A Year of Kaddish

And so I returned to say Kaddish last night, the yahrzeit or anniversary of my mother’s passing a year ago. On the English calendar, her death came August 6, but the date on the Hebrew calendar was the 16th of Av, and not wanting to mix metaphors or symbols, I am choosing to observe the Jewish ritual according to the Jewish calendar, which began at sunset Monday night.

It’s an interesting drama that unfolds over a year of mourning. My obligation, according to Tradition, was to say Kaddish for 11 months, not a year.  Why not a year? The reason goes like this: the soul spends some time purifying itself before entering the World to Come. The maximum time required is 12 months for the most evil person, but to recite Kaddish for the year would imply your parent needed a full 12 months of purification. To avoid that implication, the Sages decreed that one should recite the prayer for only 11 months.

So last month, I finished saying Kaddish, but the year of mourning had not ended, and restrictions remained, like not going to concerts, including the free summer jazz series Monday nights in Hartford’s Bushnell Park. The last one, which I plan to attend, is next Monday. (Anyone want to join us?)

I continued to go to Shabbat services, but my twice-daily attendance at weekday minyans dropped to a morning here, an evening service there, and when I went, I refrained from saying Kaddish.

This morning, after davening Shacharit, Rabbi Adler approached me.

“A lot different saying Kaddish today than the first time?”

“A lot,” I said, nodding. In fact, I had thought about that very question while leading the service. For starters, though I had felt sad heading off to shul last evening – even noticed a hint of a tear in my right eye as I rode down the driveway onto Fern Street, it wasn’t the same kind of sorrow or sense of loss I felt a year ago.

I thought about how fluently I was able to daven today compared to a year ago, and the comfort I got from having that oversized Art Scroll siddur in front of me as shaliach tzibbur or prayer leader. And I thought about some of the other repercussions the year offered, like the question I’m exploring this summer about whether to switch my synagogue membership from the Conservative Beth El, where I’ve been for more than a decade, to the Orthodox Beth David, which has in many ways become my new spiritual home.

My mother, Pearl Felson, was not a very religious woman, not in the Torah-observant sense, at any rate. Indeed, one of the last times we went out to dinner – for my birthday a year ago May in Oakland’s Jack London Square – she ordered a cheeseburger, though she only bought kosher meat at home. Her real value was family and she kvelled over the lives of her three sons, their families, her nieces and nephews and their families, and all the other relatives and friends scattered across the globe. Mostly, she stayed in touch with all of us during long, meandering phone calls. I thought about that too, as I rode my bike home last night. This past year and how we’ve all honored her memory – she would have been proud of us. She’s probably kvelling to all the other departed loved ones up there in the World to Come. Her mother, her father, her brother, her aunts and uncles, her cousins, her friends. She’s no doubt the one with the apron wrapped around her waist, pouring tea around the kitchen table.