Mourner

Hold still.

In a communal setting, when we recite the Mourner's Kaddish, the Kaddish Yatom, usually our mourners rise.

So here, we're going to rise with our body and our breath, to raise up a little bit taller, to find a little more room in our bodies for that breath.

This prayer, though associated with death, has no mention of it.

Mm-hmm.

But what I couldn't do was say Mourner's Cottage.

I could only cry.

Why? I

And alone and afraid, not with his company, not with his people.

And thinking of myself during this time and how showing up in a Zoom space with other mourners and Shep listening to your voice.

Saying Mourner's Kaddish every single morning made me braver and braver and helped me through the pain and trusting even through the fear, just like David had to do.

So powerful.

Our Minach in Ashkenaz is to have a Kaddish after Aleinu.

That Kaddish was not invented for the mourners.

Kaddish after Elenu, even though it says in the Siddur and Mourners, Kaddish, because the custom nowadays is for mourners to say it.

But the original invention is to finish off with a Kaddish.

And therefore you should say that Kaddish too, regardless whether you have mourners or not.

In the case of Jewish law, w- we have a whole set of strictures that, that stop it f- us from having a normal life for at least 11 months.

In the case of a parent, we have to say, uh, the Mourner's Kaddish for our parents.

Mm-hmm.

And so we're forced, in Jewish, in the case of Jewish law, to not revert to, to the-

We preserve their stories and pass them on.

And we recite the Mourner's Kaddish.

People think that Kaddish is a prayer for the dead, but Kaddish does not even mention death or the afterlife.

It does not tell us what happens to the people we have lost, and maybe there is wisdom in that.

preserve their stories and pass them on.

And we recite the Mourner's Kaddish.

People think that Kaddish is a prayer for the dead, but Kaddish does not even mention death or the afterlife.

It does not tell us what happens to the people we have lost.

And then there's the following 10 months.

So for 11 months following the passing, and this is something that even though I'm not like a strictly observant Jew, I made it my practice to do, and that is to get to synagogue at least once, many people do it twice a day, to recite this prayer called the Kaddish, the Mourner's Kaddish.

And if you were to ask me for a million dollars, what does it mean? What does it do? I don't know.

I don't have all the answers.

Yeah.

And now, actually, what one does every year on the anniversary, it's actually the Hebrew anniversary, not the, not the secular anniversary of your loved one's passing, you light a 24-hour memorial candle, and you go to those same services.

You're only obligated to go on that day, and you say that Mourner's Kaddish, that prayer.

And it's funny that we're talking now because the anniversary of my father's death is, the Hebrew date is coming up this Wednesday.

I am going to synagogue to celebrate Lenny Berkowitz's second bar mitzvah, and you will not hear one word from me.

Mourner's Kaddish was all I said the entire service.

And yet Mourner's Kaddish is a celebration of life.

It's about praising God, right? How do we praise God?

So God was there going, I nailed you anyway.

So here, Martin Prechtel, another book that I read, says that praise is a way we can express grief out loud.

And so that is how I was able to get myself to recite Mourner's Kaddish.

And I also really placed myself within a larger context.