Making Memories Firm

Rabbi Malcolm Cohen

Yom Kippur Yizkor | Thursday, October 2, 2025

Many years ago, our friend, Karen, came to a house party my room mates and I were putting on. Everyone was enjoying themselves but their mood seemed to change as they spoke to Karen. It turned out she was letting them know the news that, at not much more than twenty years old, she had just been diagnosed with Leukemia. It took a long time to come to terms with the information after which we all sprang into action, organizing drives to see if we could find a bone marrow donor for her. 

Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t find a match. This young woman, who many of my friends grew up with, succumbed to the disease at the age of twenty-three. Shortly thereafter, I led a memorial service for all of her friends from our youth movement. I wasn’t anywhere near becoming a rabbi yet and felt completely unprepared, but all of us being together and thinking of Karen gave us great comfort. 

I remember when we buried Karen in a cemetery in North London, at a spot overlooking green hills, sheep and cows grazing, butterflies flitting between hedgerows. A few paces from Karen’s grave, that of Rabbi Michael Leigh, who bar mitzvah’d me and was such an important mentor for my own father. A few yards from there, the final resting place of Amy Winehouse, the talented, but tragic, singer. Down the hill, my Elementary School, the voices of the current crop of mischievous students carried to us on the wind. 

I was quite removed from the chapel service for Karen, since I’m a Cohen, and those of the priestly class, at that burial ground, had to stand in a different room. Through the wire grill, I saw my friends weeping as the final prayers were said over Karen and the mourners spoke their tributes to her. 

In the ensuing years, I would see and work with Karen’s mother, Sylvia. She had set up the Karen Morris Memorial Trust. This newly-minted charity raised money for Karen’s Home From Home, a cluster of apartments near Hammersmith Hospital, where Karen had been treated. The apartments enabled family members to stay for free, while their loved ones were fighting Leukemia and other diseases. All these years later after the charity was set up in 1999, it continues to give comfort to those whose lives have been changed forever by different deadly diseases. The organization sponsored a travel prayer book for the British Reform Movement which I used just recently, Karen’s face staring out at me from the inside front cover. 

All of this is to say that what we are about to engage in, the act of Yizkor, memorial, can be one of the things we do to maintain the connection to our departed loved ones. I still remember what Karen looked like. I still can remember the way her voice sounded. I can recall what some of her passions were, the small amount of times we argued, some of her quirks. Her mother, with the setting up of the memorial trust, made her memory even more concrete, and was an incredible gesture which keeps on giving, but we don’t even need to go to those lengths.

In this Yizkor service, we can simply, in the moments of silence, go through, in our mind, the faces of our loved ones who are no longer alive. At those moments, we will ask ourselves questions. What were their most memorable facial features? What did they care about? What were the values they stood for that we can raise up in our own lives? In which moments do we miss them most? What stories about them do we remember? Who else is related to them that we can check in with in the new year? 

The amazing realization for us is that love is stronger than death. Whenever we engage with the precious act of yizkor, remembrance, we make a bond with those we loved. They might not be here physically but that doesn’t cut off our connection with them. Humans were built this way for a reason. We have the capacity for vivid memory, for bringing back to life, in a way, those who have been lost to us, and ensuring they are still present in our lives. 

On that basis, this sanctuary might not look full to the brim but, in reality, the souls of our loved ones inhabit it alongside us. They are still with us. They come back to us in our dreams and our prayers and our songs. They sit beside us now, as we do Yizkor, they lean into us, gently, and say, “Thank you for remembering us. Thank you for thinking about us. Thank you for living up to what we stood for. Thank you for saying our names once again”.  

If you’d like to read Rabbi Malcolm’s Yom Kippur Morning Sermon, click here.

If you’d like to read Rabbi Malcolm’s Kol Nidre Sermon, click here.

If you’d like to read Rabbi Malcolm’s Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon, click here.