Wednesday the Rabbi Said Kaddish

Growing up, all I knew about the Kaddish was that it was recited by children whose parents were dead, thus I was absolutely forbidden from saying it.  An important tenet of folk religion --otherwise known as superstition-- is that a child who recites Kaddish tempts the Angel of Death to take his or her parents from this earth.  Traveling the country and teaching, I have found this tradition to be universally known and observed by Jews.

During my second year in rabbinical school I studied the history of the Kaddish and its role in Jewish liturgy.  I was already aware that the words of the prayer had nothing to do with death, and that the person leading the recitation was in fact heaping praise upon God.  But I was surprised to learn that the origin of the Kaddish was not as a mourner's prayer at all.  In its ancient formulation, as the Rabbi's Kaddish or Kaddish d'Rabbanan, it was recited upon the conclusion of Torah study. The custom of mourners saying Kaddish arose centuries later.

It was in Rabbi Joel Roth's classroom that I abandoned my attachment to superstitions about not saying the Kaddish and allowed the prayer to assert its primacy in my daily life. Like his colleagues in the Talmud & Rabbinics department, Rabbi Roth followed a pedagogic approach to the text that included calling upon the students to read, translate and explain passages without warning. This somewhat intimidating practice ensured that no student would attend class unprepared.  Every class period was effectively a pop quiz, at least for the students called upon to read that day.  It was also an opportunity for individual students to demonstrate their progress, which Rabbi Roth both encouraged and rewarded.  

Toward the end of every 90-minute class, before we closed our volumes of Talmud, Rabbi Roth would take a laminated sheet from his desk and hand it to the student who "stood out" that day from among the group.  Then we all stood together to recite the Rabbi's Kaddish. When this privilege, an invitation to lead the prayer, was bestowed upon me for the first time that semester, my heart rejoiced.  I felt my praises of God's name rise up to join the chorus of angels in heaven.  I still remember how I felt that morning, nearly half a lifetime ago. 

These days, I attend a weekly Torah study at my doctor's office. It is comprised of adult learners who are professionals in other fields. As a rabbi and the assigned facilitator, I am often the only one present who has prepared the text prior to class.  Usually other members of the group volunteer to read aloud from the text, ask questions about the translations and commentaries, and readily offer their own interpretations of the material.  At a well-attended session, six to eight friends sit around a conference table, enjoying coffee and snacks with Torah study and conversation.  This past Wednesday, however, our host spent half the class moving chairs from every exam room into the break room.  At the end of the hour I realized that we had a minyan – the quorum needed to say the Rabbi’s Kaddish.  We quickly ascertained which direction was east, and I scrolled through the prayer book on my iPhone to find the words, fondly recalling Rabbi Roth’s laminated sheet.  My heart sang as the chorus of students stood with me to praise God's name. 

Smoke & Mirrors

Ten is one of those mystical numbers in Judaism. Its special significance is introduced in biblical literature, and the rabbis of the 1^st century codify ten as the number which represents critical mass in a Jewish community.  A Jew can pray alone, anywhere, but he or she is required to find nine others with whom to recite the prayers designated as most important.  Ten is called a minyan, quorum, and sometimes nine Jews gathered for prayers will pause in the service to wait until the 10^th arrives.

Sometimes it feels like there are only ten Jews in the entire world, and the rest of us are a magician’s stunt, an illusion produced using smoke and mirrors.  I feel this most keenly when I play the game that Jews initiate upon meeting each other for the first time: Jewish Geography.  It is similar to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only a much older and more beloved version, and it goes something like this:

Jew #1: You’re from [name of town in New Jersey]? Do you know [name of random Jew from that town, with a common Jewish name, such as Cohen or Levine]?

Jew #2: Of course! He is a few years older than I am, but I grew up with [name of Cohen’s younger sister or cousin].

In Jewish Geography, it’s usually fewer than six degrees of separation, too.  We are a small clan, and just a few generations ago it was not uncommon for distant cousins to marry each other for the sake of endogamy.

So I should not have been at all surprised when I met a fellow Jew for the first time a few weeks ago and he asked me: “Did you go to JTS?”  For a fleeting moment, I wondered if he was curious about my rabbinic training or checking my credentials, as I will be reviewing his book for a journal next month.  Then I realized, from his follow-up question, that he was playing the game:

Tom: Do you know [name of rabbi who also attended JTS]?

Me: Of course! He was a year behind me in school, but I think he is a few years older than I am.  We work together at camp and our sons are going to be bunkmates this summer. I’m going to be visiting him in [name of town in Florida] in January.  How do you know him?

Tom: He was my roommate in college.

Ten Jews.  Smoke.  Mirrors.

I had the feeling that if we’d played Jewish Geography a few minutes more, we would have discovered a common ancestor.

As the evening progressed, we discussed mutual interests and affiliations, and chatted about his book, the publishing industry, politics-- the usual agenda of people getting acquainted.

Leaving Starbucks and saying goodbye to my new friend, I understood that we are actually old friends, possibly mishpochah (family), in the sense that we are part of the quorum of ten Jews who, wherever we gather, comprise a community.