now.

Rabbi Greenstein, as usual, finds meaning and context for the grief that grips many of us:

On every Friday evening, we recall the story of creation and the words, “God saw that it was good.”  But the biblical stories that follow, however, hardly support such an assessment.  Remember those bible stories?  What follows God saying that the work of creation was good are verses filled with dysfunctional families, murder, bloodshed, violence and war.  Jewish history would witness the slaughter of the innocent, the bitterness of exile, the death of the young and blameless.  One of the early rabbis, in fact, faced all these realities and finally concluded, as stated in the Talmud, “It is beyond our power to explain either the suffering of the good or the prosperity of the wicked.”

Still, after all was said and done, Judaism rejected the conclusion that life was meaningless.  They insisted that life is a precious gift and that God’s creation, as we sing each Friday night, God’s creation indeed is good. How did they do it?  How did our Jewish forebears reconcile the glowing pronouncements in that scroll with the very sobering bitter facts of life?  They did so with three fundamental convictions.

Some of them concluded that creation is good and life is meaningful  because what appears to be evil may in fact lead to further blessing.  This particular view found expression in a bunch of stories about a guy named Nachum Gamzu.  “Gam zu means “this too,” so whatever troubles befell him, Nachum would always say, “Gam zu l’tovah, this too can be for the better….this too is for the best.”  No matter how monumental the misfortune might be, he was still convinced, “This too is for the best.”

Every one of us, I’m sure, could cite an instance when in retrospect we would say, “Gam zu l’vtah – this too is for the best.”  Still, most of us would find it difficult to ground faith in that conviction alone because most pain and suffering are NOT for the best, and no amount of verbal gymnastics can change that fact.  Whenever I have stood at a grave with parents who have just lost a young child, I could not ever dare to say, “Gam zu l’tovah,” nor could I utter those words to the terminally ill who die a slow and painful death, or to the victims of genocide and mass murder.  Some events can NEVER be for the best.

Which leads to a second Jewish explanation for the suffering in this world.  In the rabbinic mind, all existence is divided between the world of our ordinary experience (olam hazeh) the world we live in and work in – and the world beyond, olam habah, the world to come.  The meaning of the world to come refers on the one hand to the Messianic Age, a time when this ordinary world and everyday life will be totally transformed – and it also refers to an existence beyond our normal lifespan, a heavenly realm where our own soul returns to the source of all souls and we all attain perfect peace and contentment

While many of us find comfort in this deeply held Jewish belief, more of us probably seek some comfort and courage in THIS world now, not in some future existence.  Pain and sorrow may indeed turn out for the best eventually and this earthly existence of ours may not be the end of our spiritual life, still neither of these views mends a broken heart completely.

The third explanation Judaism offers may deliver for some of us even greater comfort and reassurance.  This third explanation is embedded strangely enough in the Jewish wedding ceremony.  Certainly, the Jewish wedding ceremony celebrates the goodness of life.  We all know that.  That’s why the ceremony includes the Kiddush, a symbol of rejoicing. Nonetheless, how does a Jewish wedding conclude?  It ends, remember, with the breaking of the glass, a reminder of sorrow.  The lesson?  Life is both a cup of joy and a broken glass.  Inevitably people will offend each other, hurt each other, neglect each other – even if they love each other- simply because we are all fallible human beings.  If we seek to acquire qualities of kindness, compassion and tenderness, we must also risk the possibility of losing them.  No one can hurt us more than the one to whom we are bound and whom we love

The cup of joy and the broken glass in the wedding ceremony both teach us that life’s agony is real even as its higher moments.  We may even suppose that not all that happens in this world is pleasing to God.  Even God may suffer, even God may hurt – indeed God’s joy and sorrow may often depend on what WE do.  But God is present even in the deepest darkness, and beyond that darkness, God waits to comfort us.  That faith is what we witness and stand for as God’s partner.  That faith is what it has meant to be a Jew both in the best of times and the worst of times.

To put it all together in one sentence:  When it comes to the deepest questions, Judaism teaches that life is not a puzzle to solve- it’s a mystery to embrace.  To insist that there is NO meaning in life is as much an act of as to insist that there is.

One of my favorite spiritual writers, Rachel Naomi Remen, recalls her visits with her grandfather on late Friday afternoons when she was only ten years old.  Each time, her grandfather would light and bless the Sabbath candles since his wife died.  Then he would give Rachel a tiny cup that contained a thimble full of wine, and after he recited the customary blessing as we did earlier in tonight’s service, he would invite little Rachel to say, “L’chayim! To Life!”  When Rachel asked him, “Grandpa, why do we say To Life,” she remembers he told her, “My dear Rachel, no matter what difficulty life brings, no matter how hard or painful or unfair life may be- life is still holy and good and worthy of celebration.”

In other words, whatever disappointments we may suffer, life is still good.  Life is worth the price it demands.  No matter what sorrow, no matter what adversity may darken your days, may each of you find sufficient faith in the Jewish toast that life is good, through one word, “L’chayim.”  Amen.