A Letter to Myself: Reflections on my father’s first Yahrzeit

In the twelve months since my father’s passing, our community has accompanied around twenty individuals on their final journeys. For a rabbi, walking with the bereaved is a constant, but this year the weight of it felt different. There was a strange, heavy resonance between my private study, where I sat with my own grief, and the living rooms where I sat with yours. My own loss acted as a sort of spiritual tuning fork. I was no longer just a narrator of tradition; I was a fellow traveller.