|
|
Can I just say right here how terribly, terribly much I am missing my dear Ella Russell? This is exactly the time that she and I would be taking our "pre-Pesach walk" and asking each other -- "What does the exodus from Mitzrayim mean to you this year? What do you want to happen at the seder table this year? One year we talked excitedly about visualizing the Red Sea really splitting. We could hang blue streamers in a doorway and make our guests walk through. We could spray each other with water… (That was the year I made my splitting Red Sea table runner.) Another year we got juiced by the idea of leaving slavery in a hurry. What would it be like to run from our homes in the night? (That year we hosted a second-night "yetziah" -- leave-taking -- hiking in the dark with packs on our backs, having a most extraordinary full-moon afikomen hunt in a meadow overlooking the ocean.) There was the idea one year that we had to eat matzah outside, standing in the dark, like our ancestors did. I think we've done that at our house every year since.
A group of us just baked hamantaschen at the shul without Ella, using her recipe, her poppy seed grinder, laughing with such love about her particular, exacting ways with the egg wash and all. Yes, yes, she was there in spirit -- so strongly there -- but dammit, we weren't in her kitchen, using her pastry brush and looking out her window into her overgrown back yard and beyond to the hills above Elk, like I have done most of the last twenty years. She wasn't chatting about who she was saving hamantaschen for, who needed a box of them this year.
I've already had a couple of these times of piercing, particular missing of my beloved friend and co-conspirator and teacher. And there are a lot more to come, I know.
All of this by way of responding to a question which came my way recently about saying kaddish for animals. (Yes, there is a connection here, I think…) We have inherited from our ancestors a powerful set of practices for mourning our dead. As we practice these in our community over the years (too often lately, if I dare say…) many of us are amazed over and over by how strong and healing a tonic these rituals are. We sit with the body of a person who has died, wash it, dress it, bury it, all in a precise way.
But then, I'm interested to note, once the met (the deceased body) is laid to rest, we tend to improvise more around here. Some people sit shiva for a full week, others for less time or not at all. Some people observe the custom of sh'loshim -- the thirty-day period of mourning, in which one says kaddish and avoids festive occasions. Some observe a full year of mourning for parents who have died, in the traditional fashion, again saying kaddish at every service and steering away from parties and play. Others will say kaddish if they happen to be present at a service, maybe wondering for how long they should keep standing up.
And some people here actually do more than the traditional prescription -- they say kaddish for a loved one for longer than the thirty days. They stand as a mourner for people who were not among the four official familial relationships that require mourning (parents, siblings, spouses and children.) Some say kaddish as a kind of proxy, if they know that no one else is likely to observe this custom for someone that they knew. Some say kaddish for famous people who have died recently or for whole categories of people, such as people who perished in the holocaust, victims of war, people who have died of AIDS and so on. And someone recently asked me about whether to say kaddish for an animal.
I'm glad I am not the kind of a rabbi who is expected to issue a p'sak din -- an official ruling -- on such a question. But I find it all interesting and moving, and I've been mulling quite a bit since this tender question came my direction.
Over the years I have personally been evolving a kind of "don't ask don't tell" position on how people participate in Jewish ritual here. I personally, and MCJC as a community, have some firm boundaries. But my general sense is that we are blessed with the large and varied treasure of ideas and practices and language given to us by our ancestors, and we each have the opportunity to engage with it all in the ways that bring beauty and meaning to us personally and to our world. These traditions grow and change as we bring our own experience to them, as my Pesach seder has evolved over my years of conversation with Ella. So, for example, I don't ask who is Jewish when people come up to Torah for an aliyah. I figure that they are coming up because they find the act meaningful, and this is all to the good. If there is someone in the community who doesn't think they should come up if they aren't Jewish, then I hope they will stay seated.
There are profound arguments against this approach that I take, and I deeply respect the rabbis and communities who are concerned about protecting traditional boundaries (which are themselves part of that box of treasure we have inherited.) My own sense is that I prefer, in life as in rabbi-ing, to err on the side of spaciousness.
But I remember when I was a baby rabbinical student, doing a wedding between a psychiatrist and a judge, each a good thirty years older than I was at the time. We discussed each piece of the service, made all kinds of exciting and creative decisions. But they got stuck on breaking the glass. There were reasons for, reasons against. We talked and talked, and they kept perseverating. Finally it was the day of the wedding, and they still hadn't decided. The guests were arriving, the music was striking up. I finally said, "Look, just break the glass!"
It was a moment of truth for me. Sometimes I just have to say, "Do it this way. It works. I know it." But not very often.
Mourning is an extremely personal, and obviously emotional, experience. And I definitely believe that our primary commitment must be to support and console each other when time comes to mourn. So I would never say, "You should not say Kaddish" for anyone or any creature whose loss brings you intense grief. If Kaddish will help you to heal, then say it.
That said, I think that the main energy of Jewish mourning practice, and especially the saying of Kaddish, is to mourn family. We as a community, like many progressive communities, and in keeping with our local history and experience, have a pretty expansive understanding of what constitutes a family. I intentionally diverge from that part of Jewish tradition which defines family in terms of those four categories of relationship. We all make family differently. This is a key part of who we are as a community.
But I think that the first question to ask about saying kaddish for someone who has died is, Was this person (or this animal) part of my family? Or another way to say it, perhaps: was the weight of this relationship to me commensurate with the weight of a mother/father/sister/brother/spouse or child as Jewish tradition understands those losses? Or another way: am I fundamentally changed by this being having been part of my life, so that I will have to balance differently in days and years to come because they are no longer alive? I would never presume to answer these questions for another person. And I also respect people who say kaddish for other reasons -- for solidarity, to show honor, as an act of friendship, as a political statement. I guess what I want to say here is that I see saying the mourner's kaddish as a serious gesture, and the reasons for doing so should be serious.
I chose not to say kaddish for Ella during her shiva and sh'loshim, though I mourned her deeply and continue to. Ella was my beloved friend and in many ways my rabbi. But there I was, after she died, in the presence of her sons, her brother, of people whose children she had nursed, people who had given her sanctuary in flight. Somehow it seemed like a greater act of honor to defer to these relationships, which in some intuitive way felt even weightier than mine.
I have been mourning her in other ways -- speaking her name, gazing at photos, baking her hamantaschen and just communing with her bright and enduring spirit. Here is one of the teachings of Rabbi Ella of Elk: the days before Passover are always difficult, because that's when the plagues were raining down all around us in Egypt. So don't be surprised if things get tense and messed up. But it will end, and our joy will be full! May the memory of my teacher be a blessing for us all.
I wish you all a great experience of deliverance from anything that keeps you in chains. Happy Pesach, my dear community.
- Rabbi Margaret Holub
© 2009 Rabbi Margaret Holub
(home) (calendar) (info) (articles) (sponsors) (links) (bios) (reviews) (travel) (recipes) (projects) (photos) (art)
Updated 03/31/2009 (rge)
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuu