Kaddish

August 31, 1998
When his father died in 1996, Wieseltier began to observe the Jewish rituals of the traditional year of mourning, going three times daily to synagogue to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Between the prayers and his daily work as literary editor of the New Republic, he sought out ancient, medieval and modern Jewish texts in an effort to understand the history and meaning of Kaddish. He discovered that early texts dictated that the mourner's kaddish be recited only on Saturday nights, but the prayers were prolonged so that the souls of the sinners of Israel released from Gehenna would not hurry back to hell. Wieseltier reports that through his study and practice of Kaddish he realized that the past is at the mercy of the present. "The present can condemn the past to oblivion or obscurity," he notes. "Whatever happens to the past will happen to it posthumously. And so the saga of the family is also the saga of the tradition." Wieseltier provides a work of history, philosophy and spiritual memoir where he deals with the meaning of freedom and the perplexity of tradition. His book demonstrates how the practice of religion meets the needs of a troubled soul.