Kaddish Musings #2

Kaddish is not said alone. Not only are you in a congregation, with others responding to your words of heavenly praise, but, more often than not, other mourners are saying kaddish with you.

Sometimes that makes it hard. One says it at this speed, and another at that speed, and you are trying to listen and keep up and match your words with theirs, and the whole thing is an exercise in frustration. The chairs scrape against the floor, making it impossible to hear the other mourners’ kaddish, and you feel alone, out of sync.

Those are the difficult moments. But there are other times, times when a state of grace falls on us all. We say Yehe shlama raba, “May there be great peace,” and there is peace. We are miraculously in step with one another. There is a rhythm and a meaning to the words, and they rise up, on many wings instead of one.

That is kedushah, holiness. Devarim shebekedushah, “things of holiness,” like the Kaddish and the kedushah, can only be said in a minyan for this reason – kedushah is a state achieved together. We read about how the angels do it in the first brachah before the Shma – they call out to one another, facing each other, calling zeh el zeh, “this one to that one.” They sanctify God through their communal activity, through their ability to come together in His praise and do it as a team.

We are not angels, and not automatons. We are blessed with individual differences, but we also can come together, can work as a team, and when we do, we bring the holiness of God down to earth. And that is kaddish.