kosher bookworm: alan jay gerber

Rabbi Kamenetzky’s last Kaddish: A son’s tribute

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This week’s “review’’ is basically a personal note of tribute to one of our community’s leading educators, Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky, for the grace and eloquence that he has demonstrated in memory to his late mother, Rebbitzen Tzirel Kamenetzky. This son’s tribute comes in the form of a small, emotionally charged anthology,  “Kaddish Chronicles” (originally serialized in Ami magazine, where he is a regular columnist, and just released as a paperback, available at createspace.com/6625619), featuring 46 heartfelt essays detailing his journey of mourning through this past year.

This work concludes with a poem, “The Last Kaddish,” that sums up the author’s deepest emotions, a litany of tears in verbal form, that summarizes a period of religiously mandated mourning and what one might expect will follow this intense emotional experience.

What impressed me most in this poem was the author’s high personal regard for his fellow mourners, whom he now leaves behind in the daily Kaddish routine as he returns to a “normal” lifestyle. Rabbi Kamenetzky’s prose and rhyme give these emotions the power and force for all to appreciate and emulate in thought and deed as our emotions reflect upon their inner spiritual message.

Below, I share with you, in its entirety, the literary tear that is shed in these words for your own personal spiritual enrichment, with deep appreciation to its esteemed author.

THE LAST KADDISH

You’ve been with me since I sat down

When seven passed I stood,

And for eleven months, each day

We both knew that I would

Recite the Kaddish carefully

And sanctify the Name

In Heaven you were watching me

As angels did the same

Through winter’s cold

And summer’s heat

Each night and every day,

I felt your presence as I said,

“Amein yehei Shemei…”

The angst I loved as if I were

Presenting you a gift

Intangible the love I felt

Your soul I knew would lift

We heard the chorus of the crowd

Respond in affirmation

“Yehei Shemei Rabbah mevorach”

The words of elevation

Goodbye, my dearest Kaddish

The ever-present cry

And Ma, your soul now rests in peace

Above this world, on high

There’s a hole inside my siddur

A hole inside my heart

As now the bond of fervent prayer

Slowly slips apart

And now I stand in silence

I watch the others say,

“yisgadal v’yiskadash

Amein yehi Shemei”

Eleven months

We stood as one

In harmony endeavored,

In unison we led the chant

And now that bond feels severed

I sit and watch them silently

And answer now their call

My mother tells me from above,

“I’m good, now help them all”

Her chesed tells me, “It’s their turn,”

I hear from high above,

“It’s now your turn to answer them

With sympathetic love

Goodbye, my Kaddish zuggers

My sad fraternity

For now my mother’s soul’s with G-d

For all eternity

Until that time

When all will see

His glory and His fame

The Kaddish prayer

Will shout itself

V’imru amein.