Synagogue Sermon
Immortality (1955)
We are here gathered this morning to participate in these Passover services of Shacharith, which also includes the Yizkor memorial. The very fact that we are here to worship a Living and Eternal G-d, and also to ask Him to remember the souls of dear departed relatives, is in itself an expression of an age-old Jewish belief – the immortality of the human soul. We pray to G-d Who is Eternal, and since He created man in His image, then man is immortal. We ask G-d to remember the soul – and therefore the soul must still exist. So that our presence here presumes our profound, though unarticulated, belief that man can achieve immortality. Though the body is perishable, the soul can live on.However, I feel sure that there is one question that must disturb many of us here this morning: Granted that immortality can be a fact. Obviously some people achieve it. No one will deny the immortality of a Moses or a Rabbi Akiva or a Maimonides. Rembrandt, Shakespeare, and Einstein, in their respective fields, have achieved this deathlessness. Dr. Jonas Salk is probably the latest in this galaxy of immortals.But that is true of people of world-wide fame, people of extraordinary ability and achievement, people of genius or power. What, however, of us common folk? What of those we memorialize this morning, and what of ourselves? Talented, perhaps, but genius? Well-liked, yes, but world-famous, no. People who are good, kind, but humble and modest and retiring — can they be said to be able to achieve immortality? Are they not swallowed up at once into this vast anonymous army of the dead, ultimately receding into eternal obscurity with the relentless passage of time? Can anyone achieve immortality?And the answer is that yes, anyone can achieve immortality. We can assure it for those we loved and are departed; we can assure it for ourselves. And the formula for the attainment of immortality by us common folk, unpretentious and unassuming, was given in symbolic form by a man who himself w…
