יתגדל ויתקדש שמי רבא
Magnified and Sanctified be Thy Holy Name
I intone the Kaddish prayer,
Often as many as five times in the course of a service,
Amidst the cacophony of other mourners,
Some semi-literate, others mono-tonal,
One exuberant in his volume and pious intensity
(of course he sits right next to me,
Booming his piety!)
I prefer an elegiac tone..
Kaddish in the key of Elgar!
The prosody of mourning…the physiology of grief in rhyme and meter,
Which alone opens my heart to the grief of my recent loss.
Since the words do nothing to evoke death or reference to bereavement.
The text refers only to high theology and the resurrection
A disconnect that only now forces itself on my daily consciousness
As I recite this doxology aloud,
And the community responds aloud יהא שמה רבא
קדיש יתום
The Kaddish is the ultimate disconnect
Between title and textual content,
Never mentioning death itself,
Forcing me to focus on my grief and anguish without the semantic assistance
Of which the devotional words normally afford as triggers for the heart.
No, I must muster the feelings of loss each time afresh and resist
The fall into textual rote and repetitiveness along with the others
Of this Magnificat.
Of course this is by Rabbinic design: יהא שמה רבא
To sway us away Kaddish by Kaddish from thoughts
Of dissent, heresy, questioning the divine judgment.
In line with the very צדוק הדין that began by the graveside
Justifying the divine and providential hand in the death of the loved one.
(As if the mere repeating of the doxology makes it true)
I find myself more deliberate in enunciation of the words
Than in my usual davening,
precisely to evoke a depth of feeling
through my tonal nuances and cadences.
In part, a resistance to end as quickly as possible,
Which usually leaves me alone
(except for my exuberant neighboring worshipper)
reciting עלינו ועל כל ישראל after the others have already completed
ואמרו אמן
Which leaves my words as often the last public oration
concluding each davening,
As if my words effect a sort of closure on the service (albeit unwittingly).
My voice as the ending of things, like the ending of my mother’s life.
It feels as if the very repetitive nature of the kaddish
is designed by Rabbinic genius
By this constant rehearsing of the Kaddish
(did Wieseltier actually count how many times he
recited it, or Goldman or Kaminetsky?)
Day by day for the year of mourning,
Effecting its own closure by moving the lost beloved
From the acute pain of physical absence,
(The absent touch, kiss, holding the hand,
embrace, even “when are you coming next Julian?”),
To a laying to rest of all these tangibles, in the memory of the heart.
I can testify to the truth that the depth of grief lessens
And this daily recitation of Kaddish has helped in the mourning process
though not through the intrinsic meaning
behind the Aramaic archaic language itself
rather through the constant rehearsing of the stanzas,
a letting go of the beloved (and that deep aching gaping wound
The chasm of reality without her, the never-again-ness of life without her),
Through the ritualized sequence of this prayer,
Embedding her memory in my heart
One day at a time.
How do I confront the sheer size of text?
The need for such repetitive recitations (albeit with intentionality)?
Facing the sheer consumption of such volume of devotional material?
How to maintain the reverence for the memory of her loss
Morning, noon and night?
This was always my difficulty with “davening”
and in the past, I followed the advice
Of mentors in “choosing” which psalms of the פסוקי דזמרה I would focus on
And so on…I had the luxury of choosing…
But now, the rigor of punctuality and attendance to recite the early Kaddish,
And the attention to points in the roadmap
of davening where the Kaddish is triggered,
Forces me into a new mode to fulfill this Mitzvah of davening.
How can one not fall to reverie or distraction?
As one navigates some 45 minutes (at a minimum) of worship
Or more than 2 hours on Shabbat?
Usually I would bring reading materials to Shul
My Shtender a veritable mini-library
(plus a mini scotch for refreshment!)
Feeding my halachic attention-deficit disorder!
(of course only religious material, would I justify to myself!)
But now, taking in the timing for the various Kaddish’s
dotted across the prayer landscape
And the recitation as an act of memory and dedication,
I am stretched, even exhausted by the daily task at hand-
A military-style mission-
Accomplished by serious attention to detail
Watching the speed and volume of davening,
Not my strong point.
When allowed to “stand before the amud”
העבר לפני התיבה
And leading the prayers,
I am instructed (warned) by the beadle
who, like a station master, pocket watch in hand,
Checkered flag at the ready,
Whistle between his lips,
for the Tefillah locomotive to leave the station,
He writes for me (newby) on a chit the following:
6 45 am אמר רבי ישמאל
6:48 am ברך שאמר
6:54 am ישתבח
7:04 am שמע
7:08 am עמידה
7:14 am חזרת השץ
And small a clock with seconds hand
is placed on the lectern next to the oversized siddur.
(He once chided me commenting
“your pesukei de’zimra was too short and your chazaras
haschatz was too long!”) true to his vocation as station master!
All this distracts any kind of kavvanah for the davening, let alone the Kaddish!
Then comes the different Nusach for different minyanim I attend.
(Ashkenaz, Sefard, Hassidishe, Habad, Sephardi, Kolel, and on),
When the Kaddish is said differs as does
the very text of the Kaddish, most dramatically the
ויצמח פרקוני
Or even whether at all (after Sefiras Ha’omer)
All these finer points need negotiation and lateral thinking
As the local minhagim of each minyan requires this skill.
This is not a task for the fearful,
as minhagim differ from shul to shul.
The the emotional strain and anxiety of “grabbing the amud”
(or as Dad called it “chapping” the amud…)
The need to show up early to be present with Tallis and t’fillin
before the start time
And equitably sharing it with the other aveilim,
(didn’t he already do שחרית?
Isn’t it my turn?
Yesterday I had an early flight so had to daven in another shul
מנחה גדולה(Mincha Gedolah)
As I entered I asked if there was another chiyuv
and offered to lead in the absence.
Directed by the laity to take the amud
I was grateful for the opportunity once more,
To memorialize my mother by taking the amud.
For me the kavod for my mother is the leading
the service, not the Kaddish itself since
קדיש יתום
Was originally meant for orphans!
And, as a stranger to this minyan, I graciously accepted.
Then another mourner showed up and confronted me at the amud.
I yielded…( he was threatening!)
for being a “stranger”
(according to some poskim)
the local member takes precedence
But I felt cheated nonetheless, he was late.
This is a high stakes game for us aveilim!
The Kaddish’s biggest effect on my life
Is on my daily schedule.
Whether showing up early for the morning prayers
And that deadline for Mincha
I discovered a newfound (DSM V) “highway anxiety syndrome”
Whether the Edens Highway will be lighter than usual
or will I miss davening because of some
car crash?
Will I make it in time to “grab the amud”
Or will I even make the Kaddish?
I already dread the winter months
And how will I negotiate the commute home,
what with the weather and the early sunsets.
And my abhorrence of airline minyanim on planes
Having always considered it a חלול השם
I now seek out others, on board, to help me say Kaddish in the kitchen
At the back of economy, suffering the knowing looks and disdain of the crew.
עבודה
I remain uncertain whether this whole avodah
And the toll it takes on my peace of mind each day
And the disruptive effect on my usual schedule
Wasn’t intentional?
Or a just a historical byproduct of life in the shtetl?
Not for those who ride the highways and byways of modernity.
Is this ? כבוד המת כבוד המת
Surely Mum would have said “Just get on with it, Julian!”
In her usual British pragmatism.
Maybe it is merely the accumulation of generations of מנהגים
Characteristic of the expansion and inflation of מנהג ישראל
Into routine praxis.
The relief comes daily with the conclusion of מעריב
When the daily chore is done.
When the last Kaddish and the
עלינו ועל כל ישראל
Rings out,
And the sense of duty fulfilled,
The burden relieved for another night,
That train has finally pulled into the station,
A sense of accomplishment washes over me
Ever so slightly
undeservedly.
עלינו ועל כל ישראל
I know not whether this helps my mother’s soul in heaven
I know how she lived her life,
With integrity, honesty and sincerity.
She had no fear of גיהינום
And I am certainly not a person who has the
זכותים to rescue her from it in any case.
The Kaddish has helped me in a profound way, however.
This daily mantra has forced me into a verbal performance ritual
(much like my old piano practice of scales and arpeggios)
And a dance between my recitation and the communal responses
יהא שמה רבא מברך
It has given me a profound new respect
For the habitual in ritual,
The constant repetitive, recitative, verbal articulation,
The demonstrative and the declarative,
Yet almost unconscious flow of words
As intentional flow of a stream of consciousness
Too fast to focus on any particular thought
Removing comprehension from the left hemisphere and analytic part of mind
Into a subconscious stream.
It has therefore changed me in the core
Forcing me to articulate without thinking
Those doxologies I always struggled with…magnified and sanctified...really?
Leonard Cohen’s resistant Kaddish comes to mind…
Public displays of emotional piety and devotion
were always problematic for me
Even an anathema,
Having witnessed so much hypocrisy as a child and in married life,
For me devotion and piety were always
inward expressions of the love of the divine
And like all lovemaking,
Restricted to the privacy of the intimate spaces,
Never to be worn on the sleeve. Certainly not in public acts of piety.
נשמה
My public davening was relegated to the Yamim Noraim when
In the company of my children, we would sing in harmony to the divine
(usually borrowed from D’veykus niggunim!)
It was for me an experience of devotional prayer
through the harmonic cords of music
Not the words.
Music was the very vehicle that allowed my soul to soar,
Now, however, I am forced through the non-musical nusach of daily Kaddish
To demonstrate doxology without public display of piety
and without the luxury of sacred music.
This is my challenge.
Another instance is the minhag is to wear the Tallis over the head
In this shul, for me, another anathema,
(Dad says that in Austro-Hungary
only the shul Rabbiner would wear it over the head
as a sign of eminence and talmudic erudition.)
Here every Tom Dick or Baal T’shuva
shockles with his Tallis over his head, unable to even
pronounce the words of kaddish de’rabanan without stumbling.
Yet, if I am leading the service,
I must don Tallis over head, from beginning to end.
Maybe the Rebbe feels “fake it until you make it!”
All this remains uncomfortable for me,
But I do not have the luxury to do anything but comply,
For here in this shul,
I am a member!
And have status (unlike that minyan where I was a stranger)
In the “pecking order” of chiyuvim.
קבלת שבת
Ironic how, many years ago, this very Rebbe
stopped me from davening kabbalat shabbat
Someone asked him why?
He replied my davening was too בעצבות
For admittedly, at times I got carried away by לכה דודי ,
“come my bride (Sabbath Queen)”
Moved to tears by the niggun.
Inappropriate (sic) for the שמחה of Kabbalat Shabbat.
I accepted his decision with no regret.
My notion of שמחה included the discharging
the pain of the secular week and the cry of the
Schechina, the Sabbath Queen to be rescued!
(more consistent with Rebbe Nachman’s paradoxical notion of שמחה)
I daven from the heart and it pours into the text and is triggered by the text
Joy includes everything within it, the tears are still tears.
How ironic then, שמע קולינו
That the same Rebbe stands near the amud
Now listening to my daily Kaddish and, at times
My voice cracking up when memories of my mother well up
During kaddish or during שמע קולינו
He, of course, understands I am in mourning.
I have a new respect for the wisdom of our rabbinic tradition,
And how מנהג ישראל emerges from centuries of legal halachic precedence,
Stemming from various local שאלות ותשובות
across the communities of Ashkenaz.
(until recently I suffered from a prejudicial resistance
to the obsessive halachic minutiae of
halachic splitting of hairs, Pharisaic Judaism)
I preferred surfing the larger theological questions of theodicy
(having been born a mere 5 years after the Tremendum,
after the greatest challenge to Jewish Theology in its history)
And having struggled with these larger questions
in my study of Midrash/Hassidut.
Surprised was I to learn how deeply theology is embedded
in the little rituals we perform, when we bring attention
and meditation (kavanot) to them.
קונה
The wisdom embedded in our morning stages
from Aninus, to Aveilus, to Shloshim, to the return
too the stone setting after 11 months, all point
to a deep psychological understanding in grieving.
More so with the Kaddish.
It focuses me away from the grief, however hard that is right now,
Easing up as the year progresses day after day.
How ironic it is that Mum’s loss
Should have been the trigger
For this awakening,
Never one for the minutiae herself
She always focused on the bigger picture.
Never once did I see her complain
Despite her suffering,
Multiple hospital admissions, the poking and prodding,
the IV’s the infusions,
The pneumonia’s gasping for air,
Never once did her philosophical view of life falter.
So paradoxical that her absence has forced me
into these backroads and alleyways
Of local praxis, a worm’s eye view of ritual praxis,
Despite my genetic predisposition to understand
the grander schemes and patterns and fault lines
of tradition.
יתגדל ויתקדש שמי רבא
Sanctified and Magnified
Be thy Holy Name.
We are born into this world
We die in this world
The Holy Name was there before us
The Holy Name remains after we are no longer here
We are forced to focus on the eternal Thou
Not our mortal selves
Not even our beloved losses
We focus on the mystery behind the Holy Name
The unfathomable grief and tragedy of life
And death are subsumed in the mystery of the Holy Name.
We recite the kaddish
Without understanding of the why-why she died why
they died (so many million קדושים)
We say Kaddish for the קדושים קדושים
