column by Lynne

This was in the HT last week.


Thinking about Religion
Kaddish: A prayer to bless

By Lynne Foster Shifriss lshifriss@heraldt.com
July 14, 2007

The Colorado mountains are a good place to reflect on God and life. Lynne Shifriss | Courtesy photo

Let God’s great name be blessed forever and ever...

— from the Kaddish prayer

It’s pretty easy to feel close to God in the mountains of Colorado.

And while on vacation here, I am filled by thoughts that reinforce the meaning of the circle of life:

• A couple of days ago was the yartzeit (anniversary) of my father-in-law’s death.

• Just a few weeks ago I went to a memorial service for a friend — he was only 59 and had been an exuberant dad, a mentor to us when we were all young parents.

• We are staying with an old college friend and his children — his wife, Mary, died six months ago. She and I were kindred spirits since our freshman year in college in 1972.

• Our 20-year-old son sits with his grandmother in the hospital today, where he has taken her so that she can get a needed blood transfusion. Then he will go and play chess with a very elderly friend.

• Yesterday, one of our oldest and dearest friends, at age 57, married a wonderful man in a small beach ceremony in San Diego.

• I have much time to think on this vacation as I knit a blanket to welcome a new baby to the world.

Generations.

Death and life.

Grief and joy.

Mourning and ... going on with life.

That, to me, is the essence of the Kaddish, a prayer that Jews say after the death, and on each anniversary of the death of a loved one.

The Kaddish does not talk about death. Instead, the prayer extols the glory of God and the promise of peace, the goodness of life.

The Kaddish is supposed to be said only during a religious service in which there is a minyan — a group of 10 adult Jews.

Perhaps this is so, I think, because those rabbis of old realized that mourners really need the support of a community (but that’s just my theory, and I’m not a clergyperson).

And yet my husband, daughter and I found ourselves, on the yartzeit of my father-in-law’s death, standing at a 360-degree outlook off Timber Ridge Road, a little above 12,000 feet high in the Colorado Rockies.

There above the treeline, we wore fleece and shivered in the fierce wind, though we had been in shorts and T-shirts down in Estes Park.

We were surrounded by the alpine tundra — tiny blue-purple, yellow and white flowers pushed through the hardy grasses and scattered rocks, a reminder to me that beauty exists even in the harshest conditions.

And that life’s goodness comes back, even through the most painful of memories.

Generations.

Death and life.

Grief and joy.

Mourning and ... going on with life.

I took a copy of the Kaddish prayer from my purse and there, on top of the mountain, we three recited the words in memory of my father-in-law, praising God, praising life.

It was a very holy place.