Quick Kaddish in a Dreadful Summer

For Congregation Ner Shalom, August 15, 2014

A couple weeks ago I wrote an essay in my blog about going through my mother's basement back in Niles, Illinois, and the stories and sadness that were emerging for me from those long sealed, dusty boxes. I shared the essay with a new friend, a rabbi friend, that I've only known for a couple months. He emailed me back and said, "I didn't realize you were an avel.  I wish you constant comfort and strength through this year of mourning."

Those words hit me hard. Avel. The Hebrew meaning "a mourner." A word that signifies a special status that one maintains for a full year following the death of a next of kin. I felt myself choking up, feeling "seen" in a way that I hadn't been. And feeling "seen" made me feel the loss all over again. I wasn't used to being visible as a mourner. After all, in our culture, we don't have good words for people who are in mourning. If you lose a spouse, you're a widow or widower, and you stay that way. And while in Hebrew a yatom, an orphan, can be of any age (I choked up similarly a few months ago when a friend called me yatom sheli - my orphan), in English the word "orphan" applies to a child, and pretty much a child only. An adult who loses parents and says aloud, "I'm an orphan" is judged as self-pitying or overly theatrical. An orphan child who grows up will, at some point, gently morph from saying "I am an orphan" to "I was an orphan."

In our culture, "mourner" is an ephemeral state, situationally dictated. A mourner is someone at a funeral. Mourners can even be hired for the day. And then, after that funeral, you have no status. And you become invisible. But in Hebrew, avel is an attribute that sticks beyond that difficult day. It allows you, even requires you, to be seen. This designation reminds those around you to judge your actions and your moods not in a vacuum, but against the backdrop of loss. Not just at some moment where you are publicly singled out as a mourner. But in your day-to-day life, when you're running errands with jaw-clenched stoicism, or when you're having a private moment of crazy grief that can take any surprising form, even screaming obscenities at inanimate objects. For instance last night, driving home, trying to send a text message in a compliant and safely hands-free manner:

Me:	Siri, send a text to Anne and Suegee.
Siri:	Do you mean Anna Bell Kaufman or Anna Mollow?
Me:	Neither.
Siri:	I'm sorry. I don't understand what you mean by "neither." Do you mean Anna Belle Kaufman or Anna Mollow?
Me:	Neither one.
Siri:	I'm sorry. I don't understand what you mean by "neither one." Do you mean Anna Belle Kaufman or Anna Mollow?
Me:	I mean somebody else entirely.
Siri:	I'm sorry. I don't understand what you mean by "somebody else entirely." Anna Belle Kaufman or  --

At which point, crazy with rage, I hurled an uncharacteristically graphic expletive at Siri. To which she replied, "I'm sorry. I don't understand what you mean by," and then managed to repeat the profanity with absolute precision.

Anyway, the point is that being in grief means that sometimes you're just bonkers. And when your loss, your avelut, is invisible to others, no one knows or remembers why you keep sliding off the deep end.

But Jewish tradition does in fact encourage us to to be visible as mourners, to show up publicly as avelim. The custom is, as we know, for mourners to recite the Kaddish prayer, and to do so, when possible, publicly, in a minyan, a community of at least ten people. As I remind us whenever we're together, the words of Kaddish, in the Aramaic that was once our everyday tongue, are words of praise. In the face of loss, sometimes because of loss, we are called to express wonder; we acknowledge that the workings of this Creation are bigger, deeper, higher than we can possibly imagine or understand. But now that Aramaic is more remote for us even than Hebrew, it is not the lofty sentiment that speaks to us. Rather it is the heartbeat-like rhythm of this prayer - yitbabam v'yitbabam v'yitbabam - that hits us most profoundly, and that we associate not with death itself, but with the Jewish experience of death. I just finished reading Philip Roth's The Human Stain, and this little insight about Kaddish jumped out at me:

Most people in America, including myself . . . don’t know what these words mean, but nearly everyone recognizes the sobering message they bring: a Jew is dead. Another Jew is dead. As though death were not a consequence of life but a consequence of having been a Jew.

The traditional way of reciting the Mourners' Kaddish, in which only the avelim, the mourners, rise, was another way to make sure that you, the mourner, were seen. And in that moment of being seen, you would inevitably see your own altered state. The modern progressive custom of the whole room standing, either in support of the mourners or in the name of the 6 million, is beautiful also and well intentioned. But it inadvertently neutralizes loss and renders individual grief invisible. Standing as a mourner among a bunch of non-mourners has the perverse effect of making me, at least, feel more alone than I felt starting out.

That said, I do think there are times in which we are all in fact, and not just symbolically, avelim together. And I think right now is one of those moments. There is a pervading mood of loss and desolation that everyone I know has been experiencing for many weeks now, and that has only been deepening with each new turn of events. We're all feeling Robin Williams' loss this week with a surprising keenness. Because we were already primed for it by the grief we feel about the war in Israel and Gaza and all the senseless deaths there. But of course that grief itself was an explosive extension of the grief we already felt about three murdered Yeshivah bochurs and one cruelly killed Palestinian boy. And those shocking acts came on the heels of or intertwined with other things: the downing of a passenger plane over Ukraine; the still inconceivable kidnapping of some 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria. And even grief about ISIS overrunning far-away Iraq, which brought with it the death of many members of ethnic minorities there, and the death of any lingering hope we might have had that despite our bungling invasion of that country we might somehow have left it better than it had been.

It's been a season of tremendous grief. It courses through all of us. What we are feeling this summer is not polite sympathy, such as we expect from those who obligingly stand to say Kaddish alongside the mourners. But real personal grief. We feel it and we act on it without naming it. Not just Jews. The country. The world for all I know. We feel it, our children feel it through us. Our pets probably feel it. Our tempers are short, our misunderstandings are frequent, our ability to find the right words eludes us.

This is because we are impaired. Impaired by grief. Traumatized might or might not be overstatement, but impaired is not. We are impaired like any avel is impaired. We can't always trust our reactions, we can't always trust our better selves. We don't know when we might start screaming at Siri.

But maybe there is some comfort available. This is the season for it, after all. After Tisha B'Av, after our holiday marking the destruction of the holy Temple, where the ruined Jerusalem is described as a widow; after this holiday of desolation comes a season of comfort, of slow, step-by-step emergence from our broken state, culminating with the last blast of the shofar at the ne'ilah service at the end of Yom Kippur, when we are, once again, we hope, whole. During this time in between, our tradition hands us weekly haftarah portions of comfort.

This week's haftarah, from Isaiah, offers repeated and insistent declarations that we are not forgotten, that we are engraved on God's hands like a divine tattoo, that our children carried off to captivity are bound to return, that our desolate city will once again be alive and bustling.

These prophecies might have been comforting to our conquered and exiled ancestors. But we are cynical moderns. We know that on the global scale there are rhythms of loss and regeneration. We know that destroyed cities fill up again. But we also know they don't fill up with the people who were lost in the conquest. The hope offered by Isaiah is pretty, but pretty hard to accept.

Still, Isaiah has some advice that might speak to us. He says:

Look to the rock you were hewn from,
To the quarry you were dug from.
Look back to Abraham your father
And to Sarah who brought you forth.
(Isaiah 51:1-2)

And there is something here. Which is, when you are without landmarks, and it feels like there is nothing to steer by, look back to your roots. When the path ahead is dim or unimaginable, turn around and look back at the path where you came from. If nothing else, it will be familiar. Re-orient yourself with what you know. When you see yourself plowing ahead in a panic, stop. Breathe. Inhale some of the good stuff at your source. Is there guidance there? How to handle loss? How to mourn?

Yes, there is. Our rock, that Jewish rock that we were hewn from, gives us some guidance. It says there is a name to this experience and if you name it then you can see it and you can be seen. Avel. That is the name. You are a mourner. We are all mourners. And seeing each other that way, seeing ourselves that way in these hard times, allows us to give each other some extra space. It allows us to give ourselves some extra space. To look at others with compassion, to look at ourselves with compassion. To care for ourselves the way we'd care for a dear friend who has suffered a loss. What might we say to our bereaved selves? Take time to breathe. Eat ice cream. Take a walk. If we are still going to have something to say or something to do to make this world better, we need to be careful and cared for so we can play our part and play it well. So, avel, take some special care of yourself.

And, one other piece of guidance. That quarry, that Jewish quarry we were dug from, that old tradition that seems to go back to Sarah herself, suggests that when we are in mourning, we say Kaddish. When we feel the pain of loss - the death of loved ones or a respected icon or innocent people far away or even the death of a long cherished hope or belief - we honor that loss with a Kaddish.

So in this summer of grief, say Kaddish. Not a symbolic Kaddish but a real one. Even if you don't know what the words mean. Even if you don't know the words at all. Think how this Creation is bigger than all of us. And notice that through all this loss, you are not gone yet. You are still here and that is your heart that is beating and beating.

Yitbabam. V'yitbabam. V'yitbabam. V'yitbabam.




Thank you to Ellen Atzilah Solot for pushing the point this week that it's not just me.

From the Valley of the Shadow of Death

On Leadership, Gentile In-Laws & Recovery from Loss
For Congregation Ner Shalom ~ January 17, 2014

A shadowed road. Hampstead, London. Photo: IEK

It's good to be home I think. Although I am suffering from performance anxiety tonight, wondering how to even form words at this moment. Because I am freshly back from shiva, having dusted and vacuumed and locking the door behind me on the house I grew up in, a house only ever lived in by Kellers, standing now without occupant for the first time since 1958. A house that, like me, has undergone a great loss but doesn't yet feel that way.

After the cascade of events of these past 8 weeks, I ought to have something of value to say, or so I suppose people to think. But my head is aswim, and it's not clear to me that I have gained insight. I expect that insight, if it arrives at all, will come only in the long haul.

And besides anxiety about content, I have anxiety about topic. Because I have already delivered two drashot and a eulogy about my mother. Who really wants to hear more? Her death is painful  to me, but it doesn't objectively constitute tragedy. She lived a long life full of love, including the love of many people here. She affected people for the good. She died at a reasonably ripe age, even if her youthfulness made it seem oddly premature. No, not tragic. Whereas our community here and my own circle of friends have in fact seen tragic deaths in the past weeks. People dying young, leaving behind spouses, children and parents too. Deaths happening in an order that they should not happen; in a way that I suspect is not strictly necessary in the divine scheme of things, unless it's to teach some lesson about noticing the preciousness of life. But if so, it's an awfully high pricetag for mindfulness.

So instead, I imagine, what I should do is get on with business. The sermon business. And do what is done universally in the Jewish world when at a loss and talk about this week's Torah portion. And it's a good one, culminating in the receiving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai.

But it begins with a visit to Moshe by his father-in-law, Yitro, the High Priest of Midyan. Yitro tracks down Moshe and the Children of Israel in the wilderness, where they have just escaped the slavery of Egypt. Yitro praises God by name, a name and worship which some scholars speculate we got from the Midyanites to begin with. Yitro offers gratitude for God's benevolence. And then there follows much hugging, feasting and weeping.

Then the next day dawns and, surprise, it turns out to be "Take Your Father-in-Law to Work" Day. Yitro watches as Moshe spends every waking hour sitting and adjudicating the disputes of the Israelites, and there are many, considering that they are all displaced and disorganized and facing unprecedented difficulties. Moshe sits from dawn till dark and Yitro, his father-in-law, is appalled. He appeals to Moshe, explaining that this locating of leadership within a single individual is not sustainable. Moshe seems to know this but doesn't know how to break the cycle. Yitro presents him with a new system in which there are judges over the tens and appellate judges over the hundreds and then the thousands, with Moshe as the court of last resort, never again to listen to a small claims matter.

Yitro's idea was one that perhaps Moshe could hear because it came from outside. It was new,  not an inherited idea. It didn't come from Moshe's parents or his priestly brother or prophetic sister. It came from his father-in-law. His non-Jewish father-in-law. And perhaps that's the function of the gentile in-law in the Hebrew mythos. They are a source of newness, of freshness. Yitro, like the famed Moabite daughter-in-law, Ruth, is not of the Abraham-Isaac-Jacob line. Instead, Yitro and Ruth represent the new idea. And they are beloved - their contributions lead to greatness. Yitro's advice to Moshe immediately precedes the moment of revelation at Sinai; it seems to ignite our people's ability to give (or receive) a system of law, that very Torah that has formed our identity and worldview for millennia. And Ruth, for her part, is depicted as the great-grandmother of King David and is, according to tradition, to be the ancestor of the Messiah. Naomi's gentle, gentile daughter-in-law, with her unexpected fount of kindness, becomes our people's source of future redemption.

In any event, Yitro's teaching to Moshe is about the sharing of leadership. And that, I can guarantee you, is a hot topic on the world's bimahs tonight. And, after all, it's New Member Shabbat here. How could anyone resist making a pitch for new leadership? Because as you might perceive, this community is growing - we have twice as many households as we did five years ago. But our leadership has not doubled. Instead, we largely see the same small group struggling to keep up.

And there are so many things we could be doing! Not just services. Not just classes or religious events. We could be streaming. We could be making a CD of our music. We could be visiting sick community members, fitted with songs and casseroles. We could be doing nice, easy stuff - bike rides or bagel brunches or bowling nights. Chances to just hang out as Jews, or mostly Jews, together.

So let me tell you about how this conversation then goes at our Kavanah Committee, which is our spiritual life planning committee. It is this synagogue's most active and successful committee, because it meets monthly over breakfast, and breakfast makes all the difference. So at the table someone has or relates an idea for something we can do. Something brilliant; and sometimes super easy. Something we really think people would respond to. Then the question arises who can put this together? And we all look at each other, knowing that everyone at the table is spread too thin with their Ner Shalom leadership commitments. Most at the table are already on the Board or on the bimah.

So up comes the idea of calling the membership and asking who would be willing to take the lead on this idea. After all, we have "new member forms" for everyone - we know your interests and skills. Plus everyone knows when they join, that this community will need a little of their time. So we all smile at the certainty and relief that just the right person (or almost the right person) exists in our midst already. Then someone asks, "Who can make the calls to find someone?" And we all stare at each other, knowing we're all spread too thin to sit and make those calls. The panic slowly rises. A clock somewhere in the restaurant begins to tick loudly, until someone says, "This is why we need a Volunteer Coordinator. To make these kinds of calls." And again we're elated as we all agree that somewhere at Ner Shalom is a Volunteer Coordinator waiting to be plucked like ripe fruit from the tree. Then someone asks who can make the calls to recruit a Volunteer Coordinator. And we stare at each other some more, keenly aware of the spiral of self-pity now in motion, our tears dripping into the remnants of our French toast. Until the Kavanah meeting begins to look like Moshe's reunion with his father-in-law, characterized by hugging, feasting and weeping too.

So on this week of the Yitro visit, this week of the breath of fresh air that says, "Others can lead too," how can I not make a pitch, and say, "Please, share the leadership here with us?" Don't stand on ceremony. Don't wait to be called, because we might just still be stuck at a breakfast table trying to figure out who, if anyone, has time to pick up the phone. Just step up. We need you. Newcomers and old-timers alike. Not hard labor. Just gentle leadership. A single event. A single project. A single idea. Honor us with your wisdom and your sparkling skills. And if you notice it being hard for us to accept your help, forgive us and gently remind us of this night and of Moshe.

So there. A pitch for your leadership was just the right thing to do tonight. Both legitimate and timely. And it got me out of my sermon-writing bind. So that I wouldn't really have to report back on the way that my life is now different, and not different at the same time.

Because it is different and not-different. Surreal. As if I accidentally got sucked into an alternate universe, where everything is the same but my mother does not exist.

You know, over my life I've had thousands of opportunities to recite Psalm 23, the calming psalm, The Lord is My Shepherd, that one. Still waters, green pastures. I recite it almost daily, and I continued to do so at each shiva minyan at my mother's house. But I think I am now understanding in a way I never have, the bit about walking through Gey Tzalmavet, the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Gam ki elech b'Gey Tzalmavet lo ira ra. "Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil," says the psalm. I used to think this passage was about the fear of dying or the fear of death. When I'm afraid for my life, God is with me. That's what I was sure the psalmist was aiming for.

But now I'm no longer certain. Because it is now, after my mother's death, not in anticipation of it, that I feel like I am walking in Gey Tzalmavet. I am shadowed by death. Death's shadow obscures the road ahead. It is not an evil road that I'm on. Just a shadowed one. And a strange one, because it makes the routine things seem out of place. If I sent a postcard from Gey Tzalmavet, it would say something like, "Everything here is just like at home, but the people are so perky."

Tzalmavet, the odd Hebrew compound word that means "shadow of death" could also reasonably be voweled and read as tzalmut - and it would then mean something more like "self-image" or "identity". From the root tzelem, that we use when we say that we are made in God's image. Walking the path, after losing parents, as many people in this room know, is a challenge of tzalmut, of identity. Who am I now? What does it mean for me to be me, now that none of being me can be about pleasing my mother or rebelling against her for that matter? Who am I now that I am on the front edge of the generations? Who will I become? How will I change? When I look at my reflection in the mirror, will I see more of her now, or less?

Gam ki elech b'Gey Tzalmut, lo ira ra. But as I walk through the valley of this precarious new identity, I will not fear. Because it is not an evil road. Just a shadowed one, hard to see around the next bend.

So that's the report. When people ask, "How are you," I've begun to simply say, "The jury's out." I'm sad, I'm bewildered, I'm busy. But, lo ira ra. I'm not afraid.

Parashat Korach: In the Face of Unfairness

Thinking about the loss of Stephen Norwick.

This year, for this community, our very hardest Torah portion arrives during what has turned out to be our very hardest week. The portion and the week both reek of unfairness.

In Parashat Korach, a Levite not of the priestly caste challenges Moses (and, by extension, at least according to the text, God) about why direct access to the divine should be restricted to the priests, or  kohanim. Aren't all the people holy, Korach asks. Moses scolds Korach soundly and sets up a test for him for the following day. And at the moment of the test, the earth opens up, like a mouth, and swallows the challenger, his followers and their families. The remaining protesters are consumed in fire. This, for questioning the order of things.

We moderns - believers in equality and lovers of a just cause - are shocked at this treatment. This is Tiananmen Square - a massacre of those who dare speak out. We can't help but identify with Korach and his followers because we too live in an unfair world. A world where God's law, or Nature's law, stands behind what seem to be some of the most incomprehensible of inequities.

Certainly members of our community felt that way this week at the untimely death of a righteous man: Steve Norwick, a retired professor of Environmental Studies at Sonoma State University, a promoter of getting outdoors, learning your environment, reducing your carbon footprint, taking the bike instead of the car. Steve, on his bike, hit twelve days ago by a car that veered into the bike lane because the driver was drunk or because he had a stroke or - there but for the grace of God goes any of us - because he was momentarily distracted by any of a million thoughts or gadgets.

In any event, something very unfair happened. But of course, what does fair mean? It is in the nature of Nature to be unfair. Life unfolds in this Creation in a way that necessarily pits needs and forces against each other. The Psalm says, "Every living thing declares God's praise." I'd like to believe this to be so, and it is observably so if we conceive of the very desire to live as a song of praise. Because every living thing wants to live. Every mammal and every plant. Every bacteria and virus too. And so life in all its glory unfolds in finite chunks, unevenly distributed. Old age takes one person at 100 and disease takes another at 40. As soon as Creation began Creationing, as soon as the laws of physics and chemistry and biology were set in motion, the stage was set. There would be constant blossoming and constant loss, and to any creature that could separate itself enough from the process to develop a sense of self-awareness (and justice), it would feel horribly unfair.

As Creation's most recent and prolific inventors, we humans have added so many new moving parts to the machinery of Creation. And as any engineer can tell you, the more moving parts, the more things can and will go wrong. We mine and we smelt and we make fire and machines. We dig and dam and hurtle through the air at unnatural speeds. The unfairness of nature becomes magnified, hitting faster and harder and in ever more dramatic ways. Under the right circumstances, even our briefest moments of distraction can now kill.

The unfairness of this world is as old as life itself. One would have to be a fool not to cry out in protest, like Korach, saying, "Are we not all holy? Is God not resident among and within all of us? Don't we deserve better than this?"

No wonder Korach and his people were swallowed up by the earth. Because there is no answer to the cry of "foul" delivered up to God or to the Universe. How can the response of "that's just the way things are" not cause one to sink into a pit of darkness and despair? This is a natural consequence, not an unnatural - or supernatural - one.

The story of Korach, though, has one more twist. After Korach and his people are swallowed by the abyss, the entire Israelite community, now united, speaks up in shock and protest. They are not scared off. They defy authority and resist their fear of the dark and deep and they call out against injustice. And they suffer for it too; a plague takes many of them. But this time Aaron the High Priest defends them against God. There is no storybook ending here. Nonetheless, mostly they survive. They survive to keep going and struggle another day with their lot. That is the meaning of "Israel" itself - those who struggle with God. Sometimes the struggle casts you into a pit, and other times, if you are fearless or reckless or stubborn or lucky enough, you survive.

There is no good answer, no satisfying answer, to the operation of this Universe. With one hand it offers us delights beyond measure - love, beauty, music, dreams, language, poetry, sex, belonging, wondering, discovering. And with its other hand it exacts such terrible payment. Railing against it lands us in a pit of darkness. But those who rail against it anyway are right. We are all holy. We all deserve.

So perhaps the best we can do is to know this Universe. Even when we don't like it. Even when it hurts. To embrace the beauty with whole hearts, even as we maintain our disapproval of life's unfairnesses. As poet Edna St. Vincent Millay says of the ultimate unfairness of death itself:

     Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
     Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
     Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
     I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Let us treasure the memory of a righteous man. Let us appreciate all that grows in our world because he lived. Let us carry on his legacy as we should have been doing anyway. But as for his death, we are not required to approve. And we need not be resigned.