Kaddish Musings

I honor our tradition’s’ rituals about mourning. They help us not rush to cheer us out of our feelings or get us to “move on” or do the emotional disservice of “trying to feel better”.

Each ritual or practice serves its sacred purpose in the tapestry of love and memory. We begin to integrate memories into our daily lives.

I wish I was not so bound to these brilliant, mindful and time-tested acts of love and care.

I wish I could honor you, my dear dad, in other ways.

I have been living this life of conscious loving and grieving for so many years. I no longer want to be defined by grief and loss, either mine or others.

Yet, once again, I find myself walking to synagogue to say Kaddish for you, stand in your memory and honor. There is still one more month until time invites me to stop actively guiding your spirit in its ascent. I can’t stop now.

One more month of honoring my mourning in its sea of tears often overflowing with the heartbreak of more than just the loss of you.

God help me.

Forgive me.

I want to be done with this.

I want to be done with the grief.

Weariness overtakes me.

My father was a giant in both his professional life and in our family. He was Captain Kangaroo at my grade school carnivals where he would take prizes for the kids out of each of his huge pockets. As a young girl I couldn’t have been prouder.

And then in 6^th grade he taught our class about recidivism. A word I will never forget because he taught it to us.

Since dad died I learned about the parties he had with Margaret Mead and more about his unique contributions to sociology.

For example, I was deeply moved when I learned from Professor Rona-tos that my dad said “As a sociologist I have always been interested in how things become problems. My interest has been in the contexts of problems—how they come to be matters of public concern and how they become defined. I like to say that if I am pressed to the wall, and asked, ‘How do you solve this problem’, I say, ‘Why do you ask?’

As a rabbi and a hospital chaplain, I rarely answer people’s direct questions, like “is there an afterlife?” or “is the story of the Exodus true?” Or “why is God punishing me?” I also respond with “Why do you ask?”   That response opens up the conversation to a much deeper level.   The inquiry we do together is more important at that moment that what I believe. Every day when I ask that question, I can feel my dad smile.

In his elder years he became a true artist, using color and poetry for inspiration. He also became an accomplished “shopping list poet”. Whenever he asked me to pick up something from the store, it came in the form of a poem. The following is one example.

Dear Chaya:

Here again is your

poetic father

Sorry that I

Make you bother’

For the cough of which I’m fussiin’

One large bottle Robitussin.

Peet’s coffee I like most.

Two pounds -French Roast.

Six small cans of juice Tomato

I’ll drink it much,much latuh..

A pack of cheese, wrapped and sliced

That will be very niced.

Six Bars of soap,the kind I love

For the face .It’s called Dove.

Most crucial-salt and pepper.

Thank you much

My helpful schlepper’

My dad grew up as a religious Jew but was not observant as an adult. However, after my mother died, two years to the day before he died, he started going to services to say the Kaddish for my mother. The Kaddish is the Jewish prayer for the dead said for an entire year. At 89, he became a regular at services. What a great role model for continuing to learn and grow into our elder years.

The origin of the Kaddish prayer to honor the dead is not entirely clear, but many think that it started in a house of mourning for a scholar, a teacher. Someone would offer a teaching in honor of the scholar who had died. Because learning was considered a pious activity which deserved words of praise, the son of the scholar would say the Kaddish, a prayer that praises God and life, yet says nothing about death. The version of the Kaddish they recited was called the Rabbis Kaddish or Kaddish de Rabbanan. It included a paragraph of blessings for teachers and students.

Over time, everyone wanted to say this prayer to honor their deceased and it became awkward to determine who was worthy of being seen as a scholar and who wasn’t. So a different version evolved that we all recite for all loved ones that doesn’t include the specific paragraph honoring teachers and students. That version is called the Mourners Kaddish many are familiar with.

However, our tradition retained the original Kaddish de Rabbanan to recite after study and to honor our teachers because it speaks of the centrality of learning, the continuity of knowledge, and it connects us with learning everywhere. It underlines the spirituality of learning.

The following is a translation of the Aramaic paragraph about teachers and students written by my teacher Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, z’l, may his memory be a blessing.

Please, accept our petition for all of Israel, for our teachers and their students and the students of their students … indeed for all these who invest themselves in Torah, be it here or in any other location…this is what we ask for them as well as for us:

Blessings in all endeavors, grace, kindness and compassion, long, healthy life and ample income as well as release from unnecessary burdens. May this be granted by You God as You embrace all creation as we express our agreement and hope [by saying],

AMEN.

Here we are today: all in some way students of Joseph Gusfield, or students of his students, across time and place. We came together to acknowledge and savor the continuity and transformative power of learning with him. We came together to remember, to honor, to mourn him. Therefore, I invite all of us here, colleagues, students, family and friends, to step into the place of the mourner and rise as I recite the Kaddish d’Rabbanan in my father’s honor and memory. (Words to the Kaddish d’Rabbanan can be found in the following link.)

http://www.mussarleadership.org/pdfs/kaddish_d%27rabbanan.pdf

All versions of the Kaddish end with a prayer for peace. May Joseph Gusfield’s memory be a blessing, and may his life of loving and learning bring us peace, and help us work for peace everywhere.

The impact o f your death escapes me

Except when I walk alone up the hill.

As I ascend, I can feel you ascend.

I remember how you slipped from this life with ease…

The difference between being alive and dead almost imperceptible.

I say Kaddish with purpose, devotion, and hope….

That your soul will continue to ascend and ascend.

I know you will teach class in Gan Eden and your students will be so pleased when you arrive.

As I ascend the hill and the tears flow, I feel you with me, rising.

The days are no longer marked by rituals that serve—

as land to the wholeness of grief

• Burial (Levaya, accompaniment)
• Shiva (sitting still, receiving)
• Kaddish, Kaddish, Kaddish, Kaddish, Kaddish, Kaddish, Kaddish (Praising the Great Name: Shmey Rabba)
• Yarzheit (Remembering—a liminal time between the past and the future)

To be untethered is my new ritual

Unbouyed, riding the waves, deep water, endless seas

No land in sight.

Home found in every moment, the present moment.

Don Juan says keep death upon your shoulder to help you remember love.

I could feel the laminated kaddish card in my pocket all day.  During the hike, the lake, the waterfalls, the ocean view, I counted how many were with us. Oh yes, only seven, we need ten.   Well maybe there were people on the path who would want to be counted towards the minyan..to be the 8^th, 9^th, or tenth, to help me recite Kaddish for my mom.  There aren’t many days left and I missed services today in order to connect with the earth and celebrate a friend’s birthday.

The card in my pocket felt warmer and warmer all day.  During the birthday party the card really wanted to come out. The tears welled up. There was a distance between me and joy, the fun, the celebration.  “would this be a good time to ask 9 others to join me in the other room to help my mom’s spirit ascend?”  “How can I do this without being a distraction, a downer?”  The urgency increased. The separateness increased.  Then I went home, wishing I had gone to services that morning.  The Kaddish words burning in my pocket.

My mom forgave me, knowing I was doing my best.

It was a busy day and I had a lot to do before our trip to New York, leaving at noon. Pack, clean, cook, return calls, figure out the ride to the airport.  The last thing I wanted to do was to go to minyan to say kaddish for my mother. After all, it had almost been 11 months and soon I wouldn’t need to say kaddish regularly anymore, or at least for my mother.  I was getting ready for the 11 months to be over.

I had not only put in my time, but it been a meaningful time, filled with all of the emotions one would expect, this being my first parent that I had taken on the obligation to say kaddish for.  So many different emotions this year;  extreme grief, gratitude for our people and our tradition, boredom, duty, obligation, a desire to be a good daughter, mystical feelings of connection and purpose, loneliness, shyness and plain old sadness.  Maybe these aren’t all emotions, but I had many experiences in this year and a rich tapestry of a meaningful mourning process, not to mention my broken heart over two dear friends who also died this year.  I deserved to take the mourning off.  After all, I had a lot to do.

I started to circle the kitchen until suddenly I found myself walking out the door, driving to shul and parking in the lot, knowing I needed to be there. I was very late, but there were still two more kaddishes to recite.  I was compelled to go, to join the minyan and say kaddish for my mother.  It could have been the power of the davvenen, the welcoming energy of those who attend, the Hebrew letters, the smell of the siddurim, the words of Torah, or the calm smiles that I always encounter. Maybe my mother was urging me to hang in there a little bit longer.  Maybe she needed me. I will never know for sure what compelled me to get in the car, but I am so very grateful for the men and women of the minyan who make it easy for me to have my own process and are always just friendly enough, never expecting me to report on my lateness or absences, never pushing me to participate beyond what I am comfortable doing this year, even though I can.

I know that if I arrive between 8 and 9 any Monday and Thursday, I will have the opportunity to experience grief, gratitude, davvenen in various colors depending on my mood, connection with my mother, and a bit of Torah.   What a gift.

I can’t thank you enough.