Yom Kippur Yizkor, September 23, 2015/10 Tishri 5776
Rabbi Judith Abrams (z”l) studied intensely, learned with unparalleled insight, taught with free-wheeling delight, laughed easily and wildly, and loved the wisdom, foibles, brilliance, obsessions, cleverness, level-headedness, and mystical practicality of the ancient rabbis. For me, two core take-aways from her teaching include: (1) develop a spiritual practice during easier times to support you in tough times, because the demands of tough times arrive unannounced; (2) when you notice a passage of liturgy that reads like it’s climbing a staircase to heaven, get on board the mantra and climb.
And climb we do. Yitgadal v’yitkadash, magnified and sanctified – the kaddish mantra with which we acknowledge and commemorate the loss of loved ones – the prayer for the dead that requires us to exalt the glory of the God upon whom we often heap blame for our grief, the Author of life and death. Our sense of obligation to recite kaddish runs deep, drawing the doubtful and the faithful into a ritual of intergenerational weaving, of assuring an unbroken chain of remembrance.
So essential is this weaving, that we’re willing to stretch as necessary to make sure we can fulfill our heart’s wish to bless and elevate. Rabbi Simcha Paull Raphael remembers working as a busboy in the Catskills back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, at the then-famous and now-vanished Kutsher’s Country Club. One summer, owners Joe and Milton Kutsher were saying kaddish for their mother. And every day, mid-morning, there would be a minyan at the hotel so the two brothers could say kaddish in community. If the maitre d’ of the dining room got a call that they needed more bodies for a minyan, he would look around the dining room to see who was finished with his breakfast cleanup and would call the names of those he was sending to the minyan – “Goldberg! Schwartz! Cohen, Raphael!” – and then he would stop, look around, and finding no more Jewish teenagers, would continue “Gonzalez! Rodriguez! – you go, too!” Better too many than too few to uphold the Kutshers in their prayers.
Observing the anniversary of parents’ death (and the deaths of others especially close to us, and the deaths of the uncounted unnamed) originated in Germany. Later, the 16th-century kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria expanded our understanding of the prayer’s power: not only does our recitation assist the transition of loved ones’ souls during the first eleven months after death, reciting a yahrzeit kaddish helps sustain these beloved souls as they continue their evolution in Olam ha-Bah.
Rabbi Shulamit Theide considers more earth-bound reasons for reciting magnifications in the face of loss: “When we grieve, we face realities: life is fragile, fate is unpredictable . . . . God does not pull strings [on our behalf]. One must acknowledge this reality in order to become an adult who can pray as an adult. The rabbis, too, lived through [life’s routine sufferings and] through horrific ordeals. . . . They knew that there was no true and lasting path to God that did not admit of God’s [apparent] hiddenness from humanity.
“So they prescribed the continual process of saying – again and again – that God is, in fact, too magnificent for words. The text demands that we admit that the Holy One is so far and above all that is human that there is no earthly speech that can be adequate, no words that can suffice. Judaism asks us to proclaim God’s greatness in the moments of our deepest losses. . . . But at some point, standing at the juncture of life and death, praising God, the knowledge of our precious smallness emerges simultaneously with the awareness of the Creator’s awesome, indescribable nature – [which enfolds and sustains us].
“[Some] rabbis say that by repeating y’hei sh’meih rabba m’varakh [Let God’s great name be blessed] we aid God in affixing and affirming the foundation of the world. We co-create the world, itself spoken into existence, in the act of reciting Kaddish – [we build the stairs as we climb them, as I imagine Rabbi Abrams saying]. We use all-powerful speech while simultaneously admitting its patent inadequacy. [Let the name of the Holy One be glorified, exalted, and honored] . . . beyond all psalm and song? We are only human. Our words – even those we use to praise the Holy One – are wounded ones.
“[Yet,] they must be, if we are to be adults. To acknowledge God’s greatness demands that we see ourselves for what we are: the heirs and the executors of the human condition, ensouled collaborators in God’s unimaginably awesome creative unfolding. So we learn that we must rise to our God-given task: the ethical and moral work of fashioning the world, [for the elevation of all souls, of our very own souls, in this lifetime. Say the Kaddish. Then, work to create a world that honors all those you remember with love. Within the unique cosmic moment of our embodied consciousness, it will indeed be a new world.]*
After all, when we endure a loss, committing ourselves to saying kaddish gives us a chance to learn from the Torah of the beloved’s life, to appreciate the legacy that will help us build that new world. In this way, we support our loved ones making their way (however we each might imagine it) in eternity while simultaneously engaging our embodied souls in new learning and creativity. As not everyone feels drawn to attend synagogue regularly, even to say kaddish, so it can be helpful to think of kaddish as both a specific ritual act in Jewish community and an internal process of working through and learning from the nature of one’s relationship with the person who has died.
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (zt”l) used the term “Going to Kaddish College” to describe the psychological function of reciting the prayer. He explained how in this eleven month period mourners who open to the potential may go through a deep sense of inner evaluation, and learn a great deal about themselves and about the one they mourn. He used to tell the following story about his father's death – one to which many of us can fully relate:
“After getting up from sitting shivah for Papa, alav hasholom, I was driving home in my truck. Soon after I started out, a driver on the road cut me off. I instantly let out a string of curses – Polish, Yiddish . . . every obscenity in my vocabulary. Then I stopped myself as I heard the echoing of my father's voice. It was exactly as he would curse and swear while driving at the wheel. I said aloud: “Papa, this is one of yours! This one you can have back.” I realized that I was just beginning to sort out my “yerishah,” my inheritance from Papa, to understand what he had given me that I could affirm as my own, and what was his, not mine.”**
As this anecdote suggests, during the process of “Going to Kaddish College,” mourners have an opportunity to distinguish what they wish to weave forward into the new world they’re building in collaboration with their beloved’s memory, and what may be left behind. In contrast to our wider culture’s insistence on closure, moving on, forgetting death’s ever-present teachings of love, impermanence, and hope, the obligation to say kaddish binds us to past and future both realistically and creatively.
When you notice a passage of liturgy that reads like it’s climbing a staircase to heaven, get on board the mantra and climb. And because the mantra includes responses, you know you do not climb alone – you accomplish the outer and inner work of initial mourning and annual remembrance in community, with others who have or will stand where you stand, grieve as you grieve, and who will, in their time, be grateful for your emotional and spiritual support. Keyn y’hi ratzon, so may this be our work, together.
* “Say the Kaddish, Create the World (For the Very First Time)”
** “On the Afterlife,” audio-cassette, distributed by Bnai Or Religious Fellowship, Philadelphia (n.d.)
Rabbi Judith Abrams (z”l) studied intensely, learned with unparalleled insight, taught with free-wheeling delight, laughed easily and wildly, and loved the wisdom, foibles, brilliance, obsessions, cleverness, level-headedness, and mystical practicality of the ancient rabbis. For me, two core take-aways from her teaching include: (1) develop a spiritual practice during easier times to support you in tough times, because the demands of tough times arrive unannounced; (2) when you notice a passage of liturgy that reads like it’s climbing a staircase to heaven, get on board the mantra and climb.
And climb we do. Yitgadal v’yitkadash, magnified and sanctified – the kaddish mantra with which we acknowledge and commemorate the loss of loved ones – the prayer for the dead that requires us to exalt the glory of the God upon whom we often heap blame for our grief, the Author of life and death. Our sense of obligation to recite kaddish runs deep, drawing the doubtful and the faithful into a ritual of intergenerational weaving, of assuring an unbroken chain of remembrance.
So essential is this weaving, that we’re willing to stretch as necessary to make sure we can fulfill our heart’s wish to bless and elevate. Rabbi Simcha Paull Raphael remembers working as a busboy in the Catskills back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, at the then-famous and now-vanished Kutsher’s Country Club. One summer, owners Joe and Milton Kutsher were saying kaddish for their mother. And every day, mid-morning, there would be a minyan at the hotel so the two brothers could say kaddish in community. If the maitre d’ of the dining room got a call that they needed more bodies for a minyan, he would look around the dining room to see who was finished with his breakfast cleanup and would call the names of those he was sending to the minyan – “Goldberg! Schwartz! Cohen, Raphael!” – and then he would stop, look around, and finding no more Jewish teenagers, would continue “Gonzalez! Rodriguez! – you go, too!” Better too many than too few to uphold the Kutshers in their prayers.
Observing the anniversary of parents’ death (and the deaths of others especially close to us, and the deaths of the uncounted unnamed) originated in Germany. Later, the 16th-century kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria expanded our understanding of the prayer’s power: not only does our recitation assist the transition of loved ones’ souls during the first eleven months after death, reciting a yahrzeit kaddish helps sustain these beloved souls as they continue their evolution in Olam ha-Bah.
Rabbi Shulamit Theide considers more earth-bound reasons for reciting magnifications in the face of loss: “When we grieve, we face realities: life is fragile, fate is unpredictable . . . . God does not pull strings [on our behalf]. One must acknowledge this reality in order to become an adult who can pray as an adult. The rabbis, too, lived through [life’s routine sufferings and] through horrific ordeals. . . . They knew that there was no true and lasting path to God that did not admit of God’s [apparent] hiddenness from humanity.
“So they prescribed the continual process of saying – again and again – that God is, in fact, too magnificent for words. The text demands that we admit that the Holy One is so far and above all that is human that there is no earthly speech that can be adequate, no words that can suffice. Judaism asks us to proclaim God’s greatness in the moments of our deepest losses. . . . But at some point, standing at the juncture of life and death, praising God, the knowledge of our precious smallness emerges simultaneously with the awareness of the Creator’s awesome, indescribable nature – [which enfolds and sustains us].
“[Some] rabbis say that by repeating y’hei sh’meih rabba m’varakh [Let God’s great name be blessed] we aid God in affixing and affirming the foundation of the world. We co-create the world, itself spoken into existence, in the act of reciting Kaddish – [we build the stairs as we climb them, as I imagine Rabbi Abrams saying]. We use all-powerful speech while simultaneously admitting its patent inadequacy. [Let the name of the Holy One be glorified, exalted, and honored] . . . beyond all psalm and song? We are only human. Our words – even those we use to praise the Holy One – are wounded ones.
“[Yet,] they must be, if we are to be adults. To acknowledge God’s greatness demands that we see ourselves for what we are: the heirs and the executors of the human condition, ensouled collaborators in God’s unimaginably awesome creative unfolding. So we learn that we must rise to our God-given task: the ethical and moral work of fashioning the world, [for the elevation of all souls, of our very own souls, in this lifetime. Say the Kaddish. Then, work to create a world that honors all those you remember with love. Within the unique cosmic moment of our embodied consciousness, it will indeed be a new world.]*
After all, when we endure a loss, committing ourselves to saying kaddish gives us a chance to learn from the Torah of the beloved’s life, to appreciate the legacy that will help us build that new world. In this way, we support our loved ones making their way (however we each might imagine it) in eternity while simultaneously engaging our embodied souls in new learning and creativity. As not everyone feels drawn to attend synagogue regularly, even to say kaddish, so it can be helpful to think of kaddish as both a specific ritual act in Jewish community and an internal process of working through and learning from the nature of one’s relationship with the person who has died.
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (zt”l) used the term “Going to Kaddish College” to describe the psychological function of reciting the prayer. He explained how in this eleven month period mourners who open to the potential may go through a deep sense of inner evaluation, and learn a great deal about themselves and about the one they mourn. He used to tell the following story about his father's death – one to which many of us can fully relate:
“After getting up from sitting shivah for Papa, alav hasholom, I was driving home in my truck. Soon after I started out, a driver on the road cut me off. I instantly let out a string of curses – Polish, Yiddish . . . every obscenity in my vocabulary. Then I stopped myself as I heard the echoing of my father's voice. It was exactly as he would curse and swear while driving at the wheel. I said aloud: “Papa, this is one of yours! This one you can have back.” I realized that I was just beginning to sort out my “yerishah,” my inheritance from Papa, to understand what he had given me that I could affirm as my own, and what was his, not mine.”**
As this anecdote suggests, during the process of “Going to Kaddish College,” mourners have an opportunity to distinguish what they wish to weave forward into the new world they’re building in collaboration with their beloved’s memory, and what may be left behind. In contrast to our wider culture’s insistence on closure, moving on, forgetting death’s ever-present teachings of love, impermanence, and hope, the obligation to say kaddish binds us to past and future both realistically and creatively.
When you notice a passage of liturgy that reads like it’s climbing a staircase to heaven, get on board the mantra and climb. And because the mantra includes responses, you know you do not climb alone – you accomplish the outer and inner work of initial mourning and annual remembrance in community, with others who have or will stand where you stand, grieve as you grieve, and who will, in their time, be grateful for your emotional and spiritual support. Keyn y’hi ratzon, so may this be our work, together.
* “Say the Kaddish, Create the World (For the Very First Time)”
** “On the Afterlife,” audio-cassette, distributed by Bnai Or Religious Fellowship, Philadelphia (n.d.)