It is customary all through the month of Elul to visit the graves of one's ancestors and relatives. I've often wondered about this custom. I could understand the tzedakah part of it--distributing tzedakah to the poor who would congregate near the graveyard for this reason. But what were people actually doing when they fell on the graves making supplication? Were they asking God to overlook their sins for the sake of the merits of their ancestors? Were they avoiding their responsibility as individuals by lumping themselves for judgment with their pious family, people in good standing? If so, these theologically suspect practices were not to my liking at all.
Here's what I do understand: We all carry conflict, hurt, alienation, resentment, fear, and other disturbing emotions toward others in our lives. If we are blessed, we have an opportunity, or we make opportunities, to turn toward these others in love and forgiveness before it is too late. That is one of the gifts of the Days of Awe--to make us aware of the urgency to do just this before the Gates of Healing close.
But what do we do if we have missed all those opportunities with a significant person in our life, and they have died? Visit the grave, and take the opportunity you were not ready to take before. Talk your heart out. Make peace between you. If you cannot visit the grave, have this conversation before a photograph of the person. If you do not have a photo, seclude yourself and sit across from an empty chair and start talking.
The call to teshuvah, repentance, turning toward the other in love and forgiveness, transforming life into greater wholeness, is not limited; it encompasses all our relationships, with God and animals and the earth as well as humans, with the dead as well as the living.
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