What is the Kaddish Really About?

This year on Yom Kippur I was invited to introduce Yizkor, the part of the service in which we turn our attention to our ancestors who have died and remember them with love. For many people Yizkor is one of the emotional highlights of this most sacred of days.  We say prayers for individual ancestors, for the martyrs of our people and together we recite Kaddish.

Since I have been saying Kaddish daily since my father died in June, I wanted to share a few words about my experience in doing so.  What a brilliant practice our tradition offers us!  In the past I used to contemplate the time when I would be called upon to say Kaddish daily and I imagined it would feel burdensome.  But it is the opposite.  I actually look forward to it, even when it means getting up in the dark.  It gives me a framework every day to think about my dad, to feel into my grief, and to be held by community. 

And the words of the Kaddish.  I find that their power goes way beyond the familiar rhythm and the associations.  The beginning of the Kaddish – yitgadal veyitkadash - is an attempt to say what is unsayable.  Death is a bewildering mystery.  How can it be that our loved one was here and vital one moment and then just gone the next?  How do we begin to talk about it?  How much the more so, is God a mystery.  How do we wrap our minds around the Source of life and death, that we cannot see or name or describe?  We can’t – and yet we have to try. 

So the first three paragraphs of the Kaddish give us lists and lists of words:  may the Divine Name be blessed and praised and elevated and exalted and magnified.  The words are not just a thesaurus entry of synonyms.  Each word of praise is an attempt to find another way to get at what we know is a futile effort.  The prayer itself says as much:  we are aiming le’eilah - beyond all the blessings, songs, praises and words of comfort to say what cannot be said. 

But the Kaddish is not an exercise in futility.  The last two paragraphs offer the promise that abundant peace and life might descend upon us.  It is a great itoruta delatata, or awakening from below; when we rouse ourselves to praise, knowing full well that our words are inadequate, then the shefa, the flow of Divine blessings, descends to meet us, strengthening us, comforting us, renewing us.  It is akin to the beautiful story from these High Holy Days in which God says to us, “Come as far as you can towards Me, and then I will run to embrace you.”

May it indeed be so.  As we recite the ancient words to try to express the ultimate mysteries, may we be met with shlama rabbah min shamaya vechayim – great wholeness, peace and life, for us, for all Israel and all who dwell in this world.