Our Voices

Yizkor 5786 | 2025

A cab driver told this story to a rabbi. At 2:30 in the morning the cab driver was sent to a building to pick up a passenger. When he arrived, the building was dark, except for a single light in a ground floor window. 

Many drivers would just honk, wait a minute, and drive away. But this driver knew many impoverished people depended on taxis and reasoned that this passenger might need his assistance. 

He knocked, and after a long pause, a small woman in her 80s, wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it opened the door.  Next to her was a small suitcase. Her apartment was immaculate, even the furniture was covered with sheets. After carrying her bag to the car, the driver went back and offered the woman his arm. She thanked him for his kindness and he said, “It’s nothing.  I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated.” 

She gave the driver the address and then asked if they could drive through downtown. “It’s not the shortest way,” the driver answered. “Oh, I don’t mind,” she said, her eyes glistening. “I’m in no hurry.  I’m on my way to a hospice. I don’t have any family left,” she continued, “The doctor says I don’t have very long.”

The driver quietly reached over and shut off the meter. “What route would you like me to take?” the driver asked. For the next two hours they drove through the city. She showed him the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator, the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds, and a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. 

At the first hint of sun, she suddenly said, “I’m tired.  Let’s go now.” As they pulled up to the low building, two orderlies came out to help her. 

Seated in her wheelchair, the woman asked, “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” the driver said. 

"You have to make a living,” she said.

“There are other passengers,” he responded, as he bent and gave her a hug. She held on tightly. 

“You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said.

He didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift and wondered, what if that woman had gotten an impatient driver or if he had honked once and then driven away? 

He told the rabbi “I don’t think that I have done anything more important in my life.”

We’ve come here today, I imagine, to remember our loved ones and to say Kaddish for them. We know that Judaism teaches this is how we honor them. And it’s meritorious for us to do that. But I think it’s also true that Yizkor, memory and Kaddish have the power to change us too. It can help clarify for us what is really important. What endures. What we ought to be spending our time thinking about and doing.

We often think that peak moments are how we measure our lives, but our real peak moments may be in smaller, less beautifully wrapped packages.  Real living happens when we are present in the moment and when we are focused on offering a measure of kindness to another person. May we remember today, and may we be reminded of what really matters. Amen.