Yom Kippur Sermon: History Has Its Eyes On You with Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

When I turned 60 this past summer, I developed an intense fascination with my grandfather, my mother’s father, Will Bloom.

It is not just that I am named for him. He was Will, I am Wes.  We are both Yechiel Shneyer. The connection is deeper.  My grandfather was, in the last season of his life, a traveling salesman.  He would drive hundreds of miles a week making sales calls.  He was Willy Loman. My mother could never watch Death of a Salesman because the pathos hit too close to home. One day, he died on the road, in a single car accident, suddenly, tragically, and in circumstances that were never explained.  Did he fall asleep at the wheel?  Did he intend to take his own life? We never knew.  One day, out of the blue, my mother gets the call saying that her 60 year old father had died on the road.  Her loss was shattering and unimaginable.  And she decided to respond by bringing a child into the world to name after her father, that would turn out to be me.

It was an implausible choice, to bring another child into the world.  My parents already had five children, one bathroom, and no money.  The last thing they needed was another mouth to feed. But my mother was determined to name a child after her father.

Will Bloom’s death, and my life, are intertwined.  If he had not died the way he had died, I would never have been born.