Honour the ones still sitting at the table

Over years working with seniors in our community, it has become increasingly clear that our elders are among our greatest treasures and yet often among the most overlooked. 

There are Holocaust survivors who still hum lullabies their mothers sang to them so many decades ago. When I walk into our communities’ retirement facilities and sing Yiddish melodies something remarkable happens. Faces that seemed distant moments before suddenly light up, and voices quietly begin to join in. There are seniors who cannot remember what they had for breakfast yet can recite childhood prayers without missing a word. And there are moments when everything changes simply because someone pauses, sits down, and listens long enough for their world to open again. 

As Shavuot and Yizkor approach, these moments feel even more significant. 

Shavuot is not only the anniversary of receiving the Torah at Sinai. It is zman matan Torateinu, the festival of transmission, how Torah moves from one generation to the next. While children are the guarantors for the Torah, it is parents and grandparents who ensure its perpetuity through decades of lived example. 

As children, these were routines. Only later do they reveal themselves as eternity in motion. 

On the second day of Shavuot, Yizkor is recited for those no longer with us. The day we received Torah is also the day we remember those who brought Torah into our homes. 

Jewish law teaches that when a festival arrives, even a mourner sitting shiva must pause their grief for the yomtov celebration. At first glance this is difficult to understand. How can grief simply be interrupted? 

Perhaps the answer is that a Jew is never only an individual life, but part of an unbroken chain. A life may end, but the story it helped build continues. 

This reality is one that I witness daily in my work with the elderly. Families try, even if imperfectly but sincerely, to repay a lifetime of care with presence and patience. 

Yet, many seniors are physically cared for but emotionally unseen. What is often needed most is not another service, but dignity, attention, and presence. 

Because one day, the voice we were too busy to answer will be the voice we would give anything to hear again. 

Yizkor is not only about memory, it is about responsibility. 

This Shavuot, as you again hear Ten Commandments, including “Honour your father and mother”, perhaps the greatest tribute we can offer to those who have passed is how we treat the grandparents and seniors still sitting at our table. 

Because what they built in love does not end. It continues in us. 

• Rabbi Ari Kievman is the rabbi at Chabad Sandton Central.