Kaddish Musings

Kaddish feels like a flight upward. The words have wings, lifting us with their soft repetitive mesmerizing sound, yitgadal vitkadash. Yitpa’ar vitromam vitnase. May He be exalted and lifted up and raised up. Le’eyla min kol birkhata . . . Higher than all blessings and praises, . . . Higher and higher we go. Each word is a step in our trip upwards.

Like the soul that we are praying for, helping to make its journey upward, we, too, take a little flight each time. We, as mourners of the dead, have some special connection to this journey upward of the soul.

And once we are up there, we bring down for those around us gifts from that space – the gift of shalom or shlama, peace, and somewhat ironically, the gift of hayim, life, the gift of knowing that life – more precious now that we see how easily it can disappear -- comes from above, from this place we have flown to, this space between worlds.

No wonder kaddish is a prayer that happens at the interstices of our formal prayers. It is a prayer said by those, the living mourning for the dead, who inhabit a place between worlds.

And, as if to keep us firmly rooted in this world, like ropes attached to a rock climber, we have the solid grounding of our fellow inhabitants of this earthly world constantly saying “amen” and “brikh hu,” anchoring us as we make our climb. This is a temporary journey of the mind, but we are still here, among the living, bringing down blessings from above aleynu ve’al kol yisrael, vimru amen.