Yom Kippur Yizkor 5776 - The Power of Tears

A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow on Yom Kippur, 5776.

A few years ago, an artist named Rose-Lynn Fisher decided that she would take samples of different kinds of tears and photograph them under an optical microscope. What she discovered was that each tear and each type of tear she photographed gave her a unique artistic composition. She turned these prints into an exhibit she calls The Topography of Tears. Fisher writes: “The random compositions I find in magnified tears often evoke a sense of place, like aerial views of emotional terrain. Although the empirical nature of tears is a chemistry of water, proteins, minerals, hormones, antibodies and enzymes, the topography of tears is a momentary landscape, transient as the fingerprint of someone in a dream.”[1] 

Tears are indeed meant to be momentary, transient, like life. But Fisher, by photographing all these tears, has given them permanence, just as our memories do for our loved ones.

Did you know there are different kinds of tears? The saline that streams down our faces differs depending on the situation. There are actually three different kinds of tears, according to doctors. Basal tears lubricate and protect our eyes each time we blink. Reflex tears are triggered by irritants like onions or smoke. 

The tears in our eyes this day, The Day, however, as we remember our loved ones of blessed memory seem to be unique to humans. No other species cries emotional tears. Emotional tears are triggered by happiness, loneliness, fear, sadness, and grief, among many other emotions and in all combinations. What’s even more interesting is that some studies suggest that these three kinds of tears while similar are all slightly chemically different. Our bodies know when we’re reacting or when we’re expressing emotion. Fisher discovered the difference firsthand, noticing that the tears she photographed were each so different from one another.

In one print titled Tears of Grief, Fisher presents a mostly barren print, with jagged, rectangular intrusions seemingly disconnected from each other, as if the grief has ripped apart the structure. 

Tears of Remembrance, on the other hand, has a darker tone to it, as if the darkness represents the memory washing over similar rectangular forms to those found in Tears of Grief. Those forms come together in this print, as if to tell us that remembrance is an act of piecing together those pieces after the grief that we have felt. 

That these two contain similar characteristics is not surprising; grief and remembrance are so closely intertwined.

All of the science and art about tears is so powerful because tears are universal to the human experience. Those same scientists who study the chemical make-up of tears also work to determine why we cry, what evolutionary purpose does it serve? One thought is that tears are a silent way for us to signal that something is not right. Our tears show our neighbors and our community that we are in pain and in distress and that we long for someone with whom we can no longer speak, with whom we can no longer laugh until we cry, and without whom we feel a void. Tears tell those around us that we need comfort, that we need a caring hand, that no, everything is not ok, not fine.  

Whether one day, one week, one month, one year or many, many, years have passed since we lost our, husband or wife, our partner, our mother, our father, our sister or brother, our child, our grandparent, our friend, the loss is still felt. That loss, though we grow more accustomed to it, will never register as normal. We may have adapted to that void, but the tears still flow to signal that we do not forget. Our tears tell others that we are in pain.

As much as our tears signal our community to action, they also are a signal to each of us. Our tears tell us that our emotional selves still long for those we have lost. Our tears tell us that our souls cry out for the connections we have lost, the friendships, the loves, the laughter, the shared experiences. Our tears serve as a personal, individual yizkor, a personal, internal, physiological and emotional act of remembrance so powerful it has no choice but to come out, so powerful, it could not be left within. And so we cry. And we ought to. Our tears tell us that we do not forget.

As much as tears speak to our neighbors and friends, and as much as our tears equally serve as a form of memory for us, they also speak to God. The psalmist teaches us: “God is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”[2] God knows when we are broken, and God is close to us in our moments of sadness. Perhaps God’s comfort comes through the acts of our neighbors and friends who, after witnessing our tears, are called to comfort us, and sit at our side to remind us that though one we have loved may be gone, love itself is not gone. Perhaps God’s comfort comes from the very real comfort we feel after we have had a good cry, after we feel as if we have let out all the emotion within us, at least for the time being, and all we can do is move on. Perhaps God’s comfort comes because God accepts tears as prayers. When we just can’t find the words to say, and all we can allow ourselves to do is cry, God will accept that. The Talmud[3] teaches us that “though the gates of prayer may be closed, the gate of tears is not.” For the psalmist writes,[4] “Hear my prayer, O Eternal! Hearken to my cry! To my tears do not be deaf.”

Our tears are prayers to God, each one of them. When we cannot find the words and all we have are our memories, our tears tell God all that God needs to know. Our tears of grief and our tears of remembrance call out to God. Our tears of sadness and our tears of loss implore God wordlessly. In this way, their memories truly are for a blessing. Today, as we allow our memories of them to flow through us, let us view our tears as an extraordinary gift from our beloved ones of blessed memory. Let us weep, let us cry, let our tears stream down our faces! And let those tears that their memories evoke indeed become our conduit to God, a prayer to the Eternal and a way for each of us to feel God’s presence. In that way may we be comforted.

[1] http://www.rose-lynnfisher.com/tears.html
[2] Psalm 34
[3] B. BM 59a
[4] Ps. 39:13