Reflections on a final Kaddish

Nearly 14 years ago I rose in schul and said a final Kaddish, ending my official period of mourning for my mother. On January 9, I did it again, this time for my father. People asked me why I go. I don’t pray; I think, I read, I write in my mind. Hardly anyone else since I started saying Kaddish in February has stayed with the program at my synagogue, so what do these other people know that I don’t? I doubt if they loved their parents less than I loved mine, so that’s not it. Maybe my academic schedule makes it easier. But ease is not the answer. The hours of services are not so difficult to plan around.

Friends to whom I confided these thoughts either tried to convince me that merely by going I would get into the swing of things, or asked the same question I posed to myself, “Why bother?” This was a tough one. I wasn't sure. When I had these same thoughts about why I was saying Kaddish for my mother, I wrote to friends:

“In the end I concluded that as my mother was always there for me when she was alive (sometimes too much so) I would be there for her, fulfilling the obligation imposed on me centuries before either of us was born. And so, for her, and not for me, I went to shul and said Kaddish and prayed, if at all, that I could pray. There was another reason I went, even less rational than the first. Maybe, just maybe, if I continued this charade and did the coming and going, the standing and sitting, the bowing and swaying, maybe, just maybe when it was all over, she would be back, not dead, laughing with me, talking to me, scolding me for some faux pas I didn't know I'd committed. This was obviously a thought verging on idiocy and I was not blasphemous enough to pray for her to be alive again—but somewhere in the innermost, most primitive recesses of my mind, the thought (if it can be so dignified) lingered. Stupid, I know, but unshakable, nevertheless.”

I no longer held that idea this time, but the other day, a fellow sat in my accustomed seat, the one to which I went every service. He asked why that seat was so special to me. “How else will my father know that I’m here, unless I’m in my seat?” I replied, and then felt myself blushing at the absurdities that spew forth my unguarded mouth.

So, there I sat as the sun set on January 9 ending both Shabbat and my period of mourning, wondering. Wondering why I could not pray, wondering why I was going to miss this twice daily ritual—and I knew that I would. I’d miss the companionship of the others and their bonhomie; I'd miss the special feeling of standing to say Kaddish; I’d miss the forlorn hope; I’d miss the structure it created for my day; I’d miss my father and wouldn’t be doing anything for him again, twice a day as I had for those eleven months. The official period of mourning would be over, but not my personal sense of loss. The eleven months were obsessively too long, but emotionally they were much too short.

When the last time I rose to say that final Kaddish, then for my mother, I found that I couldn’t. My throat choked, tears streamed from my eyes, my knees suddenly felt unable to sustain my weight. I sat, sobbing, trying desperately to utter the magic words which would bring her back to life as she had been before her final illness, though I knew that that could not be. What really hurt was the realization that I could do no more for her. She was now officially completely beyond my futilely outstretched helping hand. That was embarrassing. My hope was that such histrionics would not be repeated, no tears, just a simple stand up, say the prayer and sit down. Over. And so it was. Done.

The Haredi menace

I think of two Rosas—Luxemburg and Parks, and of the Grimké sisters—Angelina and Sarah. I think of Emily Pankhurst and of Susan B. Anthony. I think of Emilia Shrayer standing up to the Communist authorities in the old Soviet Union. I think of Nofrat Frenkel in Israel. All were women who knew something was wrong and risked everything to correct it. Some were killed, others were imprisoned, each was the object of ridicule. What do these women know about how things are or should be? Things are as they are because of divine ordinance. Read the bible. Slavery is divinely sanctioned; women must know their place because they are a pernicious, though necessary gender. “Now, I find woman more bitter than death; she is all traps, her hands are fetters and her heart is snares.” (Ecclesiastes 7:26) Enough said, right? Wrong. We also find “She is clothed with strength and splendor; she looks to the future cheerfully. Her mouth is full of wisdom, her tongue with kindly teaching.” (Proverbs 31: 25-26)

I think of the Women of the Wall and the arrogance of the authorities who arrested a woman for wearing a tallit at the Western Wall, still rankles. Granted, Nofrat Frenkel wasn’t stoned to death—for all their puritanical fussbudgetness the Haredim of Israel are not the Taliban. But they insist that they know the truth and that the truth shall deny others freedom. Just like the Taliban, just like the Puritans from whom Roger Williams fled. And we who are not ultra-Orthodox are asked to bend our wills to theirs, since they are the authentic Jews. Women must sit in the back of the bus, they insist; a 13 year old child converted by a Conservative rabbi has to be buried in a non-Jewish section of a cemetery in Spain by decree of rabbi Shlomo Amar, not a Spanish rabbi, but the chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel. So, not only do the Ayatollahs of the extreme right in Israel try to dominate in that country, they seek to extend their purview to the world. Recently mixed-group singing at the Wall was declared Vorboten so singing Hatikvah there to celebrate the return of the Old City to Israel is now a criminal offense. If I were a conspiracy theorist I’d suspect that the ultra-Orthodox who opposed the creation of the State of Israel have found a new way to destroy it—by alienating the vast majority of us who have entered the current century. It’s like supporting Hamid Karzai. Americans look at his corrupt regime and ask, for this we have to pledge our soldiers and our cash? For the Haredi we have to fight in Congress and the White House?

Avi Shafran, spokesman for the Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, has a strange argument. On the one hand “Israel is a country that has functioned with a certain understanding among its religious and not religious Jews. If the activists don’t want to alienate Jews, they shouldn’t thumb their noses at the traditional Jews in Israel.” The fault is all on the side of the progressives. On the other hand, it’s only a handful of the Haredi who protest the women and others who violate traditional standards. Most are in favor of a reasonable compromise, but there are always holdouts, he says. So, which is it—the fault is with the activists, or the fault is with the Haredi hot heads? Pick one. Oh, he also argues that the problem is with foreign Jews who are trying to impose their views on the traditional ways of Israel. Rather like Ross Barnett or George Wallace complaining about outside agitators coming to their states. The defenders of the benighted old ways always blame outsiders.

Modern Orthodox in America also feel the sting of their Haredi brethren who, not content to deny Reform and Conservative conversions, now challange the validity even of theirs.

Oh, lest it be thought that my ire is directed against the Haredi, it’s not. They are what they are. It’s Israel’s government which kowtows to them, allowing a minority within a minority to dictate public policy. That’s the shanda.