The Memory Room

Connecting Many Worlds

Covid is a divider, but also a uniter.  It has separated us from each other, but also provided us with opportunities to unite in new ways that have given the idea of community new meaning.

     Covid has separated us, but it has also opened opportunities to give the idea of community new meaning.

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A minyan is a group of at least ten Jews meeting in prayer. Congregation Kehillath Israel in Brookline, Massachusetts, has hosted morning, afternoon, and evening minyans for over 100 years, but only in 2020, with the advent of the Covid lockdown, did it begin to experiment with holding minyans on the Zoom platform.  

Very quickly the KI morning Zoom room became a home for people from many congregations in the area. In the room were people who knew each other and others who knew no one, people who had been regulars before Covid and people, like me, who needed a way to fulfill their obligation to say regular prayers to mourn a relative. Together, over the months of daily prayer, people got used to seeing each other in the Zoom room.  There were conversations before services began; and then at the end of the service, when it was time for the mourner’s kaddish, it became the custom of participants to offer the names of their loved ones.

 At some point in the summer of 2020 participants began to add a few words about those they had lost.  Over the months that followed, the Zoom room became a place to share memories.  During Covid, when attendance at funerals was severely restricted and there were no in-person shivas, the Memory Room became a place to share, to laugh and to cry.  Each morning we were witnesses to each other's stories and yes, to each other's grief.  And over time, we were also able to see the transition from grief to something new as participants finished their eleven months of saying memorial prayers.  

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          The Memory Room has been a place to share memories, but also to grow closer as a community.

This is a story with three themes. 

How does my own spiritual space connect to the virtual spiritual space that exists online?  

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How do the short descriptions of the loved ones, for whom we prayed Kaddish each day, help to create bridges?

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 How is community created during a time of overwhelming isolation and fear?

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עלות השחר

Could online intimacy ever happen? You would have been right to doubt that such a thing could be possible. 

Yet ongoing early-morning experiences in the Memory Room unclogged the ducts that enabled our souls to flow freely. At times, it nearly felt like some form of soul-streaming. It has certainly given new meaning to live-streaming in that it has made the pulse of our lives and those of our loved ones feel so real. 

The spiritual eagerness in the Memory Room was busy producing a new reality each morning (עושה חדשות) that we stretched forward into each new day. Distinct memories, touching stories were shared so tenderly that they called up pictures.

Some may say it was the chemistry. Perhaps it was. Somehow a secret wealth of warmth emitted in the sharing and the listening and the being fully present for each other. Pre-Kaddish recollections had a reviving quality like the dew that rises each morning (עלות השחר). 

It took us by the hand and led us from a sickbed of sadness to a storehouse of kindness. 

As the Psalmist sings, ‘among the world's pleasures, praise is most beautiful of all’(Ps. 147:1).

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Rabbi William Hamilton

Congregation Kehillath Israel

March, 2021

Build me a memory room

Let its floor be made of happy thoughts,

of recipes,

tales of kindness and compassion,

of kisses planted on the top of bald heads,

of meals shared, of skinned knees and weddings.

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Let the walls be full of snapshots

of sailing, biking, 

long Scrabble games,

the titles of books,

nightly phone conversations, 

Walls which are hung with words of advice,  laughter and a thousand smiles.

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Build me a memory room

with clear windows where I can see the seasons change,

for indeed seasons do change.

And while some memories fade,

others will always be glowing 

on the other side of the window,

gossamer like the sunlight after the rain.

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Build me a memory room

for healing,

filled with listening ears,

with eyes that see deeply

and hearts that have room to be filled.

A memory room

 a room with windows, but no ceiling,

a room which looks up at forever.

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Leann Shamash

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What are we

If not a sum of our parts?

A pile of experiences.

Diaries from our childhood, books we've read,

arguments we've had

while sitting at the kitchen table,

meatloaf and dancing jello.

What are we,

if not just a multiplication of our days?

From here to there and back again.

Home.

Nights upon the same mattress.

Work, play, sleep, raise a family,

walk the dog.

One day runs into another.

Words pile on top of each other

in conversations long forgotten.

Slowly things attach themselves to us,

items gotten here, no there, no maybe there

You remember?

Each thing has a tiny match that ignites a tinny memory,

a glimmer of copper when we close our eyes

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What are we

If not our stuff?

Gathered over time

Each piece a reminder of a car ride,

a store, a beloved child, a dog,

a job well done,

a friend, a boss,

jealousy.

Cherished items bring back memories.

A cloudy Tuesday when we were ten

or that time on the mountain when we were eighteen,

things we collected to remind us of our youth

Our children, that we were here.

As real as the words on this page.

That we lived.

We can still smell our childhoods

when we smell the lilacs.

What are we without our memories?

Can we give our memories away?

Share them with others so when we are gone

Bits of us that remain on earth?

Fragments of our life, indications of love not lost

Snippets of us we give so we are not forgotten

The sum of our parts provoking thoughts, inciting love and memories.

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We are but fragments

In the notes we wrote, the shoes we wore, the things we held in our hands,

warm and solid and alive

Pieces of me that fit you now,

here now and gone tomorrow.

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Leann Shamash

Listen to the Kaddish Prayer on Zoom

Thank you to  Larry Cohen, Robbie Shinder, Laurie Gershkowitz, Julie and Yana Kozhukhin, Judi Ehrlich, Richard Weinstein, Ann Neumann, Anne Leeds, Megan Shamash and Bethany Roditi who provided me with feedback and helped with the editing.

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Thank you to each of the morning minyan participants who wrote about their loved ones and allowed me to photograph them and share their images and writing here.

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Thank you to Rabbi Hamilton, Larry Cohen and Congregation Kehillath Israel for welcoming us to the morning minyan.