Tag Archives: kaddish

November 3, 2025 · 7:30 am

Two Yahrzeit Candles

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)

February 17th, my mother’s Yahrzeit.

I realized I had forgotten to light 

the candle for my father on February 11th.

They died years apart, my father at 62,

several months before his early retirement,

my mother at 92, a mainstay in my world. 

My father and I remained estranged.

He missed so many chances to be part 

of my life—never came to my wedding, 

my college graduation, or celebrated

the birth of our daughter, his only grandchild.

February 17th, I lit two candles chanted

the Kaddish for both parents, holy words 

in Aramaic that are deeply etched 

in every synagogue service. This ritual 

binds me to my ancestors, sends shivers 

down my spine as I reckon with shame 

at the growing distance from my father. 

There’s no accounting for the candles’ 

wax or for the duration of their burning. 

One candle with barely a flicker, 

while the other still flares two days later.

Who’s to say for which parent the candle 

burns brighter?

Miriam Bassuk’s poems have appeared in Snapdragon, Borderless, 3 Elements Review, and The Jewish Writing Project. She was one of the featured poets in WA 129 project sponsored by Tod Marshall, the Washington State poet laureate. As an avid poet, she has been charting the journey of living in these uncertain times.

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February 24, 2025 · 7:30 am

Saying Kaddish for an Unworthy Parent

By Karin Joy Sprecher (Newton, MA)

Dear Friend,

Though I could not attend your Shiva in person – my husband stood there for both of us – I’ve thought of you every day since our conversation when you borrowed my mother-in-law’s wheelchair.

Funerals are never easy. Shivas are even more difficult, especially when the relationship was less than ideal or even fraught and sad and painful. 

How does one sit Shiva for someone who often caused us pain? How does one say Kaddish for a parent who was also mean, nasty, down-right abusive?  Two different rabbis and a cantor, in different ways, gave me essentially the same message: try sitting Shiva & saying Kaddish not for who that parent actually was. Instead, try sitting Shiva … try saying Kaddish for the parent you did not have, but that every child deserves.

I had my doubts.

But I was truly surprised that, over time, it felt not only like something I could do.  It felt right! 

What the rabbis and cantor specifically said — that there was a place in Jewish practice which not only acknowledged imperfect, damaging parenting and how that affected one’s ability to follow Jewish rituals for death and mourning — eventually became, for me, very powerful.  It enabled me to find solace in rituals which originally seemed inappropriate, even untenable.

It gave me a place to sit with other mourners in community, even if my feelings were different, even if my raison d’être for being there was the opposite of what others were experiencing.

Over time I remembered there were other warm, loving, nurturing adults in my life who, intentionally or not, filled a parent-like role in my life. Those who became role models for good parenting. Those who enabled me to become the kind of parent I wanted to be … the kind of parent I needed to be … for my children … because  I saw the way they parented their children. 

I saw that their children felt seen, were nurtured, were loved just as they were, whose strengths were appreciated and whose negative behaviors were lovingly redirected. I saw what was possible, and I saw its wonderful effects. I saw what I believe every child needs and deserves.  And, through parenting my own children, I finally realized that I was becoming the parent I deserved to have as a child.

By the end of saying Kaddish, I gratefully realized that there were people in my life who truly loved me, nurtured me, just as I was. They were my “real” parents, just not my biological parents.

Karin Joy Sprecher, an artist specializing in Judaica, was inspired to begin writing again the year before Covid shut everything down thanks to a Hebrew College class  “Writing Through a Jewish Lens: A Jewish Women’s Writing Workshop.”  She lives with her husband in Newton, MA, where she continues to sing, virtually, in Jewish choirs and take online classes in Jewish and secular subjects.

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December 23, 2024 · 7:30 am

The Thing About My Conversion

by Miles Whitney (Sacramento, CA)

The thing about my conversion was that it was in response to Karen telling me that if we got married, I would have to convert. I had never considered conversion before that and had only a vague awareness that it was even possible. Later Karen clarified that we could do some kind of civil ceremony even if I didn’t convert, but I chose to explore conversion anyway. Obviously I did end up choosing conversion for myself, with quite a bit of joy. But it wasn’t something I originally sought out — it was something that came out of left field but ended up being one of the best decisions I have made. And that was even before my daughter, Bel, died. 

Karen brought up conversion before I proposed. We barely knew each other. I tried to get my head around the idea of conversion. I had an acquaintance that had started the conversion process a few years earlier, but we had lost touch and I had forgotten about it. Of course, I knew about Ivanka Trump, and Karen, who had converted maybe eight years earlier, but the idea that this was something I could do, or anyone could do, was new. I worried about cultural appropriation. At the same time, I felt something like recognition, like I had failed to see something totally obvious that was right in front of me.

I immediately agreed to explore conversion. However, there wasn’t a readily available rabbi or conversion class. This all happened during early COVID. Karen was not affiliated with any congregation at the time, and I lived in a different city. Everything was shut down.

Karen found a rabbi for me. Karen’s father had died a few months into the pandemic (from unrelated causes), and Karen had struggled to find support. Karen had posted something online about their dilemma of how to say the Kaddish. A Bay Area rabbi had offered to help. I remember Karen telling me that the rabbi would be a great person to study with if he was available and willing. Karen insisted that if nothing else I should talk to him, because we would totally hit it off.

I called the rabbi and indeed we hit it off. I told him about my fears of cultural appropriation. He assured me that it was totally fine to convert. He told me a story about how converts are supposed to be treated. He asked me why I thought he opened with that, and I guessed it was because some people might not live up to that ideal. He said I was right. He also told me about a tradition whereby an applicant would ask a rabbi three times when seeking to convert, but he would not hold me to that. He was quite sure I would meet enough obstacles without him throwing up more.

I asked about my Buddhist practice, which I didn’t want to abandon. He assured me that there was no serious conflict, that he himself practiced Zen. We talked about my conversion being in response to Karen’s wishes. I told him I wasn’t sure I would convert. I just didn’t know enough yet. He told me that this was a good position, that no matter how the journey had been initiated, in the end I would have to decide for myself. We would figure out the answer as we went along. I agreed to proceed.    

In the beginning, the rabbi told me to find three things I would have a hard time discarding, and three things I looked forward to gaining. One thing I knew for certain was that I would happily embrace monotheism again, after spending many years following the Christian faith. I had quit that path after too many followers supported Proposition 8. I missed it.

I had not, however, expected to fall in love with Judaism’s magical world of stories, words, and ideas. That is all I had then. I had yet to attend a service or participate in any of the home-based rituals. It was more than enough. My experience was similar to how, in my early twenties, I stumbled into a job at a law firm and found out that the law was exactly how my mind worked. The stories, words, and ideas stole my mind.

I was asked to do writing assignments. I wrote about my relationship with the Divine. The rabbi told me I should polish it up and get it published, that it would be of benefit to the world and to the Jewish people. That sentence made no sense to me. Why would anything I do matter to the Jewish people? I didn’t understand anything yet.

I decided to convert. I sat for the (Zoom) Beit Din. I had sent in my writings earlier, including one about how I chose my Hebrew name, so the rabbis knew something about me. I expressed my fear of not knowing enough, not being Jewish enough. One of the rabbis told me not to belittle my fears, that the sentiment was “so Jewish.” I laughed, delighted. I passed.

I ended up doing the mikveh in the American River, witnessed by Karen and a mutual friend. Even though it was August, the water was so cold that stepping in it made my feet ache. Karen and our friend perched on a large boulder that was surrounded by the freezing water. There was a depression in front of the boulder, where I decided to submerge myself. I waded in, wondering whether the cold could stop my heart. Because I was so slow at learning Hebrew, Karen had to tell me the prayer a few words at a time, which I repeated. I bent my knees and was underwater. I popped back up, and the process was repeated. By the second dip I was numb to the cold. Once again and it was done.

Karen and I had our perfect Jewish wedding two months later. Seven months after that, my daughter Isabel (from a previous relationship) died in her sleep. She was 22. No cause was ever found. Now it was the rituals that saved me. Karen covered mirrors and I did nothing until the rules said I could. Saying Mourner’s Kaddish tethered me to the world when nothing made sense, when my very self was shattered.

I began to write. I wondered if everything was created in six days. If God said everything created was good, was death included? If so, why was death treated as less than, or not as good as, life? I looked for the origin of death in Genesis. I was astounded by what was and was not in the text. Unsure of what I was finding and writing, I shared the piece with a rabbinical student, who saw nothing wrong. I sent the essay out and it was immediately accepted for publication in a Jewish literary journal. I didn’t see that coming. It was the first thing I ever submitted.

I also sought answers to mundane problems in Torah and found them. Karen and I joined a conservative shul. I wrote more essays. I became a Shabbat enthusiast, declaring it a day of “aggressive rest.” I observed new holidays: donuts, fasting, rickety shacks, trees.  But on Bel’s second Yahrzeit, I fell into an awful depression. I felt useless, like everything I had been was dead and all that was left was to wait for my body to follow. Or, in fancy words, I am only here to remember the dead.

I was driving to an AA meeting in the midst of this funk when I was forced to stop because a young woman stepped in front of my car and refused to move. I asked her what she wanted, and she said she needed to call an ambulance. I offered her a ride to the ER instead. She got in the car and asked if we could just talk. She clutched a beer and cried as she told me she was suicidal. She had relapsed a few months prior. She told me about her breakup, and about her happiness during her sobriety. We talked a little more, then I mentioned that I was on my way to a meeting. She looked straight ahead out the windshield and said, “Let’s go!”

I took her to the meeting and although she didn’t stay, the effect on me was profound. It felt like God, through her, was blocking my (downward) path. Like God grabbed my face, looked me in the eye, and shook me. My depression stopped, in part because it felt forbidden. I was convinced there was a command in there, that it was time to do something else. The next week I dreamt that my local rabbi showed me a binder containing three questions about Torah, which I was supposed to answer. I couldn’t read the questions, perhaps because it was a dream, or I didn’t have my readers, or maybe it was in Hebrew.

I don’t know what this means, other than to be open to the new and be willing to say yes. Maybe it means my old life is indeed dead, but a new life lies ahead, which will be significantly Jewish. Maybe I will even do something of benefit to the world and the Jewish people. 

Miles Whitney is a queer, trans, Jewish attorney living in Sacramento, California. Miles started writing creatively after the unexpected death of his daughter, Isabel, in 2022.

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November 18, 2024 · 7:30 am

I Said the Words

by Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

I said the prayer for a very long year
to remember my mother
(as if I could forget)
to honor her
(as if I needed to)
to show my love for her
(as if that was the so official way
as if that could replace the feeling
fading just too quickly from my mind).

I journeyed to the synagogue
one vacant block from where my father worked
and sat with bearded ancient men
who shared a musty smell
with the hall which they inhabited,
who sought responsibility to guide the child
that I was and would forever be.

I listened to the words of the Kaddish
spoken quite precisely in a foreign tongue
a phrase at a time
and then I found myself repeating sounds
that had no meaning and no substance to me,
but it was my job, as I was told
(as if I had a choice).

And so I went, day by day, and I obeyed
and parroted the words
but never had the chance to say
the words that needed to be said,
about the ties we’d had, my mom and I,
about the caring that we knew
and love and strong security
now shattered — and the joy
of helping her whenever she put on
that apron and began to cook
from European scratch.

I said the words that were my duty,
words so alien to me
with men so distant from my needs
but with each word I mispronounced and mumbled
was the childhood-crafted
realization of what I no longer had
but needed very much.

I said the prayer
but wondered in my elemental way
why any God could be so cruel
to cleave a mother from a child
and substitute the words that had no meaning
to my soul.

Herbert Munshine grew up in the Bronx and graduated from C.C.N.Y. with both a B.S. in Education and a Master’s Degree in English. You can find his baseball poetry on Baseball Bard where he has had more than 100 poems published, and where he was recently inducted into that site’s Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife in Great Neck, NY.

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May 13, 2024 · 7:30 am

Sitting in the Land of Limbo

by Anna Stolley Persky (Fairfax, VA)

Today we are burying my friend, my Jewish light, and it is gray and cold and muddy, and we are in the middle of a graveyard, and we are in the middle of a war, and people all over the world are telling us that they hate us, and I believe them.

It is December 2023. We are in the Philadelphia suburbs, where my friend and I grew up together, and where she is now being lowered into a hole in the earth. I am with her brothers and sister and father and friends, along with her three children. Her husband, their father, died of cancer more than ten years ago. 

My friend’s children, the youngest still in high school, are orphans.

There is a war going on more than 5,700 miles from us here, under a tent that barely shields us from the wind and rain. 

Some of my friends who aren’t Jewish are marching, even yelling that Zionists have blood on their hands. 

I look down at my hands. They are cold and tinged pink. I put them in the pockets of my jacket.

We are saying the Mourner’s Kaddish in Hebrew, but in my head, I am hearing Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, Our King,” a prayer that asks God for mercy, forgiveness, and redemption. My friend was a cantor. She led prayers in her lovely, lilting voice at synagogues in Florida before moving back to Philadelphia. She taught me what it means to be Jewish, and now she is dead, and I am standing among the lost and left behind, and I know better to ask why, and yet, still I ask. She was 54, the same age as me. 

My friend taught me that to be Jewish means to ask the questions that can’t be answered or, rather, can be answered in vastly different ways. She taught me that to be Jewish is to live in the land of limbo, the endless thirst in a desert. 

I don’t want her body trapped inside a coffin. I want to open it up and let her fly, but my friend isn’t in there; she is already away, in the somewhere else. Is she with her husband? Is she part of the wind? We debated death, my friend and I, and then we agreed that it probably meant returning to the universe in a squishy way we couldn’t fully explain. Then we laughed and tried again.

Here’s something I would like to ask my friend: Should we ask God for mercy? Why should we pray for redemption? What did she do but live in a way that was more good than bad, where she helped people find comfort in Jewish traditions? What have I done, what have any of us done but try to survive?

Do we need to ask God for forgiveness if we are fighting a war? Each life has value, so is there such a thing as a just war? What if you are attacked first? Does anything justify slaughter and rape? Does anything justify killing children?

These are the questions she would have debated with me – Jew against Jew, not against, not really, just trying to look at a problem from all the different angles. She appreciated nuance, something I fear is disappearing.

It’s time for each of us to take turns with the shovel.

We cover her coffin with bits of the earth, dirt, stones, each of us, three times. The first time we use the back of the shovel to demonstrate our reluctance to say goodbye. Then the other two times, we turn the shovel back over to symbolize our acceptance that she has gone from us.

One: Do you remember that when we first met? We were seven. You wrote poetry and ate Tastykakes in the library even though the rules said no eating in the library. You smirked while you opened the plastic wrapper. I want you to come back and debate with me why those rules, but not all rules, could be broken.

Two: Are we going to be all right? I mean, all of us, the Jews, and me without you? Your son called me on your phone to tell me that you had died, and I already knew because your sister texted me first, but when your son called on your phone, I thought it was you anyway. This shovel thing isn’t working. I see your children. They are looking down, stunned.

Three:  When we were in high school, you would let me lie next to you, and you would play for me “Fire and Rain,” and we ignored the Jesus in the song, but I am still on “I always thought I would see you again” repeat.

My friend was still living when the war started, although she was sick and knew she was dying. She was still living when she told me to turn off the television, that she couldn’t watch anymore because she was so angry, and she was worried that her anger would twist into a blood lust. She was so honest, sometimes, and unafraid of putting to words what the rest of us hold inside and allow to fester. She was also not honest sometimes, which is to say, human and mortal. 

Then she said, turn the television back on, and we talked about all the different emotions we were feeling and how they could exist at the same time, and all of them could be true to us. 

I look at my friend’s children again. They are Israeli American. Their father’s family had to flee Iraq, their home, to Israel or they would have been killed. My friend’s ancestors escaped pogroms. It is a miracle these children are alive, these three beautiful beings.

It is raining harder.

I want to sit with my friend in the land of limbo. I want to sit with my friend who reveled in the gray. 

It is perfect for her, this weather.

Anna Stolley Persky is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at George Mason University. Her essays have been published in Pithead Chapel, Two Hawks Quarterly, and The Washington Post. Her fiction has been published in Mystery Tribune, The Satirist, and Five on the Fifth. 

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December 4, 2023 · 7:30 am

I forgot to light a candle

by Dennis Gura (Santa Monica, CA)

I forgot to light a candle the other day:

It was an uncle’s memorial,

But he was gone before I was,

And the recollections second-hand:

What my father mentioned,

The documents entrusted to me,

The rare, very rare, comments of my grandfather.

I did not know the precise date until

After they too were gone, when

I dug through the papers

And figured out the World War

Two details. They did not mark

The date.

Nor did they light a candle,

And certainly no prayer was uttered.

No kaddish for the boy gone in France.

My grandfather might have

Been bemused, or likely annoyed,

That I would recited the doxology

For his sons, or for him,

For that is an obligation I have

Saddled myself with.

But this year, I neglected

To consult my calendar in

A timely fashion, and the

Day on which I should have

Lit the candle to

Honor the sacrifice of

The too-young uncle

Had already passed.

No candle this year.

Perhaps this scribble will do

To recall the uncle gone

Before I, or my elder sibs,

Arrived, though both of them bear

His name in some fashion. Perhaps

Their lives will make do

For the absent flame.

Dennis Gura is a father, husband, and an engaged and serious Jew who tries to understand a complex and confusing world as best as possible. A native Angeleno, he has been deeply engaged in Jewish thought and experiences his entire life–the ethnic, the ethical, the secular, and the religious.  He was privileged to study at Machon Pardes in 1982-83, and has since bounced around various LA synagogues and Jewish groups.

If you’d like to read more of his work, visit his Substack page, where this poem first appeared (and is reprinted here with permission of the author): https://dennisgura.substack.com

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March 6, 2023 · 6:30 am

Ending Kaddish

by Pam Adelstein (Newton, MA)

Eleven months of showing up and standing up. The days blur together, sometimes feeling short, and other times feeling endless. People tell ME that it feels like I’ve been saying Kaddish forever. I think in response, it has been longer for me than it has been for you.

Countless Kaddishes feel like exposure therapy for public acknowledgment of grief.

I feel vulnerable and exposed each time I rise and hear the Kaddish uttered from my lips, as my voice fills the room.

In the traditional call and response, the kahal overpowers my voice. I know they are listening to me. Me –  one tiny insignificant mourner among centuries of Jewish mourners around the world.

Humbled and grateful, I take comfort in our togetherness. A daily minyan, where I stand with a group of mourners, who implicitly understand, no questions asked. I march blindly forward in their footsteps, often the youngest in the room. This has the effect of making me feel way too young to have lost my dad.

At our evening services the shliach tzibbur reliably inquires, “Is anyone observing a yahrzeit who would like to speak about their loved one?” Each time I stare blankly back, thinking, “Nope, still a poor schlepper.”

Finally, I learned what I have dubbed “the paragraph.” The talmedei talmedehon of the Kaddish D’Rabbanan.

Though I no longer feel nervous trepidation, sometimes while reciting the Kaddish I still feel as if the poetic Aramaic words are rocks in my mouth, projectile phrases from my throat, lyrics from my grieving soul.

The Kaddish words sometimes come out differently with every recitation. Someone jokingly asked if the words rearranged themselves on the page. I shared that reciting an imperfect Kaddish reminds me that my grief is imperfect. Like the Navajo people, who intentionally weave a flaw into their rugs to show that only a Supreme Being can produce perfection.

The end of my daily Mourner’s Kaddish is here. I have ordered my life around this prayer. I have observed the sun and the moon, the snow and the rain, and the day and the night through the skylight of Gann Chapel. Thinking about and searching for my father. Is he out there somewhere, looking in?

It feels as if a cliff’s precipice awaits me. A leap of faith, knowing that the sages thought we mourners would be okay at the eleven-month mark without the daily scaffolding of coming together briefly in community. Without those snippets of conversation before we return to our daily lives outside these walls.I wish those sages could guide me through the next phases of mourning, of integrating further back into regular life, as I ask: what do I do with my grief now?

Pam Adelstein is an active member of her Boston-area minyan. She is married, has two children, and is on the verge of becoming an empty-nester. She enjoys hiking, yoga and kayaking, and works as a family physician at a community health center. Writing is a way for her to express the emotions around her work and personal experiences, connect with others, and be creative. Her writing can be found at Pulse Voices (search Pam Adelstein), at WBUR, Doximity, and STAT.

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February 14, 2022 · 7:56 am

Shevat—the month that makes my soul ache

by Carol J. Wechsler Blatter (Tucson AZ)

Shevat, it’s the month that makes my soul ache, my heart hurt. It’s a cruel month, usually cold and bleak, sometimes damp and dark. Rarely do the rays of sun seep through my windows and lift my spirits. It’s during this month that I light three yahrzeit candles–one candle on 2 Shevat for my mother, one on 9 Shevat for my sister, and one on 13 Shevat for my father.

***
It was on January 16, 1965 that my mother, sister, aunt, uncle, and I were present at the burial of my father, Albert, in the oldest Jewish cemetery in Middlesex County, NJ, Mount Lebanon. It was a frigid, snow-covered Sunday morning in central New Jersey. Rabbi Yakov Hilsenrath (of blessed memory) gave a very brief eulogy. Over my down winter coat he pinned a black ribbon cut to simulate the physical act of death ripping me apart from my father who, from that time forward, would only be in my memory.

I remember how bleak and alone I felt losing my father. I was only twenty-two years of age. I was angry. I felt cheated at not having a father. Even when my father was alive, he worked so much to provide for us that I had very little time with him. He had grown up with minimal emotional support, love, and self-esteem, and as a result he was unable to be supportive and complimentary. He was an expert in delivering put-downs. Yet once he was gone, I imagined that if he had lived longer, things would have been different between us. How could I have fooled myself into believing he would have changed his ways and been more fatherly to me? Yet, despite his flaws, I still miss him. After all, he fathered me and, in his own way, he loved me.

***
It was on January 2, 1986, twenty-one years later, that my husband, my sister, my brother-in-law, my brother-in-law’s mother, and I were present at the burial of my mother, Bertha, in Indianapolis. Rabbi Dennis Sasso spoke about my mother and described her as a powerful, intense, and passionate woman filled with love for her family and her heritage. “You could agree or disagree with Bertha,” said Rabbi Sasso, “but you could never be indifferent to her.” I was forty-three.

Unlike my father, my mother supported, nurtured, and loved me. She was always my cheerleader and made certain that I had every possible opportunity to be successful. It was a shock when she died to find that she was no longer at my side. It was very hard to let her go.  

***

And it was on January 14, 2019 that I lost my sister, my life-long friend, who died unexpectedly of a catastrophic brain hemorrhage. Although we had a minyan prayer service in her memory in our home in Tucson with our rabbi and many congregants, we were unable to attend the service and burial in New York. I never had the opportunity to say goodbye to my sister. I never had the opportunity to put shovelfuls of dirt over her coffin. I never had the opportunity to sit shiva with other family members. This has left an emotional gap in my life and an unfillable hole. There is one thing I do, though. I keep on my bed a tiny green velvet embroidered pillow which she gave me which says, Sisters Are Special.

***
As long as I can remember I have sensed God’s presence, as a supreme being who governs my life in unexplainable and unknowable ways. It’s as if God beams a light leading me to insight so I can glean what had been until that moment unseeable and unforeseeable. I feel that God is — and will always be — my protector.

But is this the same God who allows death? How can I praise God, I ask myself as I recite the mourner’s Kaddish prayer with a broken heart? And I tell myself it’s because I also believe that God is not all-powerful. God cannot prevent death. This is not God’s job. Death is not about blame. Death is what death is. It is my job to accept death.

***
The Kaddish prayer is always said in the presence of ten adults, a minyan, and a community of worshipers. As part of a minyan for eleven months after the death of each of my parents and my sister, I reaffirmed and praised God’s presence in unison with other mourners.

Healing took place slowly.

Day by day.

***

Now I’m seventy-nine years of age. I am acutely aware that my time on earth is limited. I am here only for an extended visit. Some day I know I will die. So I am trying to make each day count. I am trying to be fully present, especially when I arise at all services, on Shabbat, and on holidays, and say my prayer:

I give thanks before you, O God living and eternal, for You have returned within me my soul with compassion; abundant is your faithfulness!

_____

Carol J. Wechsler Blatter is a recently retired psychotherapist in private practice. She has contributed writings to Chaleur Press, Story Circle Network Journal, and One Woman’s Day; stories in Writing it Real anthologies, Mishearing: Miseries, Mysteries, and Misbehaviors, Pleasure Taken In Our Dreams, Small Things, & Conversations,The Jewish Writing Project, and in 101words.org; and poems in Story Circle Network’s Real Women Write, Growing/ Older, and Covenant of the Generations by Women of Reform Judaism She is a wife, mother, and grandmother of her very special granddaughter who already writes her own stories. 

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November 2, 2020 · 7:05 am

Whether I Was Counted Didn’t Matter

by Rita Plush (New York, NY)

I was not a religious woman. I did not keep kosher. I drove and carried on the Sabbath, but when my mother died in 1995 I decided to say Kaddish for her. She had honored the role of motherhood in her quiet and loving way for so many years of my life; it was my turn to honor her. When I told her rabbi I’d decided to take on the responsibility of Kaddish every day for 11 months, he said it wasn’t expected of me. A polite way of saying I wouldn’t be included in the minyan, the ten people required for communal worship—ten male people that is. 

A bar mitzvah boy, still sleeping with a nite-lite? According to ancient rabbinic decree and prevailing diktat in the Conservative movement then, that pisher would be counted; he was up to the task. A 58-year-old female who had raised three children, gone to college and was running a business? Talk to the hand! No matter; I wasn’t there to make noise and change the rules of female inequality in Jewish ritual. I was there to pay tribute to my mother’s passing, a loss so profound, it felt as if my very connection to the universe had been broken. 

Yiskah-dol v’yiska-dosh sh-may ra’bbo begins the ancient Aramaic prayer. 

The words had a power I could not name but when I recited that opening line, I was part of the world again! Part of all Jews who, for centuries past, had shown their respect for their loved ones the way I was respecting my mother. I felt connected to them and to Jews in present time, whoever and wherever they were, remembering their beloveds as I was. I was not alone in my grief. Yet a need began to bloom in me. Reading the Kaddish phonetically was not enough; something was missing. 

Had been missing, every time I held a siddur. When I sat and when I stood during High Holiday services; when I bowed my head and beat my breast, following the prayers and blessings, silently reading in English. I wanted the language of my ancestors on my lips. I wanted to read Hebrew. 

And so I learned, in a classroom with other like-minded adults, part of National Jewish Outreach’s Read Hebrew America program, hieroglyphs in the booklet, square and blocky, rather than actual letters. I tried to commit to memory the significance of the undersized T’s, the dots and dashes under a particular letter—the new world of sound that was Hebrew. It took study and time; it took some sweat as I labored over a service’s opening prayers while the morning minyan was wrapping up the closing Aleinu. But I kept at it and after a few months I was reading along (struggling along, is more like it) feeling the presence of the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebekah and Leah, my matriarch, Malka, now among them. 

Soon after my mourning period was over, my synagogue became egalitarian—sort of, or as my Grandmother used to say, nisht du, nisht ort, not here, not there. To appease the older, more traditional-leaning congregants, women were included in the minyan in the smaller, downstairs chapel, while upstairs in the main sanctuary, it was business as usual. So be it; they built it and I came, called upon to be present for others saying Kaddish, as others had been present for me. Every Tuesday morning, with gratitude and my faltering Hebrew I joined the minyan and helped a mourner honor their loved one. 

In time, my synagogue became fully egalitarian, and it felt good. It felt right to be a fully acknowledged member in good standing of my Jewish community. But whether I was counted downstairs, upstairs, or no-stairs, it didn’t matter. In the tradition of my people I had given tribute to all my mother was to me. And… I learned my alef beis.

Rita Plush is the author of the novels, Lily Steps Out and Feminine Products, and the short story collection, Alterations. She is the book reviewer for Fire Island News, and teaches memoir, Continuing Education, Queensborough Community College. If you’d like to learn more about Rita and her work, visit: https://ritaplush.com

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May 27, 2019 · 6:20 am

As Our Father Neared Death

by Herbert J. Levine (Philadelphia, PA)

As our father neared death, his mind raced
between fantasies and the facts of his life,
his speech like the black box of an airplane that had crashed,
the record of its journey jumbled beyond reconstruction.
My brother and I cared for him, sometimes
feeding, sometimes reading to him
from the Book of Psalms. I led him
beside green pastures and still waters
when he, in a soft voice, as if from far away, blessed me:
May God bless you and keep you. May God shine His Face upon you
until its end. Am I not the brother who wrapped himself in a tallit,
who stood before the congregation on Shabbat and holidays
to lead it in prayer to an improbable God? But all that ritual
razzmatazz fooled my fond old man and me.

After his death, my brother came every Shabbat and holiday
to say Kaddish with our mother.
She said to me every Sunday when I visited her,
“Your father would be so happy
that your brother is saying Kaddish for him.”
Thus my brother received her blessing for the great kindness
he did her, a kindness that only the living can receive.

Herbert J. Levine published his first book of poetry, Words for Blessing the World, at the age of 67. His previous books were scholarly treatments of Yeats and Psalms. To learn more about Herb and his work, visit: https://benyehudapress.com/books/words-blessing-world/

Note: “As Our Father Neared Death” was first published in slightly different form in Words for Blessing the World  (Ben Yehuda Press, 2017). The poem is reprinted here with permission of the author.

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