Something was bound to go wrong on the Tzaddik’s first Yahrtzeit. It was a day I had hoped to bring my mother to the cemetery for the first time — for she herself had been too gravely ill to understand at the time that he had actually died. In the next room. In her house….
Category: essays
Mira and Erin writing on themes of death, dying, grief, ritual, music, listening, Kaddish, Lev Kogan’s “Kaddish,” and so on.
a kaddish for eichmann
Has anyone ever said kaddish for Eichmann? I had this argument tonight. Rh insisted that someone somewhere has mourned him. But that’s not what I meant. I did not mean just a Mourner’s Prayer. I meant a real live authentic kaddish. Maybe even with a minyan. And my thought was no. That it was very…
kaddish in two-part harmony
I’ve been challenged to a kaddish a day — for an entire year. That year starts today, right now in fact. On this very line. I’m not sure this is a healthy thing to do, but maybe it’s exactly the right way to work it through. Bibbo tells me of the baths his babalawo prescribes….
what is it about musicians?
I was at the bookstore at the airport, and you know how much selection they have there, don’t you. Close to nothing at all. Couldn’t believe I was traveling without a book in my bag. But then again, the whole point of the trip was to go collect books, so it also made sense not…
on playing kaddish
Mira Amiras’ blog “and this part is true” had a recent post entitled “war stories” about translating the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish mourner’s prayer. She asks, “What does this really mean?” It’s a good question, because the Aramaic text doesn’t say a thing about mourning. It’s a pretty generic prayer, in fact. Here’s the basic…
war stories
We were holding kabbalah study group tonight at Beit Malkhut, and I don’t know how it came up. But you know how study groups go — one topic leads to another. We started with the Kaddish — the Mourner’s Prayer — since all of us had something to mourn, and it was time to explore…
mandelbrot and music: on listening in fractal dimensions
Benoit Mandelbrot died this month. He was the guy who came up with fractal theory, which led to all those gorgeous computer graphics like this one: Last week, my friend and contradance bandmate Tina Fields wrote an essay about Mandelbrot’s ideas on her blog, Indigenize! I found it quite thought-provoking, and it surprised me how much I…
yahrtzeit for the tzaddik
Do I still get to cry? The first year ends, and I’ve been living the dying over and over. Actually, it all started two years ago with her. And I just couldn’t get over it, and then, wham — the tzaddik is ill, the tzaddik is terminal, the tzaddik is gone. I think it’s time…
misunderstanding pessimism: a manifesto of sorts
The NYT has run a number of articles lately on optimism and pessimism, including one entitled, “Is your Dog an Optimist or a Pessimist.” Which was an incredibly depressing article. Another, which ran today (but disappeared before I could find it again) spent a lot of time explaining why optimists live longer. Go figure. Actually,…
missing her as I do — new orleans revisited
Maybe I don’t have any right to miss her as I do. Maybe the missing is reserved for what people conventionally call ‘family.’ For kin related by blood or marriage. And I am neither. She is ‘family’ in that other sense. The sense of what we call family. My home was her home. Her home…