by Robert Taxman
My main High Holiday event is the opportunity to say a
special Kaddish for my father. Kaddish, the prayer declaring faith in the
holiness of God, is traditionally to be recited daily for eleven months after
burial, on Yahrzeit (the anniversary of that loss), on the three pilgrimage
festivals (Passover, Sukkot, Shavuot), and especially on Yom Kippur. That my
feelings are hardly unique is reflected by the impressive turnout at the Yiskor
service (Yiskor meaning remembrance).
We are often reminded that Kaddish isn’t literally a prayer
for the dead. It is, rather, an affirmation of faith and the existence of
Sanctity, culminating in an appeal for peace, which I take to mean acceptance
of life and death (i.e. the order of the Universe). On the other hand, there’s
a rather alarming yarn about this in an eleventh century French collection of
Jewish rumors called Machzor Vitry, concerning the estimable Rabbi Akiba, who
encounters a Jewish Sisyphus, a deceased sinner condemned to hard labor for
eternity in retribution for oppressing the poor. Rabbi Akiba redeems him by
locating the sinner’s child, raised as a heathen, and teaching him to say
Kaddish for his father! But that’s not why I look forward to Yiskor, because my
father was decidedly no sinner, and requires no prayers for redemption.
That my father’s Yahrzeit falls just a week or so before
Elul, the month we are admonished to make the memory of our dear ones a
template for improving our own lives, makes this recollections especially
meaningful to me:
Dad never missed The Eternal Light, a weekly program about
things Jewish, a very big deal in the years before television when families
would gather around the radio to listen. We could just pick this up on KMOX,
sixty miles from Centralia. Tuning in one Sunday morning, Dad happened upon a
sermon from Reverend Bean, the local Baptist pastor. We were the villains of
the reverend’s piece, which informed us that we—and all Jews, for all time—were
doomed to Hellfire for the death of Jesus. That evening Dad called Reverend
Bean and invited him to breakfast at Lee’s Drug Store downtown (actually Cohn’s
Drug Store, but the owner probably felt that business would be better with Lee
on the sign. Jews generally kept their heads down in Southern Illinois in the
1940s. Maybe they still do.) Dad said this: “Reverend, I have no problem with
your telling folks that I’m going to Hell, because I’m a sinner, and you’re
probably right. But when you declare that my children, who are angels, and
Amelia, who you know yourself is the soul of virtue, are headed the same way,
well, I’ve got a problem with that.” And it worked. Next Sunday, Reverend Bean
led off his program as follows: “Well folks, I was talking to my friend Milo
Taxman, the most Christian Jew in Centralia, a couple of days ago, and he made
me think over what I told you last week about the death of our Lord. It seems
to me that folks like Milo who are good people shouldn’t be punished for
something they didn’t do themselves. That just wouldn’t be fair, and God is
never unfair.”
Dad didn’t keep his head down. I never knew anyone happier
to be Jewish, or who was more accepting of the way the world works, including
the cycle of life and death. I believe he did achieve the peace that the
Kaddish expresses so eloquently. That’s what I’ll think about when I say
Kaddish for him in a few weeks. Because he was proud to be Jewish, so am I.
Dr. Robert Taxman provides
primary care services at Grace Hill Clinic and has taught Jewish
history in the Melton program and internal medicine at Washington
University School of Medicine.
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