Yizkor Sermon for Sh’mini Atzeret: “Tattered Shoes”
(delivered on September 28, 2021)
We are completing Sukkot, one of our shalosh regalim, our pilgrimage holidays. Shalosh regalim literally means “three feet,” reminding us that since ancient days, three times a year, on Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot, pilgrims would make a journey to the holy city. The Hebrew word for holiday, chag, means something very specific in the Tanakh. It is semantically related to the Arabic word haj, also translated as “pilgrimage.” The word chag teaches us that our core defining holy days are all about making a sacred journey on our own two feet. On Sh’mini Atzeret, we stand on our own two feet for Hallel and for Yizkor. We are called to hold both joy and grief.
In thinking about feet, I am drawn to think about shoes. Writer Shel Silverstein commented that “comfortable shoes and the freedom to leave are the two most important things in life.” He might have been speaking about our holy days. After all, our pilgrimage holiday cycle begins historically with Passover, which marks the time that we wanted to leave Egypt freely to worship G!d, but Pharaoh refused. Shavuot marks the time we marched to meet G!d on Mount Sinai. Sukkot reminds us of all the wandering we did in the name of G!d and freedom. I am thinking of all that journeying, all that walking. And apparently all barefoot.
Perhaps that’s why Judaism feels so strongly about footwear. The Talmud states: “A person should sell the roof beams of one’s house to buy shoes for one’s feet,”[1] thus implying that shoes are more important than a home.
Shoes contribute to our basic sense of human dignity: Rabbi Akiva instructed his son Joshua never to go barefoot.[2] The rabbis teach that one should say the daily-recited blessing she-A-sa li kawl tzor-ki, “who has provided me with my every need,” while putting on shoes.[3] Rashi explains that there is nothing more degrading than walking barefoot in public.[4]
Another reason draws me to think about feet and shoes. We Americans recently commemorated 9/11. One memory from Teri Schure:[5] As the towers burned and then crumbled, women yanked off their high-heels so they could flee the cataclysm as quickly as possible. Heels don’t make for fast running. A pink spike here, a black slingback there.
One woman got her shoe and foot caught in a piece of twisted steel and thought she would die there. Someone helped to free her foot, and she recovered her shoe. He saved her life but she never found him to offer her thanks, or even found out if he himself survived.
Others discarded their shoes as they trudged through stairwells flooded with water from fire sprinklers. And the entire floor of the Battery Park tunnel was strewn with shoes from people taking them off to run as fast as fast could run.
There is yet a third reason I am thinking of shoes this morning. It is because of a poignant story from the museum at Auschwitz,[6] where a note was found—a little piece of paper—in a child’s shoe on which was written the name Amos Steinberg. This name defines the shoe’s owner and also all that is left of one boy, born in Prague in 1938 and killed with his mother at Auschwitz. The museum at Auschwitz recently linked this little note found inside that child’s shoe to a suitcase in its collection in storage, a suitcase that belonged to Ludwig Steinberg. Steinberg’s name is written on the suitcase as is his transport number.
Researchers believe that Ludwig Steinberg is Amos’s (the shoe owner’s) father, a man who was deported to Auschwitz on an earlier transport than his wife and son. Miraculously, he survived and in 1949 emigrated to Israel. His Israeli relatives have explained more to the Auschwitz museum staff about Ludwig’s history. Upon arriving in Israel in 1949, he changed his name to Yehuda Shinan. Besides becoming a teacher and principal, he worked as a cantor in several synagogues. And, so, a note left in a little shoe links the death of a young boy and his mother in the gas chambers of Auschwitz to the story of a man, Ludwig Steinberg, who continued—against almost unfathomable odds—not only to survive but to flourish…the story of a family that only endured but experienced rebirth in the land of Israel. Yehudah Shinan died in 1985, 36 years (double chai!) after his arrival in Israel, leaving behind six grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
So we trace the feet and shoes from biblical times through the Shoah and 9/11. There are actually shoe historians who track the evolution of shoes along with other advances in human culture. In a recent article in National Geographic,[7] Cathy Newman writes of a recent discovery of sandals in Oregon that were from 8,500 B.C.E., well over 10,000 year-old sandals. Ms. Newman also interviewed several shoe historians, and she concludes: “Every shoe tells a story. Shoes speak of status, gender (usually), ethnicity, religion, profession and politics….and shoes are expressions of individuality. Even in the fiber sandals painstakingly woven tens of thousands of years ago, no two are alike. Scholar Jenna Tedrick Kuttruff[8] is quoted in the article: “The wearers of these shoes lived a subsistence existence. They didn’t need to make each pair different. But it is human nature to make things visually appealing, to make one pair a little more complex than others to set it apart from someone else’s.”
Shoes can speak volumes about a person and their personality. And shoes can oftentimes speak for themselves. They can also serve as a symbol for family gatherings, historical events, and more. No matter what the situation, shoes will most likely tell a story. As the old adage offers: You can tell a person by their shoes.
On this morning of remembrance, I invite you now to consider the shalosh regalim, the sacred pilgrimages, the life journey, the feet and the shoes of one person whom you are remembering this morning, to think of those tattered shoes and to acknowledge the hardships, the sacrifices, of that journey taken by your loved one to witness the pilgrimage that was their life. Take a moment to remember their shoes, their walking, and their life journey.
—(Silence for 30-60 seconds, then continue:)—
As you continue remembering, please consider:
- Where did their shoes take them? (brief pause)
- What did their shoes say about them? (brief pause)
- What did their shoes tell us about their values? (brief pause)
- If someone were to spend a day in their shoes, what would they experience? (brief pause)
The Talmud teaches that the angels in heaven cannot—on their own—start singing G!d’s praises. Instead, they must wait each morning, until we, down below, have first initiated the act of prayer. The Baal Shem Tov taught that at the end of the Sukkot holy days, the angels find heaven littered with old torn up shoes: a scuffed loafer, a broken heel, a worn sandal, a shoelace…Confused, they decided to ask the archangel Mi-cha-el, the eternal advocate of the Jewish people, if he knows what this is all about. “Yes!” says the angel Mi-cha-el. “This is, indeed, precious merchandise. For these are the remains of hakafot[9] which impoverished, simple Jews make with lulav and etrog each day of Sukkot, seven times on Hoshanah Rabbah, and seven more times on Simchat Torah dancing with Torah scrolls in their arms. Most of them did not know Hebrew. They didn’t know how to pray…” And so in front of all the assembled Hosts of Heaven, the angel Michael proceeds to sort the tattered shoes by communities: “These are from Lublin. These are from Mezeritch. These are from Krakow.” Then he explains to the assembled angels, “Usually we wait for prayers from below to arise so that on holidays such as this we can create a crown for the Almighty from the prayers of the people of Israel, but this morning we will not make a crown for the Holy One out the prayers of Am Yisrael. Instead we will create an even more glorious crown. We’ll make a crown from these tattered shoes, those worn by simple Jews who march with lulav and etrog, and who dance with all their might and love—with the Torah in their arms.”
On this Shemini Atzeret, may we do the mitzvah of atzeret, of ingathering the fullness of memory, remembering the journeys of those who came before—their joy and their tears… The tired feet of those who trekked through desert heat to arrive in Jerusalem. The shoes removed at Auschwitz….The shoes ripped off in haste on 9/11… Some, like Moses, did not complete the journey they hoped to take; like Moses, many did not cross into their Promised Land. But we, like all generations of Jews, take it upon ourselves to at least metaphorically put on their shoes and honor their journeys, continue their legacies in our own wanderings.
Yizkor invites us to return on a sacred pilgrimage to the visions and aspirations of those we are remembering today, to the work that they began but—like Moses—were not able to complete. Our journeys are linked, inextricably, to the journeys of our loved ones who have come before, and every generation.
Yizkor invites us back to their life’s work and their dreams as if in a sacred circle. May we remember the dreams of those who had the spiritual courage to leave home, to forge new paths, to wander, to learn, to dance.
This Yizkor, may we see these “shoes”—these journeys, however simple—even with their tattered edges, even with their essence and destination still unfulfilled…as forming God’s crown.
And may this moment imbue our hearts with hope and fortitude to continue the journeys of our loved ones making their lives and their legacies an eternal blessing.
[1] BT, Shabbat 129a.
[2] BT, Pesachim 112a.
[3] BT, Brachot 60b.
[4] BT, Shabbat 129, s.v. ויקח מנעלים, (“One should purchase footwear”).
[5] https://blog.terischure.com/every-shoe-tells-a-story/.
[7] As reported in https://www.softstarshoes.com/live-bare-blog/2006/08/17/every-shoe-tells-a-story/
[8] Dr. Kuttruff is the Chair of the Department of Textiles, Apparel Design and Merchandising at Lousiana State University (LSU).
[9] Circuits around the synagogue sanctuary.