Mourner's Kaddish

Some of the greatest works of art fill cathedrals around the world, from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to the stained glass of Riverside Church in Manhattan. Our temple in East Meadow, Long Island was a tribute to fiberboard. The walls had wood paneling, and the stage on which the rabbi and cantor stood, as our representatives before god, was covered in green shag carpeting. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the temple staff would open up the folding doors between the sanctuary and the catering hall in the back to accommodate those who only seemed to find God during the holiest of Jewish holidays. In the Judaism I was taught, God was like Santa on Yom Kippur, dividing everyone into those who were naughty and those who were nice, except instead of getting presents, nice Jews get to live on earth for another year.

My best friend, Eileen Shapiro, and I would sit toward the back of the room and watch as they would say the blessing and open up the doors of the cabinet in which they housed the sacred Torah, a special place that received a special name in Hebrew: Aron Hakodesh. They would open up the little doors, and they would close them. They would open them, and they would close them. Sometimes, they would take out the torahs, scrolls that were dressed in velvety robes and adorned with etched silver hats and shoes. They would parade the torahs them around the room, and people would trip over each other to touch them as they went by, like they were rock stars. Eileen and I would point to our mouths and say, “Aron Hakodesh,” and to our nostrils, and say, “Aron Hakodesh,” as if any little cave or orifice was a place that could house a Torah. After the temple elders would march by, I would look down at the way my thighs would spread out on the metal folding chair and then I’d look at Eileen’s, and I’d notice how much fatter mine looked in comparison.

The first year we fasted, we didn’t make it much past lunch before we were dizzy with hunger. The following year, we sat in the backyard with Betty Crocker cookbooks and flipped through the pages, looking at pictures of Hamburger pie and Chicken Cacciatore, hoping it would satiate our hunger. We made it to sundown, but once we were able to eat, I consumed so much food so quickly, I threw up and wound up in bed with a headache.

Fasting used to be the most notable part of Yom Kippur for me. It was a dare, a way of seeing who had more control over me, my mind or my, well, my mind. But as I’ve gotten older, one of the most significant parts of the day is now the part of the Yom Kippur service in which one honors loved ones who are dead, a prayer they call the Mourner’s Kaddish. It’s a very solemn prayer that used to frighten me when I was young. The drone voices of the temple’s elders, who were mostly men, would grumble the words Yisgodol, veh-Yisgodosh, Sheh-may Rah-bah. The words of the prayer are repetitive and are stated flatly, devoid of emotion. I didn’t know what they meant. I just knew people would bow their heads and that they were talking to the dead, and for that moment, the dead might has well have been in the room with us. There’s a scene toward the end of the 1970s movie, The Sentinel, where the gateway to hell is left open, and the ghouls and fiends come out and join us on earth. And so it was with the Mourner’s Kaddish. The dead would come out into the room and sit down in folding chairs next to those who mourned them.

When my father was dying of cancer in 2001, I decided to go to temple on Yom Kippur. I stumbled into one on the Upper West side of Manhattan. I listened to the prayers for about half an hour, and then when they got to the Mourner’s Kaddish, they asked those who hadn’t lost a loved one to leave. I felt like I’d been tossed out. But I knew the following year I would be allowed to stay, and that saddened me more. My father did pass in late 2001, and I’ve been going to temple on Yom Kippur, for about an hour, hoping to catch the part of the service in which they recite the Mourner’s Kaddish. Sometimes I catch it. Other times I’ll wander in as they’re reciting the names of the families who have given money to the temple. This year, I was looking forward to it. I was to meet my father’s sister, Gloria, at her temple near the Lynbrook railroad station on Long Island. I got off the train in my plaid wool suit, black tights and leather boots. It was cool out when I left my house by the Jersey Shore. By the time I got off the train in Lynbrook, it must have been about 70 degrees, and I was beginning to perspire. I followed my Aunt Gloria’s directions, taking a left by the White Castle restaurant, going around the bend, and the temple would be there on the right. I kept walking farther and farther from the train station and couldn’t find the temple. Soon I was at the next major intersection, and I knew I’d gone too far. I turned back around and went back to the train station, but still I couldn’t find the temple. I peered down one of the sidestreets and saw a big beige building that looked ugly enough to be a synagogue, but as I got closer, I saw it was a union hall. I asked a car mechanic standing outside whether there was a temple around there, and he pointed me down the street. As I walked another three blocks farther from the train station, I thought I must be going in the wrong direction. I couldn’t believe it could be that far.

“Nice boots,” a man said, as I rushed by him with my thick, suede, knee-high boots. I couldn’t tell if he liked them or was mocking me for wearing them in 70-degree heat.

When I reached the temple, I ran inside and rushed to the doors of the sanctuary and saw it was empty. There was a group of people sitting outside, and I asked them what happened? Where was everyone? They said they were on break and asked what I was looking for. I said I wanted to say the Mourner’s Kaddish, and they laughed. That was 11 o’clock that morning, they said. I asked if there was another temple, perhaps, that was closer to the train station. They said there was and told me how to get there. As I rushed back out into the heat with my wool outfit, I could feel the sweat running down my back. I raced back to the train station, and as I walked, I began to recite in my head, “Yisgodol, veh-Yisgodosh, Sheh-may Rah-bah.” I owed my father that much. I said as much of it in my head as I could remember, and then I began to repeat the same words over and over again. It was a poor rendition. I finally found the temple and ran in and sat down next to my aunt and my cousin and made it for the Mourner’s Kaddish with plenty of time to spare.

We returned to my aunt’s house and ate challah and honey and smoked whitefish and salmon and herring and pickled beets. After dinner, my cousin said she wanted to interview my aunt about her parents. We moved into the dining room and sat around the table. My cousin perched her camera on the table and began to interview my aunt. We heard some stories I’d heard before, about my grandmother’s sister, Esther, and how she died young of cancer and left behind three boys, who were sent off to relatives in New Jersey. We heard about my grandmother’s other sister, Bertha, and how she had a nervous breakdown. My aunt told us how when they all lived in the same house, Bertha and her husband would fight, and my grandmother would take my aunt for a walk around the block to get her out of the house.

“Did your parents ever fight?” I asked.

“No. They didn't,” my aunt said. She paused. “But they weren’t very affectionate. They were cold people, and I didn’t realize that until I met Gene’s family. But they didn’t fight. My father would raise his voice and me and my mother would shudder.”

“Did he ever hit you?” I asked.

“Never,” she said.

She talked about how she and my grandfather used to sit in his car and listen to baseball games, and she would keep score of the players and the runs on a grid on a pad. “Do you know what just happened then?” he’d ask her. “I know,” she said, and she’d record it on the grid.

She said when he was dying, he was very worried about my father because we had just moved into a bigger house, and my grandfather didn’t think my father could afford it.

“He’s so stubborn,” my grandfather told my aunt Gloria.

“He’s just like you,” my aunt told him.

I thought about my father and how his father was always so critical of him, how he tried his whole life to win his father's approval, which always seemed to evade him. And then I thought of my father and how he was critical of my brother. I remembered one night about four months before my father died, he came flying out of the house looking for my brother. He was on a mission. He needed to tell my brother how wrong he was behaving in his marriage. And he was going to chastise him about it. I mourned for all of them, for the accomplishments they failed to see in each other and for the successes they failed to see in themselves.