Finishing Saying Kaddish

 Thursday, Nov 19, 2020 - Elisha gathered friends and family on zoom to mark the 11th month on the Hebrew calendar wherein children stop reciting kaddish for a parent.

I want to start by saying thank you to everyone who has shown up for me in so many ways over the last 11 months – from messages, to shiva visits and meals, walks and talks.

I need to say a special thank you to those I see on daily zoom minyan with the Tremont st shul who’ve helped me fulfill this obligation to honor my father by saying Kaddish. I tried to say kaddish once a day with a minyan and I didn’t always make the mark, but I’m glad for the times I did. Now as this practice comes to what feels like an abrupt halt, I want to reflect on a few of the experiences with you.

Before Covid hit I had 2 months of saying kaddish in person and I tried out a lot of prayer places. In addition to our main stays of Minyan Tehillah and Cambridge Minyan – I went to almost all other offerings in Camberville and even to some places beyond. I encountered multiple denominations and their varying siddurim. I found myself among an enclave of young guys gathered for a utilitarian mincha at Harvard Law School in a fancy wood paneled classroom where the pace of kaddish was race-like and also in an aging quorum in a suburban beit midrash where the kaddish pace was haltingly slow and I envied the advanced age of the mourners. Sometimes I was the only woman in the room, sometimes I struggled to make myself heard. Sometimes I was leading the services, or I was listening intently to synchronize with the others in the room who were also saying kaddish. Many times my kids were underfoot, or in my arms, and many other times I felt totally alone – saying the words of kaddish with no other voices joining in.

That feeling of aloneness intensified when covid hit and I couldn’t go in person to minyan. I was worried about where to find online prayer that would permit mourners to recite kaddish. I again started sampling different virtual spaces and while I found some lovely tefilot I didn’t feel connected to people in the zoom room. I longed for familiar faces and am forever grateful that when I turned to TBS we made daily virtual shacharit work.

As I would stand here in my office alone in front of my computer and see your faces and try to tune my ear to Lieba and Michael and Bruce and Mel and David who’ve been saying kaddish at the same time, my mind often wandered from the words we were saying, to the person I was saying them for. I would repeatedly picture my Abba as a young man, with his dark, bushy, curly hair and his full mustache and beard - at the exact same age as I am, 38, saying kaddish for his Abba, standing in a small traditional synagogue in Kingston, NY that must have reminded him of the place he went to with his father before becoming a bar mitzvah. Many of you know that saying kaddish was the beginning of my dad’s journey towards engaging in Jewish life as an adult. Thinking of my dad at that stage daily made me sad for all the things I wish I had a chance to discuss with him, but it also made me feel incredibly rooted and like our lives were cemented together in each of those moments.

Often the words of kaddish carry me without my thinking much about them – these words that seemed so hard to pronounce fluidly last January I now say without even looking at the page. But when I do think of the words I am reciting during kaddish – the ones that I feel the most kavvanah, the most sincere intention while saying, are “yehai shilamah rabba min shmaya” – may  a great peace or feeling of completeness come down from heaven. The first time I said those words in covid lockdown I was in our back room with the window shade open looking at Somerville hospital and imagining all the people who might be in there fighting this virus.- I was all in to ask God to bring us all to shleymut, complete healing, and to call on humanity to bring each other peace. The reasons for saying this part of the prayer have only multiplied in 2020. My father had such complete and perfect faith as a Jew and as a person and when I say those words from kaddish I mean them myself – I want a real fix for all the deep ways things feel broken for people right now, that things feel broken for me right now - and I’m also channeling my Abba’s attitude and demeanor that there is of course hope that such a fix can come from above - so I feel that it is together – me and him - that we’re praying for a better world.

I’ve had two opportunities recently to say kaddish together with others, in person, outdoors and I should have known that the experience was going to get me totally choked up and make it hard to say the words of kaddish out loud. It had been a while since I felt really seen as a public mourner and it felt at once comforting and also like a renewal of grief. Covid has given me more company in my grief for the changed and limited ways that we’re all experiencing life. Now this stage of my personal mourning is coming to a close and in many ways the words I read by Dr. Simon Feuerman resonate with me – finishing kaddish is “one more horrible separation from the person I lost. The Kaddish will no longer bind us.”

So thank you for being here to help me ease this transition.