By Jeremy Werbow
The following is a d’var Torah delivered by community member Jeremy Werbow at Temple Beth Tzedek this past weekend.
We are at the close of Sukkot, in Shmini Atzeret, and this evening we begin celebrating Simchat Torah.
Today, we gather at a threshold.
Between ending and beginning.
Between memory and renewal.
Simchat Torah marks the end of our yearly Torah-reading cycle—and then, without pause, we begin again. Even though the story remains the same, we do not.
The lessons we hear in Torah change from year to year. Like riding a Ferris wheel or merry-go-round, we return to the same place—but each time, we see it, and ourselves, from a different perspective.
That is where our journey begins tonight: with the same sacred words, but with hearts changed by another year of living. And perhaps that is one of Torah’s greatest gifts: it meets us where we are, then calls us to become more than we were.
That pattern of returning and seeing anew is woven into the Torah’s ending itself. Deuteronomy ends with Moses at the peak of Mount Nebo, looking out over the land G-d had given to the Jewish people. In this sacred moment, Moses is given time to reflect on his one-hundred-and-twenty-year life.
Moses dies and is laid to rest in an undisclosed location. Then, almost immediately, we return to Genesis and the creation of the world.
One ending. One beginning. No long pause between them.
The cycle teaches us that an ending does not erase what came before; it creates the threshold of what comes next. It is like standing in a vestibule: one door closes behind us, and another opens before us.
We may not choose every door that closes, but we can choose how we step through the one that opens.
Yizkor meets us in that space—between the door that has closed and the one beginning to open.
Yizkor is the memorial service in which we ask G-d to remember the family members and friends who have died. The word itself means “remember” (Goldstein, n.d.). We recite Yizkor four times each year—four sacred opportunities to pause and remember.
Four moments to stop.
Four moments to speak their names.
Four moments to feel their presence again.
Yizkor asks more of us than simply recalling a name. It invites us to renew a relationship through memory—to quietly tell our loved ones what has happened since we last paused to remember them.
“When we recite Yizkor, we renew and strengthen the connection between us and our loved one.” A memory may return like a scene in a film, linking something happening now with a moment we once shared.
For a moment, it can feel as if they are with us again—as if we are simply catching up over coffee.
For a sacred moment, memory becomes encounter, and absence becomes presence.
As we enter this sacred time, I invite each of us to pause.
To breathe.
To remember.
Think of the people whose absence still has a presence in your life. Think of the last time your senses brought them close:
The last time you saw them…
The last time you hugged them…
The last time you recognized their scent…
The last time you heard their voice.
Perhaps the scent of a candle carries you back to their room. Perhaps a song on the radio places you once more on the dance floor with them. Perhaps you remember the warmth of their hug.
These moments belong only to you and the person you remember. They remind us that love can remain present even after a life has ended.
In remembering, we make room for that love to speak again.
Yet when love speaks through memory, it can bring comfort and pain in the very same breath.
Grief can feel like a wound slowly healing. At first, it may be fresh, tender, and in need of care. Later, it may begin to close, even though it still aches. And with time, a scar may remain—a reminder not only of what we lost, but of the love that was there.
The wound changes.
The love does not.
Grief does not ask us to stop loving; it teaches us how to carry love differently. Yizkor gives us a sacred way to carry that love—not by turning away from grief, but by giving remembrance a place within our lives.
That sacred pause is one of Yizkor’s gifts. It gives grief room to breathe. In everyday life, we may have a minute, an hour, or even a day to sit with our memories. But my work as a nurse has taught me that such space is not always available.
In healthcare, grief may enter the room—but the work does not stop.
I came to understand that reality very quickly this past spring, after four years of providing direct patient care.
One morning, during my medication pass and assessments, an announcement came overhead: a patient’s condition had changed suddenly. I entered the room and learned that the patient had no pulse. We began cardiopulmonary resuscitation—CPR.
This was my first code as a nurse. I stood at the edge of the room, grabbing supplies and helping wherever I could—until one of the nurses looked at me and said:
“You’re next.”
For a moment, everything stopped. I had never performed CPR on a person before. Then my training took over. I stepped forward and began compressions.
After another round of CPR, the doctors called the time of death. The room grew still. Everyone let out a breath, and then they returned to work. But I was not ready to move on.
My thoughts were racing, and I did not know how to process what had happened. Thankfully, my former preceptor was working that day. I found her, told her what I was feeling, and asked the question I could not shake:
How could everyone go back to work as if nothing extraordinary had happened?
Her answer did not teach me how to leave grief behind. It taught me how to carry grief forward—into the next room, the next patient, and the next act of care.
In healthcare, we may have only a few minutes to process what happened before entering the next patient’s room, ready or not.
You breathe. You gather yourself. You walk through the next door.
The cycle is simple: be part of a moment that changes you, take a breath, and enter the next patient’s room carrying what that moment has taught you.
Perhaps this is what resilience looks like—not forgetting, not becoming numb, but allowing sorrow to deepen our compassion.
Like returning to the Torah each year, I know I will face moments like this again. Each return may give me another way to process grief—and another opportunity to become a more compassionate nurse.
The more I reflected on that lesson, the more I realized that I had been learning how to carry loss long before I became a nurse. I had learned it through three dates – and three people – whose memories continue to shape my life.
January 13, 2015.
March 30, 2019.
July 18, 2024.
My mother.
My grandfather.
My uncle.
These are the people for whom I recite Yizkor for each year—three different relationships, three different griefs, each painful in its own way. Their deaths ended their direct presence in my life, but not their place in my story.
In my dad’s eulogy for my mom, he said, “Many of you know Jeremy much better than you know Jennifer, but through him you know her,” and “Jenn, through our son, you will never be forgotten.”
Those words remind me that remembrance is not passive.
We keep our loved ones present through the lives we choose to live. A chapter may end, but the person does not disappear from the story. Death may silence a voice, but it cannot silence the love, lessons, and courage that continue to speak through us.
So when I ask what we carry forward, I know my answer begins with them.
So as we finish the Torah and begin it again, I carry more than the pain of absence. I also carry the love, courage, and compassion given to me by those I have lost. Their lives continue through the way I choose to live mine.
When I leave one patient’s room and enter the next, I do not leave them behind. My mother, my grandfather, my uncle, and past patients go with me—in the gentleness of my hands, the patience in my voice, and the dignity I offer.
And I know I am not alone. We all carry those we have lost. They live on in the kindness we offer, the choices we make, and the lives we touch.
Yizkor asks us to remember.
But it also asks us to answer.
Yizkor asks not only, Whom do we remember? It also asks, Who does their memory call us to become?
And so, as the Torah begins again, may we begin again—not by leaving our loved ones behind, but by carrying their light into every room we enter, every hand we hold, and every life we touch.
The question is not only how we grieve. It is how we will love. How we will serve. How we will live—because they lived.
May their memories be a blessing.
May their light live on through us.
And may the way we live be our answer.
A dedicated nurse at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital, Jeremy Werbow is expanding his impact on the future of healthcare while pursuing a Masters in Nursing Education. Deeply rooted in his community, he is a proud third-generation member of Temple Beth Tzedek and a former Tzafon USY leader with a lifelong passion for service.
