Dad and I were talking about the “kaddish in two-part harmony” project the other night, and he muttered something about spending a career dealing with death. I’d never quite put it together that his thirty years in the Social Security Administration had had him dealing with death all the time—well, duh! So I asked him to write a guest essay about what that was like.
Author: erin
Erin Vang, PMP, BMus, MMus, is Owner and Principal Pragmatist of the consultancy Global Pragmatica LLC®, offering custom JMP scripting, localization program management, and facilitative leadership services. She is also an orchestral horn player who freelanced in the San Francisco Bay Area and played assorted brass for the celebrated dance bands Midnight Smørgåsbord and contraPtion. She now conducts all her nefarious activities from Vanghalla, in Helena, Montana, where she's principal hornist of the Helena Symphony. More about Erin…
daily kaddish: for don, sr
A kaddish for our neighbor don, sr; we just learned of his passing two weeks ago.
daily kaddish: chez rebecca
Today Mira and I visited her mom, Rebecca, for a mini Seder, and I recorded a kaddish afterward in her great room. Wow.
daily kaddish: mohammed bouazizi
Mira dedicated this kaddish to Mohammed Bouazizi, whose humble reaction to bureaucratic humiliation set off the revolution in Tunisia, which set of revolutions in Egypt and Libya.
daily kaddish: plague of jazz
I didn’t have the energy to engage with what’s important. Instead I played a frippery on the Kaddish—an escapist kaddish that was jazzy in the sense of a plague. Not good jazz, not fun. No, the jazz you play when you don’t feel real jazz.
daily kaddish: for Farzad Bastoft
A Kaddish for Farzad Bastoft, in reply to Mira’s, and with thoughts of the hopelessness of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
daily kaddish: for easyness
Tonight’s Kaddish is for the sense of loss we feel when easyness begins to require attention.
daily kaddish: yikes #2
This yikes-twice-over spoken Kaddish was my Kaddish for the time that didn’t need to pass before an important friend and I both talked and listened to each other.
the shikse makes charoset—and Elijah likes it
I had the chutzpah to challenge Mira to a charoset-off. Uff da.
daily kaddish: for those who die in bondage
On Erev Pesach, a Kaddish for those who don’t escape bondage—for those who have died in bondage, recently and throughout history, and especially for those who have died in the recent uprisings in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia…