We’re almost there. It’s been a long holiday season. Here at Chevrei Tzedek, it’s been one filled with joy and the warmth of our wonderful community. It’s been a season of showing up for one another, as we offer ourselves and  our time to members of our community encountering illness and loss. It’s been a season of spirited davening and celebratory gatherings, culminating in the past seven days of Sukkot.    For the past week, we’ve left our normal, comfortable surroundings to be outside in our sukkot, celebrating this זמן שמחתנו, this season of our joy. And here we are, on the precipice of the end of yet another holiday season, preparing to begin our year properly and get back to the normalcy of our regular routines.    Almost.   This day, Shemini Atzeret, coming right on the heels of Sukkot though it does, is its own holiday. The Torah gives us very little about this holiday we’re celebrating today. The litany of holidays in the book of Vayikra (Leviticus) tells us that it’s a sacred occasion, that we’re to make a fire offering and refrain from working. (Leviticus 23:36) The Talmud (Sukkah 55b) draws an analogy to a king “who said to his servants: Prepare me a great feast that will last for several days. When the feast concluded, on the last day, he said to his beloved servant: Prepare me a small feast so that I can derive pleasure from you alone.”   This is one level of Shemini Atzeret – it’s our private time with God. If Sukkot is about outward demonstrations (e.g. building sukkot, going outside of our homes, taking the lulav and etrog), then Shemini Atzeret is the complement to that, with the focus being more inward, more about our personal relationship with God.   In his commentary to the original verse from Vayikra, Rashi teaches us a deeper dimension of this holiday. Building on the Talmud’s explanation, he continues the parable about the king, saying: “Like a king who invited his children to a feast for thus and such days. When time came for them to leave, he said, ‘My children, please delay your departure for one more day,  קָשָׁה עָלַי פְּרֵדַתְכֶם, it’s so hard for me to part from you!” (Rashi on Leviticus 23:36) For Rashi, and for us, Shemini Atzeret is about the difficulty of saying goodbye.    Rashi’s idea doesn’t come out of nowhere. There are a few salient features of Shemini Atzeret that speak directly to the complexity of saying goodbye. One of them is Yizkor, which we’ll say together shortly. We say Yizkor for those we have lost, those to whom we have already said goodbye. But those of us who have lost someone know that the goodbye we say when someone we love dies is not really final. They continue to come up for us in many ways. Saying Yizkor provides a ritual structure for these touchpoints with our loved ones, allowing us to feel their presence even as we acknowledge that they are no longer here.    Another piece of this holiday that reflects our ambivalence about saying goodbye is actually built into the second day of Shemini Atzeret, i.e. Simḥat Torah. Tomorrow, we’ll read the conclusion of the Torah, the death of Moshe. We won’t dwell on this moment, jumping right back in at the beginning, as we restart our Torah reading cycle with Bereishit. The way we read these texts in quick succession gives the impression that the death of Moshe was an abrupt goodbye. That is not at all the case. Especially in the rabbinic imagination, it was anything but.    In addition to the Torah text itself, which is among the most beautiful passages in the Torah, there are reams of midrashim based on these moments at the end of Moshe’s life. Woven through our tradition as they are, they shed light on what it means for us to say goodbye, for God to say goodbye, and for us to stand in remembrance, as we do today.   As I just said, there are literally dozens of these midrashim – I’m going to focus on just one of them. (But if you want to read something truly extraordinary, take a look at the section on Moshe’s death in Bialik’s Sefer HaAggadah, where he stitches together passages from all over the rabbinic tradition. It’s gorgeous.)   This midrash,  from Devarim Rabbah (11:10) is also known as מדרש פטירת משה, the midrash of the death of Moshe.  It’s rather long, so I’ll share with us a few excerpts. The first piece of this midrash I want to share portrays Moshe as bargaining with God, trying to find some way, any way, to stay alive.    “When Moses saw that his sentence had been sealed, he decreed a fast upon himself, drew a small circle, stood within it, and said: ‘I am not moving from here until You void this decree.’ At that moment, what did Moses do? He donned sackcloth, wrapped himself in sackcloth, covered himself with ashes, and stood in prayer and supplication before the Holy Blessed One until the heavens, the earth, and the order of Creation shook violently…What did the Holy One blessed be He do at that moment? He proclaimed at each and every gate of each and every firmament and each and every court that they should not accept Moses’ prayer and they should not take it up before Him, because the decree had been sealed…”   Moshe continues to beg God, offering 515 prayers (the gematria of ואתחנן). God says no. He asks not to die, but to be turned into a beast of the field. God says no. A bird of the sky – God says no. Moshe’s increasing desperation here is surprising. It seems unfitting that the midrash would portray our greatest prophet in this way. There’s a message here, though: loving life, loving this world, makes letting it go awful. Moshe isn’t trying to avoid death out of fear, but out of his deep attachment to his people, his divine mission, and  his own life. He models the fierce, natural human instinct to hold on.    Moshe is just like us. We, too, do not look forward to the goodbyes that we must say. Our tradition teaches us to treasure and protect life. When death comes – especially the death of a loved one – it goes against every instinct we have to just let it come. Letting go does not come naturally.   The next piece of the midrash that I’ll share shows God also struggling with letting Moshe go. Seeing that Moshe wasn’t going to accept his decree easily, God attempts to send angels to take Moshe’s soul. But no one would take the job. God then sends Samael, the angel of death, who tries several times to bring Moshe’s life to an end. Each time he comes back to God empty-handed.    God seems not to want to have a direct part in the death of Moshe, but at this point, God has no but to intervene. “At that moment, the Holy Blessed One summoned the soul from within Moshe’s body. God said to it: ‘My daughter, one hundred and twenty years I allotted for your being in Moshe’s body. Now, your end has arrived, it is time to leave. Depart, do not delay.’”   God approaches Moshe firmly, but lovingly. Still, Moshe’s soul refuses to depart, attesting that it loves Moshe and loves this world – it doesn’t want to leave. It cannot let go. This piece of the midrash teaches a truth we know in our bones. Our souls, as well as the souls of our loved ones, are deeply tied to this world.    Any loss creates a real and lasting sense of loss. When we grieve, we are giving voice to the strength of this connection between our souls and this life, this world. The grief we feel is the price we pay for this connection, for the depth of the love we have cultivated.   The final piece of the midrash that I’ll share gives us a window into God’s experience of death, and also something for us to hold onto as we move toward Yizkor. God realizes that Moshe will not be able to say goodbye himself; God will have to be the one to take Moshe’s life. “At that moment, the Holy Blessed One kissed him, and took his soul with a kiss on the mouth.” Moshe’s soul finally relinquishes its hold on his body, and through that kiss, returns to the Divine embrace.   As gentle as that final moment was, it was equally devastating. “The Holy Blessed One began weeping: “Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will take a stand for me against the evildoers?” (Psalms 94:16).” But God finds an answer, and words of comfort, in the declaration of the רוח הקודש, the Divine Presence, who says: ‘There has not arisen another prophet in Israel like Moses’ (Deuteronomy 34:10).”   This multi-faceted view of death, of the goodbyes we have already said, is what we focus on and express during Yizkor. Moshe’s death was an occasion for mourning, for sadness, a sadness so profound that even God felt it. And it was also a quiet and loving moment of reunion with the Divine.    We come to this space feeling as Rashi saw God feeling – קָשָׁה עָלַי פְּרֵדַתְכֶם – it is so hard to part from those we love. Maybe we’re also like Moshe, standing inside a circle around our feet, wanting to beg God for just one more moment, one more chance, one way that our loved one could still be with us.    When we open our personal Yizkor prayers, we begin with the words: יִזְכֹּר אֱ׳לֹהִים נִשְׁמַת… May God remember the souls of those we loved and lost. We ask God to remember the moment of that kiss, the gentle and loving way God took their souls and held them in the Divine embrace. And for our part, we try to step out of the circle, accept the goodbye, as hard as it is, and know that our prayers are heard.