It is traditional to say Yizkor, the memorial prayers, for our ancestors on each of the three Pilgrammage Festivals - Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot-Shemini Atzeret. It may seem odd to insert them in the middle of our seder, when we know there is still more fun to be had. But this is the nature of life. Sometimes loss comes at inopportune times. Sometimes the grief of memory clouds over days that have other, happy meanings as well. Sometimes new joyous occasions happen to fall on yartzeits and rewrite the grief of that day. Life goes in cycles, in spirals. We love and laugh and dance and learn. We suffer loss and grieve and weep and mourn. We are healthy and we are ill. We are injured and we are recovered. We are a community, where at any given time, we are made up of people feeling any and all of these things at once. And so, we pause now our frivolity to remember.


Booklet Section: Psalms, Poetry & Songs