I was in Israel for the first time in 1989, a few years after the Children’s Memorial opened at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem. Approximately a million and a half children were murdered at the hands of the Nazis. To capture the immensity of that number, the Architect, Moshe Safdie, filled the darkened interior with thousands of mirrors, each reflecting and refracting the light of five candles creating the illusion of millions of lights. The first time I visited I was still a child and was overwhelmed by grief. The loss of one child is horrific, the loss of many millions is unimaginable.
This week’s Torah portion Shemini tells the story of a tragic sacrificial accident that took the lives of two of Aaron’s children Nadav and Abiyhu. The ages of the sons are not given in the text, but just the hint that they may have been teenagers intensifies their loss. The later deaths of Miriam and Aaron do not feel as heavy as the loss of these two relatively obscure biblical characters. When a child dies, it breaks our confidence in the world and the promise of a long life we feel we deserve.
A week ago, a six-year-old named at Shir Shalom, whose family connections in our community go back several generations, was taken from us way too soon. Hannah St. Cyr was a bright shining light for her parents Ashley and Doug, her younger brother Henry, her grandparents Bruce and Marianne, and her extended family and friendship group. As her father Doug bravely offered in his eulogy last Friday, she was sheltered in a cocoon of love throughout her too short life. The question, he so lovingly said, was not why God took her from us, but why we were given such a blessing in the first place. Sometimes it is our children taken from us too soon, that teach us how to truly live. May the memory of Hannah St. Cyr always be for a blessing!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
A Poem for Hannah
“Hannah Sunshine”
we all have held a six year old
have raised a six year old
or have been a six year old
old enough to leave our mother’s lap
only to fall back into her arms
it is the age of magic potions and fairy houses
when a lost tooth can be a pirate ship
and a butterfly an endless supply of dreams
oh to be six again and so trusting of the world that you would could slip
through its fingers like a brush through hair
you are your full self even without knowing your full self
your future self standing at a faraway shore waving as you inspect the beach for shells
you who will never be seven or nine or twenty nine
wrap your whole soul around us
squeeze out a smile if only for a moment
remind us we have all been a six year old
or raised a six year old
or have held a six year old
inside our hearts dancing bringing a measure of joy
in an otherwise bleak world
-Alex Lazarus-Klein