Keeping Appointments

April 3, 2013

Yizkor is a prayer said only on the four Jewish "Pilgrimage" holidays. As I understand it,  a while back, the duty was to get oneself to Jerusalem to pray for one's dead on each of these four days. To pray that one would honor them by doing good works in remembrance of them. I did not have to get to Jerusalem--only to my synagogue, which is about nine blocks from my house. Still, yesterday, the last day of Passover, it was a little complicated for me to be at the Yizkor service.

Not because of some dramatic excuse like a donkey with two broken legs. No, I had a dental appointment. What's more, it was only for a cleaning. Still, the appointment was made weeks earlier.  And among my steely convictions is that it's mandatory to keep appointments unless there's a REAL emergency. Had I consulted my Jewish calendar  instead of my "regular" (larger) calendar when I made the appointment, I would not have made it for that day.

I cancelled the appointment.

Because I felt I had a prior appointment. With my parents. And with God.  Because the Yizkor prayers are to me a mnemonic: they remind me that when I act charitably toward others, I honor my parents. That's why I went and prayed Yizkor, because, most days, I do believe that my long-dead parents continue to live through me--so long as I act like their daughter.

What makes me doubly grateful that, this once, I broke an apppointment for a non-emergency, was that God, Who never had a mother or a father, and may have had an appointment with a dying child (or His own dentist) was also there in shul. Listening to my vow.