God, Peace and Life: The Mourners Kaddish And Icarus

On this day seven years ago my husband Tzvi died. In previous years, on the anniversary of his death,  I used to go up to his grave  with one of his devoted students. As is the custom in Jewish religion, he read  the Mourners  Kaddish  for my husband . It was a lovely gesture.

The Kaddish is a prayer in Aramaic, it  praises God and expresses a yearning for the establishment of His kingdom on earth. The prayer is recited by a man, usually a family member, at funerals and memorial services.

I am used to the music of the Kaddish, and could almost chant it by heart. Still  since I know only few words in this ancient  language,  I have never really contemplated the meaning of  the words, until yesterday when I looked for the English translation of the prayer for the purpose of writing this post..

 The Mourners Kaddish

May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified (Amen.) in the world that He created as He willed.

 May He give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your days,

and in the lifetimes of the entire Family of Israel,

swiftly and soon. Now respond: Amen.

(Cong Amen. May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.)

May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.

Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled,

mighty, upraised, and lauded be the Name of the Holy One, Blessed is He

(Cong. Blessed is He) beyond any blessing and song,

praise and consolation that are uttered in the world. Now respond: Amen.

May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life

upon us and upon all Israel. Now respond: Amen.

He Who makes peace in His heights, may He make peace,

upon us and upon all Israel. Now respond: Amen.

 The Kaddish is mostly about the greatness of God. It mentions the fact that He created the world the way He willed. But what I find most interesting is that this significant prayer ends with a wish that peace will descend from heaven and enable life on earth. If we consider that this is a mourner prayer, it is curious that death is not mentioned only God, peace and life.

 A mourner’s prayer with no dead person could be compared to a painting about the Fall of Icarus with no Icarus or his wings, as can be seen in the painting Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel. In that painting a ploughman is working the land, concentrating on his work, and only some smoke in the background faintly suggests that a tragedy takes place elsewhere. This painting was also the inspiration to W. H. Auden’s  poem Musee des Beaux Arts.

 Musee des Beaux Arts

W. H. Auden

 About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Like the absent death in the Mourners Kaddish, Auden points out that in Bruegel's painting everything turns away from Icarus' fall:  In both cases we would rather turn our attention away from death and other tragedies as life goes on.  

 The Mourner Kaddish ends with the familiar words: "He Who makes peace in His heights, may He make peace,upon us and upon all Israel. Now respond: Amen." The bond between peace and life is especially meaningful  in time of war. This year I choose to say the Mourners Kaddish myself , and when I get to the last two lines I shall say the the words with special intention hoping that finally God and man would  listen and bring Peace to our area, Amen.

Two Synagogues On A Desert Island: My New Year's Wishes

AUG.14.2013 - 8:22 AM

In less than a month we will be celebrating the Jewish New Year: Rosh Hashana. This holiday  is the beginning of a series of holidays known as the Jewish High Holidays. For me it will be yet another year in which “I won’t set a foot in a synagogue.” This phrase is taken from a famous Jewish fable/ Joke for the High Holidays...

“A Jewish sailor was shipwrecked on a desert island and the first thing he did was build two synagogues....

 Years later when he was rescued people were bewildered and asked him: Why he built two synagogues... to which he replied.

"Oh that other one... I won’t set a foot there”!*

Sadly this joke reflects a less than funny reality.

When we lived in small university towns in the Midwest I always went to Shul on the High Holidays. We are not religious but being outside Israel I wanted to celebrate the holidays with other Jewish people.

One year, for the High Holidays, my parents came to visit from Israel and we went together to our Shul. Upon hearing the Rosh Hashana Service my father said distastefully “this is Shaatnez”. Shaatnez is a Biblical word which means a cloth containing both wool and linen. Jewish law prohibits an individual from wearing wool and linen fabrics in one garment. What my father meant was that this Reform Service was a forbidden mixture of things that should not mix:  English and Hebrew,  men and women, instrumental music and prayer etc.

My father grew up in Berlin in between the wars, his family belonged to the Modern Orthodox stream of Judaism.  Although on his street, Oranienburger Straße, stood an impressive synagogue, he  never set a foot there, as it was a Reform Synagogue.

My father rebelled against his religion, he became a Zionist and immigrated to Israel in 1934. However,  for him the Orthodox tradition remained the only legitimate version of Judaism. And since my father became secular we grew up as Israelis with no religion and, apart from my brother’s Bar Mizva, never went to synagogue.

But in the US, our Reform Shul was  like a second home, it was welcoming and warm and it was  our only tie to Judaism.  When we were graduate students in Columbia Missouri our Shul was inside the Hillel House at the University. The Rabbi at that time Paul Saiger and his lovely wife Linda, were so welcoming and  hospitable that every new Jewish student or a new visitor was immediately invited for Shabbat dinner at their home. Around their dinner table we learnt all the traditional songs and prayers that I had never heard. Judaism for me became a happy and easy tradition to embrace. 

Later on in Iowa City our Shul was the center of the Jewish community in town. I loved that synagogue so much that together with another friend  founded a Sunday School for toddlers and their parents to offer them an opportunity to learn some Jewish tradition. Our Shul was a place where everyone: a woman or a man could say Kaddish in honor of a loved one

 Going back to Israel, we continued celebrating the High Holidays as a family but never again went to Shul. Unfortunately the Orthodox stream of Judaism, with all the restrictions and regulations, is not a welcoming place for a woman and there are three of us in our family. 

My father believed that Modern Orthodox was the only “true “ version of Judaism, but if I, his daughter,  wanted to honor his memory and say Kaddish, the only place I could do so was in an inclusive  “shaatnez” Reform Synagogue.

And about that Jewish joke, wouldn’t it be wonderful if  for the New Year, all of us -- women and men could  set our foot  in the two synagogues on the island?  We could pray together in English and in Hebrew, sing and play music, and even drink lots of (Kosher) wine.

*Another version of the joke:

Two Jews are stranded on a desert island. They build three synagogues --- one for the orthodox Jew, one for the reform Jew, and one that neither one of them will ever set foot in!