Who Will Tell Your Story?

By Hazzan Jenna Greenbeg. 

During this 10th anniversary year of Hamilton: An American Musical, I can’t help but hear the following lyrics in my ear right now: “who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” These lyrics are so evocative of the end of Unetane Tokef, one of the most powerful texts in our High Holiday liturgy. Recited on both days of Rosh Hashanah as well as Yom Kippur in the repetition of the Musaf Amida, we recite these words, which speak of the sacred power of these holiest days of the year. God is the True Judge who remembers each of us, God willing, by inscribing us into the Book of Life. 

And yet, while it is written on Rosh Hashana and sealed on Yom Kippur, nobody knows their ultimate fate, as there is only so much we can control.

The text continues: “How many will pass on, and how many will be born; who will live and who will die…” And what follows is a list, an unbalanced list of dark possibilities with hopeful opportunities, a list of what destiny has the potential to bring to any of us at any time.

But we should not live our life in fear of death. Rather, we should live our lives thinking of how we ultimately want to be remembered, both by the Divine and by those whose lives we impacted. Who will tell your story? What will you do to seal unforgettable memories into the hearts of your colleagues, your friends, your family?

While that open-ended question is full of endless possibilities, our prayer concludes with three very specific ways that we can accomplish this task of who will tell our story, the task of how we want to be remembered: “But T’shuvah, Te’fillah, and Tz’dakah have the power to transform the harshness of our destiny.” Through improving ourselves, through prayer, through righteous giving, we have the ability to be remembered by how we lived rather than how we died.

One of our beautiful supplementary texts in the Machzor Lev Shalem by Leonard Gordon shares the following about this part of this prayer: “We are not praying to be spared and ending in death. We are not even asking that death be postponed. Rather, after reminding ourselves relentlessly of the many ways that life might end, we tell ourselves that the way to cope with ultimate vulnerability is through T’shuvah, Te’fillah, and Tz’dakah. Our goal is not security, but a life of meaning that recognizes our vulnerability but rises beyond it.”

To quote another lyric from Hamilton: “Raise a glass to freedom.” We say “L’chayyim” to the freedom of choice that we have in our short time on earth. Let us all choose a life of meaning through the acts listed above, as well as many more actions we can take to create meaningful experiences and memories for ourselves and others.

May we all strive to live our lives with these questions in mind: Who will tell your story? And what will they say? 

May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life, b’sefer chayyim.

G’mar Chatima Tova