Book Description
Everything struck hard. The door slamming behind me in
the black car. The shovel stabbing the mound of soil. The
wooden box hitting the floor of the pit. I stood and I
swayed and I said what I was told to say. I was presented
with the words that justify the judgment, and I justified
the judgment. "He is the Rock, His work is perfect,
for all His ways are judgment ." I was presented
with the words of the kaddish, the long one for the
funeral, the one about the world that will be made new,
the one that I had never said before, and I uttered it.
"Magnified and sanctified may His great Name be . .
." "Magnified and sanctified . . ."
Sounds, not words. Words that were nothing but sounds.
The words spilled into the pit and smashed upon my
father's coffin. I watched the words disperse across the
surface of the wood like the clods of dirt that were
falling upon it. I saw them there, the shattering words.
I saw the letters and their shades. Finally they vanished
into the earth. They were buried with him. Justify the
judgment, but judge the judgment, too. Bring the judgment
to judgment!Out of tears, thoughts.
So begins this extraordinary spiritual journal--a
record of the inner life of one of America's most
brilliant intellectuals during a year of mourning. When
Leon Wieseltier's father died in March 1996, he began to
observe the rituals of the traditional year of mourning,
going daily to the synagogue to recite the kaddish.
Be-tween his prayers and his everyday responsibilities,
he sought out ancient, medieval, and modern Jewish texts
in pursuit of the kaddish's history and meaning.
And every day he studied, translated, and wrote his
own reflections on the obscure texts that he found,
punctuating his journal with stories about life in his
synagogue and about his family's progress through grief.
In reflecting upon the fate of his father and of his
people, he wrestles with problems of loss and faith, the
meaning of tradition, freedom and determinism, and the
perplexity of rational religion. Kaddish is a work of
history, philosophy, and interior autobiography, of moral
force and emotional power.
