NOVANEWS
Dalia Marx
An innovative and creative generation does not throw the heritage of generations into the garbage. It examines and checks, it draws near and it removes. Sometimes it takes hold of a tradition and adds to it and sometimes it digs into the pile of discards to reveal that which was forgotten and polish the rust off of an ancient tradition and brings it back to one that may nourish the soul of that innovative generation. —Berl Katznelson.
1 Arguably, no prayer evokes stronger emotional responses among Jews than the Mourner’s Kaddish. While Sh’ma Yisrael, another
DALIA MARX, Ph.D. (C/J03) is professor of Liturgy and Midrash at HUC-JIR, Jerusalem.
This article is based in part on an article I wrote for Rabbi Ellenson’s Festschrift, “Kaddish: From the Rhine Valley to Jezreel Valley: Innovative Versions of the Mourner Kaddish in the Kibbutz Movement,” in Between Tradition and Modernity: Rethinking Old Opposition, Essays in Honor of David Ellenson, ed. Michael Meyer and David A. Myers (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014), 123–41. In that article I deal also with the evolvement of the phenomenology of the Kaddish and its evolvement as the mourner’s prayer. I thank Prof. William Cutter, Rabbi Shelton Donnell, and Prof. Richard Sarason for their generous help revising this article. I also thank Prof. David Levine, Dr. Nir Resisi, and Binyamin (Buja) Yogev for their helpful remarks.
This article is dedicated with much love to my teacher and mentor Rabbi Dr. David Ellenson. David opened the world of Jewish liturgy as a scholarly discipline for me. The first course I took in the field of liturgy, which became my profession, was with him. David was then (1997–1998) in Jerusalem, for a sabbatical year with his family. During that course many seeds were planted which have since continued to grow into the ideas that inspire my teaching, writing, and researching. For that and for being a constant source of Torah and menschlichkeit for me during all these years from my junior year as a student at HUC-JIR until today, I am profoundly grateful to David.
powerful and widely known liturgical statement, speaks to Jewish identity, peoplehood, and fate, the Kaddish evokes more personal reflection upon life, death, loss, and human existence in general. While some draw consolation from its theology, many more are compelled and soothed by its familiarity and repetitiveness. While some are alienated by its theological message, few remain indifferent to the Kaddish. Even the fiercest atheists among my acquaintances tremble at the sound of the words “Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’meih raba.” Indeed, the Kaddish represents much more than its literal meaning, it has come to be a powerful symbol, regardless of its original function and regardless of the wording or theology the prayer manifests. Far from its denotative meaning and from its original use, the Kaddish became fixed in the Jewish consciousness as the prayer of mourners.
Here I will deal with a rather unknown liturgical phenomenon— contemporary Israeli literary liturgical responses to this traditional prayer. While modest in its distribution and recent, I believe that this examination may serve as a useful test case for liturgical innovations and may reveal a complex multifaceted Jewish religiosity.2
One of the main arenas in which Israeli ritual creativity has taken place is the Kibbutz Movement, which used to be the vanguard of the socialist, secular State of Israel in its early years. Some of the more creative expressions of Israeli spirituality nested within the gates of the kibbutzim. The kibbutzim took charge of the social and cultural life of their members. To this day, some of the most interesting and ground-breaking Israeli ritual innovations have strong roots in the kibbutzim. Treatment of mourning and grief is no exception to this rule.3
I will outline now three somewhat blended yet distinct stages of the uses of the Kaddish in kibbutz funerals and memorial events in general: (1) spontaneity and silence; (2) creative adaptations of the prayer; (3) retreat to traditionalism and tentative openness to religiosity. 1.
Spontaneity and Silence
The early kibbutz funerals were not marked by formal structure. Most of the members were young and were not generally From CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Summer 2015, copyright (c) 2015 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Used by permission of Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied with express written permission. dalia marx 76 CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly related to each other by family ties. The kibbutz project began, for the most part, with a total rejection of religious ritual and religious symbols,4 yet members were soon engaged in spontaneous experimentation with rituals of grief. Nehama Zitser tells of the death of Yitshak Turner, a young man of the Ha-shomer Movement in 1915. She describes the despair and helplessness of his young friends. At a certain moment one member got up and began to hum a hora song to himself. Gradually he raised his voice and eventually got up on his feet and began dancing. Little by little, all the members joined him, singing and dancing. He encouraged them, saying: “Hey, hey, friends, Turner didn’t want tears, he wanted life and growth.” They ceased dancing at dawn, when they had to go to work.5
Still, many funerals were marked by silence; no prayers or eulogies were delivered.6
The following poem by Shalom Yosef Shapira (1904–1990) may illustrate the “Temple of Silence” that the kibbutz members created:
When a person dies … ,
When a person7 dies in the Jezreel Valley The sheaves will be silent. The Jezreel Valley is a Holy of Holies And no one weeps in the Holy of Holies.
When night descends upon the Jezreel Valley The stars will shimmer;
They are the memorial lights in the Jezreel Valley for those for whom there is no “Kaddish.”8
This fierce poem proposes an alternative religiosity: instead of Jerusalem and its (lost) Temple, the Jezreel Valley is portrayed as the Holy of Holies, which requires restraint and self-discipline. No one is allowed to cry in the presence of the Sanctum Sanctorum. But the heavens and the stars in the sky lend themselves to serve as memorial candles for those for whom the Kaddish is not recited. The composer Yehudah Sharet (1901–1979) of Kibbutz Yagur, in a letter to his mother from 1923, recalled the funeral of a young man called Shuster who was killed in a work accident. He wrote: “No sob, no moan, no scream—a bleak orphanage, this is what our funerals will look like. The stillness of the mother and the lack of motherly crying, and nothing more . . . It was as if the silence were a testimony to our uprootedness.”9
But the silence was also a deliberate choice. Aharon David Gordon (1856–1922), a spiritual leader of the pioneer Zionist Movement, left the following will: “This is what I would do, and this is how I wish others would treat me [when I die]: those who wish to honor me shall honor me with silence. For at least one year, no one shall talk about me nor write a single word about me.”10 Silence was perceived as the proper response to the cruelty of death. But there were other nonverbal responses. The anthropologist Nissan Rubin notes two separate stages, the 1910s, which were marked with song and dance, and the 1920s–1950s, “a period of silence.”11 One may suggest that the lack of words of prayer in the kibbutz funerals was not a mere result of the so-called secular nature of the socialist settlements but also due to the fact that the young members felt that they could not allow themselves to sink into paralyzing grief in the face of the death of many young people (due to disease, conflict with Arabs, accidents, and suicide).12 In a way, this was a renunciation of the self for the sake of self-discipline.
The pioneers could not allow themselves to cease from their demanding daily routine and to be engulfed by sorrow. 2. Creative Adaptations of the Prayer The issue of death and mourning became more central in the 1960s when the founders of the kibbutzim began to pass away.13 Gradually, the silence at the funerals became unbearable. In the early From CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Summer 2015, copyright (c) 2015 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Used by permission of Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied with express written permission. dalia marx 78 CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly sixties, Yitshak Tabenkin (1888–1971), one of the founders of the Kibbutz Movement, said in a private conversation that the poets and thinkers of the Kibbutz Movement should be approached in order to find poetic expression of “our love of life” in a new version of the Kaddish. 14
Soon enough, some new versions of the Kaddish were composed. I will present here four examples that represent diverse literary styles. Shortly after Tabenkin’s call, Zvi She’er (1904–1987), an educator who also worked in Kibbutz Yagur’s plants, composed the first known alternative version of the Kaddish. 15 According to some testimonies, he did so as a response to the unbearable silence at the graveside. Yagur’s Kaddish, as it is usually referred to, is still read in funerals at Yagur16 and in some other kibbutzim.
Magnified be the person who holds on to his hopes from the morning of his life until his very last day. Whose heart is not tainted and whose ways are upright, And who never despairs in his quest for redemption. In whose heart is both the world’s suffering and its joys, who is its radiance both manifest and hidden.
May the glory of humankind be forever blessed. Magnified, indeed, be the Hebrew person on his land And sanctified be the one who lives with the memory of the life that has been taken away. Life has ended, sealed in the soil of Yagur, in its toil, in the hearts of its members. May his memory abide with us as a blessing. She’er quoted the well-known opening words of the traditional Kaddish but changed its original meaning dramatically. Instead of praising God and God’s future kingdom, it praises the individual in the specific context of his “kingdom,” the kibbutz. The phrase ziv haolam (the world’s radiance), which is one of the attributes of God, is applied here to the deceased. It is important to note that the phrase Yitgadal v’yitkadash shem haadam (May the name of person be magnified and sanctified) was coined half a century earlier by the writer Yosef Haim Brenner (1881–1921), who used them to end an article he wrote in the aftermath of the Russian revolution in 1905.17 This text exalts the individual within the fabric of the communal life, an action that is entirely missing from the traditional Kaddish, which does not refer to the deceased at all.
The glory and the sanctification of God, which are the center of the traditional text, are completely missing from this one, it eliminates any reference to the Divine. There are some similarities among the different versions of the Kaddish used by the kibbutzim: all of them begin with the traditional word Yitgadal, all of them are dedicated to the memory of the individual in the framework of the kibbutz, all of them wish for the memory to be for a blessing, and all of them are formulated in the male singular voice but are modified when the deceased is a female. But each emphasizes different elements. The following text was composed by the poet Eli Alon (born in 1935) from Kibbutz Ein Shemer.
Kaddish for the people of Ein Shemer Magnified and sanctified be the person in his life and in his death In his happiness, in his suffering and in his toil. Blessed and praised be our kibbutz through those who love it And gave it their strength without restraint And their reward—meaning to their lives and their labor. And when a life well lived should end—the memory of their deeds will not be lost. For the way of the upright will never perish because the aspirations of their deeds may remain forever. May the seed that they sowed sprout forth, the tree bear fruit, and the home flourish, bustling with life and multiplying generations. The soil of Ein Shemer gathers you in today with sadness and love to its breast. Let the clods of earth be sweet to you. May your life and your deeds be bound up in the bond of our lives For consolation and for hope.
In this version, even more than in Yagur’s Kaddish, there is an emphasis on the kibbutz communal life and on the meaningful choices that the deceased made as a kibbutz member. Whereas the Kaddish of Yagur emphasizes the living, this version places the deceased at the center, saying that the fruits of his deeds will last long and that he and his deeds will not be forgotten. Alon cites not only the Kaddish, but also the mourning prayer El Malei Rachamim, giving it a completely new meaning. Instead of asking God that the soul of the deceased may be “bound up in the bonds of life,” referring to the life in the world-to-come, it promises that the deeds of the deceased will be “bound up in the bonds of our lives,” that is, it will continue to be present and to impact the community long after he is gone.
Similarly, the sentence “For the way of the upright will never perish” is an adaptation of a biblical verse (Hos. 14:10), which speaks about the upright walking in the ways of God, in which the righteous is merit to step. The following text was composed by Shalom Smid, a member of Kibbutz Negba, which belongs to Hakibbutz Ha-Artzi, the left-wing and most extremely anti-religious of the Kibbutz movements:
The Reform Jewish Quarterly The Kaddish of the Kibbutzim Magnified be the name of the person, Extolled be the labors of his life and blessed through our memory for the sum of his deeds through his days in the world And for the actions which he did not manage to complete. For dreams that were spun and were then no more And for precious virtues and even human weaknesses that have faded away through the foggy mists of time. May the person’s memory be radiant and the reflections of his life be like the brilliance of the firmament in our hearts— Let his name endure as long as the sun shines (Ps. 72:17).18 What remains of the person19 is the memory beyond the limits of time. His name shall not be covered by darkness. The imperative of life’s continuity will bring relief to our inmost pain.20 The march of time will be compassionate. And we shall cherish the fruits of his life for many a day. Magnified and sanctified.
This text emphasizes the pain and loss in the face of death. Its first half speaks of the human fate to leave this world without accomplishing our aspirations and realizing our dreams, the second part is dedicated to consolation of the mourners and hopes for the future. Unlike She’er’s text, here the Zionist aspect and the kibbutz ideology are not stressed. In fact they are referred to only indirectly. Instead, it reflects doleful reflection on the finite nature of human life; it stresses the memory and the consolation of the mourners. Another version, composed by Oved Sadeh (literally, the worker of the field, 1925–2008) from Kibbutz Beir Keshet follows more closely the structure of the traditional Kaddish. However, it employs a completely different set of images.
Magnified and sanctified be the clod that crushed as the plow split the hard soil Glorified and extolled—be the leaf that sprouted and greened, reddened—and fell. Acclaimed and lauded be the one who carries the burden and when his path collapsed21 my path too collapsed. Blessed and praised be the voice of the singular one22 Along with the voice of the many. Magnified and sanctified Be the individual in his uniqueness. Sadeh’s version is a carefully crafted text: it rhymes and has a meter. The imagery is clearly based on the farming cycle. Unlike the other kibbutz versions, here it is the clod of earth that is “magnified and sanctified,” and indeed, this text is deeply grounded in the agricultural kibbutz experience. And yet, it stresses the individual. Only toward the end does it mention the community, and even then it is done in order to stress individual uniqueness.
All the above-cited texts make use of the traditional Kaddish, especially of its opening words, which profoundly resonates the expression of mourning, regardless of their denotation. Yet it drastically changes the content, not only in that it shifts the focus from the heavenly kingdom to the earth (in the most tangible sense of the word), from the Divine to the human, and from the metaphysical to the concrete and visceral. God is completely taken out of the picture. Although each composer has his literary, ideological, and cultural agenda, it seems that they cite each other, having created a subgenre of liturgical expression in which one can identify slightly different emphases. The writers of these texts (and of similar ones) made a cognizant choice in keeping the connotative expression of the Kaddish while supplying ideologically appropriate content. In their texts, these writers made bold statements; they showed that they own the spiritual property, as it were, of the Jewish tradition, yet they choose to use it in an informed way that is adequate to their faith and way of life. In order to compare the data from the studies of Kalekin-Fishman and Klingman, Rubin, and Shua from the 1980s with the situation today, I wrote those in charge of the cultural life or of mourning committees on the kibbutzim.
I inquired regarding the recitation of the Kaddish prayer and about changing trends in burial rituals within their communities. I have received responses from about forty kibbutzim and they reveal a very diverse picture. Generally speaking, the number of kibbutzim in which the traditional Kaddish is recited is more or less the same as those in which a special kibbutz Kaddish is in use. In many kibbutzim both are recited. Typically, the traditional text is read by a family member and the kibbutz Kaddish by a “reader” from the community. Some of the people I have spoken with stressed that both men and women recite the Kaddish. About half of kibbutzim which recite only the traditional Kaddish invite a rabbi or a religious person from a neighboring town or settlement to conduct the funeral, a situation that was almost never seen in the kibbutzim in the past. In many cases, the Orthodox burial leader acts as mara d’atra (the local authority) and dictates the nature of the ceremony. In some kibbutzim, especially those affiliated with the HaKibbutz HaArtzi movement, no Kaddish is recited. In general, however, the number of kibbutzim in which Kaddish is recited, or at least in which its recitation is a legitimate
option, is much larger than in the 1980s and, needless to say, it is much more frequent than in the past. Many kibbutzim stress the autonomy of family to make the choices regarding the nature of the burial ceremony; a committee member visits the family and shares with it possible texts and practices and the family makes the actual decisions. Central kibbutz protocol regarding funerals and mourning gives way to choices made by each family. 3. Retreat to Traditionalism and Tentative Openness to Religiosity Nissan Rubin writes: “As long as the ideological fervor was strong, secular formulations of ritual could be preserved. With the waning of ideological fervor, some of the secular elements of mourning customs disappeared and more traditional content was reinstated.”24
This trend—along with absorption into the kibbutzim of people uncommitted to kibbutz values and clusters of nonmembers, economic as well as cultural privatization, and the centrality of the nuclear family—all these brought about the retreat (or “withdrawal,” as some kibbutz members refer to it) to traditionalism. This process does not mean, for the most part, that the kibbutzim are becoming more traditional or embracing Orthodoxy. It is rather an indication of the weakening of the ownership the kibbutzim over the cultural life and the secular religiosity they had once created. Authoritative figures—“those who know how,” mostly from outside the kibbutz community—could be out-sourced in order to manage significant parts of the cultural life. In some kibbutzim there have been functioning traditional synagogues for many decades. Most were rather marginal and intended to address the needs of members’ parents. In the last decade, many kibbutzim have built new synagogues. Some of these institutions are models of inventiveness and creativity,25 while others are adopting Orthodox formulae, often under the guidance (or supervision) of Orthodox rabbis. Lately, in some secular kibbutzim separate dancing takes place during Simchat Torah, and needless to say that the women, placed behind the m’chitzah (separation wall) do not merit dancing with the Torah scroll.26
The existence of more and more Orthodox synagogues in the secular kibbutzim is a symptom of a broader phenomenon—a decrease of self-confidence in the social and communal way, the ebbing of mutual social and
The Reform Jewish Quarterly economic care, and the privatization of most of the kibbutzim have caused a decline in the quality of cultural life. Religious formulae that present themselves as confident and efficacious find their way into the feeble kibbutz fabric of life.27 The treatment of the Kaddish is no exception to the rule. While the kibbutz Kaddishim are still recited at funerals in many kibbutzim, some choose to add the traditional Kaddish and sometimes also the burial prayer, El Malei Rachamim. In some cases these traditional prayers have even replaced the kibbutz Kaddishim entirely. The submission to forms of traditionalism and its authoritative agents often occurs without dealing with it or even understanding it. Paradoxically, one can say that the retreat to tradition reflects a diminished commitment to vibrant Jewish activity. We may, in conclusion, point to three, albeit somewhat blurred, stages in the treatment of mourning prayers in the kibbutzim. In the first years, spontaneous reactions but mostly utter silence were deemed a proper response to death.
Later, new versions of mourning readings, based on the traditional Kaddish but reflecting the kibbutz’s ideological worldview, were created. In the third phase, we are witnessing a return to tradition, not necessarily as an informed religious choice but rather as an adaptation of ready-made formulae, which are deemed “authentic.”28 Kaddish Yerushalaim: Tentative Sprouting Religiosity As mentioned previously, in spite of the gloomy statements made above about kibbutz members taking less interest in their Jewishness and their spiritual lives, one may note a parallel developing phenomenon in Israel (the kibbutzim being no exception) of Jewish renaissance and renewed commitment. In order to explore this phenomenon I will briefly discuss yet another form of a Kaddishrelated text. This version, entitled Kaddish Yerushalaim, was composed by Gadi Raviv, a member of Kibbutz Yagur, where he was born (and where, as mentioned above, the first kibbutz Kaddish was composed). Raviv was ordained as a rabbi at HUC-JIR (Jerusalem, 2013). He serves at the Reform congregation of Karmiel and leads a prayer group in his kibbutz. Raviv’s Kaddish Yerushalaim was composed for a Yom Y’rushalayim ceremony (28 Iyyar), and not in the context of a funeral or of mourning.
Unlike the “traditional” versions of kibbutz Kaddishim, the following text does not replace the transcendental with the human realm but addresses Jerusalem in a manner that combines both the call to the sublime and the profane in a short concise prayer-poem:
Kaddish Yerushalaim Magnify and sanctify In your pavements and skies In your world that was created for your sake And by your life. May your walls roll away from your eyes Lift your face toward peace And may you know but one song Life.29 Composing liturgy for the tense and rather controversial Yom Y’rushalayim, Raviv was not reluctant to use explicit religious language, demonstrating his mastery of Jewish language, symbols, and sentiment. The religious and the political perspectives in the text are clear and overt—this is a charge of peace and of life and, needless to say, Israel’s capital is in desperate need of both. Raviv integrates old and new literary references. He begins with the Kaddish “Magnify and sanctify” (addressing Jerusalem in the imperative), and “In your world that was created for your sake/ And by your life”; he refers to the classical midrash: “May your walls roll away from your eyes,”30 but also borrows from popular Israeli songs: “And may you know but one song.”31
The apparent secularization of both the prayer and the city (mentioning her From CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Summer 2015, copyright (c) 2015 by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Used by permission of Central Conference of American Rabbis. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed, sold or copied with express written permission. dalia marx 88 CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly sidewalks, not just her high heavens) turns into a profound understanding of the proper place Jerusalem should have in our lives and in our days. Instead of the prayer of mourners, it expresses a supplication for life. Kaddish Yerushalaim was not meant to be recited at every service but is reserved for special occasions; it reflects a new voice heard by many Kibbutz members today. It seems that we have come a long way since the deafening silence during that 1923 funeral in Kibbutz Yagur described by Yehudah Sharet or the special Kaddish composed in the 1960s by Zvi She’er, and still there is a major cultural and spiritual gap between She’er’s text and Raviv’s Kaddish Yerushalaim, which was composed a half a century later at the same kibbutz.
This was a journey from the Rhine Valley, where the Mourner’s Kaddish became a device for coping with trauma, to the Jezreel Valley, almost a thousand years later, where Israeli Jews struggle with it, recite it, and even innovate within it in order to cope with human finitude and with their beliefs and fears.32 It seems that even when Jews walk through the Valley of Death, they may draw consolation and strength from the sources, and that is true for religious as well as secular, and even devotedly atheist Jews.
Notes 1. Berl Katznelson, “Mekorot lo Akhzav,” Davar (1934) (the translation of all the texts were made by Rabbi Shelton Donnell and myself).
2. Regarding the Kaddish prayer in general, see the following: Ismar Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History, trans. R. P. Scheindlin, (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993), 80–84; Lawrence A. Hoffman, ed., Minhag ami/My People’s Prayer Book: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries vol. 6 (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing 2002); Stefan C. Reif, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer: New Perspectives on Jewish Liturgical History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 207–10, 219–20; David de Sola Pool, The Old Jewish-Aramaic Prayer, the Kaddish (New York: Sivan Press, 1964); David Telsner, The Kaddish (Jerusalem: Tal Orot Institute, 1995); Wieseltier, Kaddish (New York: Knopf, 1998). See also the first part of Marx, “Kaddish: From the Rhine Valley to Jezreel Valley.”
3. For general information regarding mourning in the non-Orthodox kibbutzim, see Devorah Kalekin-Fishman, “Bereavement and Mourning in Non-Religious Kibbutzim,” Death Studies: Education
Counseling, Care, Law, Ethics 12, no. 3 (1988): 253–70; Nissan Rubin, New Rituals, Old Societies: Invented Rituals in Contemporary Israel (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 92–109; Nissan Rubin, “Death Customs in a Non-Religious Kibbutz,” Israeli Judaism, ed. S. Deshen, C. S. Liebman and M. Shokeid (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995), 323–34.
4. Avraham Azili, The Attitude of Ha-Shomer Ha-tsa`ir to Religion and Tradition (1920–1948) (Givat Havivah, 1984), 10–17 (Hebrew).
5. Muki Tzur, Ta’ir Zvulun, and Hanina Porat, eds., The Beginning of the Kibbutz (Tel-Aviv, 1981), 124. For more examples, see Rubin, “Death Customs,” 327–29 (Hebrew).
6. Rubin, “Death Customs,” 330.
7. The Hebrew word adam, which is grammatically male, refers to the human being in general.
8. Printed in Yalkut Avlut, ed. Zvi Shua and Arye Ben-Gurion (Beit Hashita, 1990), 144 (Hebrew). The poem was set to music by Moshe Rapaport.
9. Shua and Ben-Gurion, Yalkut, 128.
10. Sippura shel Degania (Tel-Aviv, 1962), 123 (Hebrew).
11. Rubin, “Death Customs,” 330. It seems, though, that there is no clear division between these periods and, to some extent, they coincided.
12. Muki Tzur, Lelo Ktonet Passim (Tel-Aviv, 1976), 33 (Hebrew).
13. Rubin, “Death Customs,” 325.
14. Shua and Ben-Gurion, Yalkut, 145.
15. A testimony to the legendary status of this Kaddish is the variety of stories about the circumstances of its creation. According to one, it was already composed in 1948 as a response to the death of Yehoshua Globerman, a commander in the Haganah organization, and the first soldier to be killed in the 1948 war (Shua and Ben-Gurion, Yalkut, 147). But according the archive of Yagur, it was composed in the 1960s. (I thank Rabbi Gadi Raviv of Yagur for the information.)
16. The Yagur Kaddish is recited by the reader while the traditional Kaddish is recited at Yagur if the family chooses it, by the family itself.
17. Yosef Haim Brenner, “Letters to Russia,” Ktavim 3 (1985): 103 (Hebrew).
18. The phrase shemesh Yinon (Ps. 72:17, which I translated as “endure as long as the sun shines”) was understood by the Rabbis as referring to the Messiah (BT P’sachim 54a; BT Sanhedrin 98b).
19. The phrase mutar haadam refers in Ecclesiastes (3:19) to the question whether the human being is preferable to the beast.
20. The phrase yatz’miach purkan is a paraphrase of a sentence included in the Sephardic version of the Kaddish: Yatzmach purkanei vi’karev meshichei (May he bring salvation and draw the Messiah near).
21. The word bik’roa literally means “when knelt down.”
22. Or “the singular voice” or “the voice of the individual” or “the voice of the one.”
23. Shua and Ben-Gurion, Yalkut, 149.
24. Rubin, “Death Customs,” 323.
25. For example, the synagogue instituted and led by Buja (Binyamin) Yogev in Kibbutz Beit Ha’emek. And see Naamah Azulay, “‘A House of Prayer for All Nations,’ Unorthodox Prayer Houses for Nonreligious Israeli Jews,” Between Tradition and Modernity, ed. Larissa Remennick and Ana Prashizky (Bar-Ilan, 2008), 22–41; Rachel Werczberger, “The Jewish Renewal Movement in Israeli Secular Society,” Contemporary Jewry 31, no. 2 (2011): 107–28.
26. For example, in Kibbutz Mazuva, the woman cantor, who served the local congregation for many years, was not allowed to officiate during the High Holy Days of 5972.
27. I thank the sociologist Dr. Nir Resisi, who shared this analysis with me. When an Orthodox synagogue was established in Degania, “the Mother of the Kevutzot,” I wrote its members an open letter, which was published in the press. I concluded with the plea: “You, the sons and daughters of the Kibbutz movement, breathed new life into Judaism by adding content and richness to our holidays, and you even created new ones. When you reach out to Judaism, don’t approach it submissively and with feelings of inadequacy. Approach it securely, with engagement and ownership. Approach it with the happiness that comes with the performance of a commandment.” Ynet, June 8, 2008.
28. In order to fully appreciate the role and status of the Kaddish in Israel, one should examine theological treatment of this prayer. See Yoram Verete and Yaron David, eds., The Kaddish Prayer in Hebrew Literature (Tel-Aviv, 2009) (Hebrew). For musical innovation, see Hanan Yovel, A Personal Siddur (Tel-Aviv, 2009), 70–75 (Hebrew). For graphic artistic depictions of this prayer, a prominent example is the series of silk screens made by the artist Moshe Gershuny; each depicts a word from the Kaddish and creative commentaries. And, finally, for poems citing the Kaddish, see David and Verete, The Kaddish Prayer; Eli Alon, “On the Secular Kaddish,” Hazrimah Hadu-Sitrit shel Haivrit, ed. Zvi Luz (Tel-Aviv, 2011), 144–54 (Hebrew).
29. Gadi Raviv, “Kaddish Yerushalaim,” Barkhu: Platform for Prayer Renewal in Israel, ed. Naama Dafni-Keln and Yehoyada Amir (Jerusalem, 2000), 74.
30. The phrase “May your walls roll away from your eyes” alludes to the Amora Rav, who cites God’s own prayer, where He says: Yehi Tatzon milefanai, sh’yikhbeshu rachamai et ke’asi, v’yagollu rachamai al midotai (“May it be the will before Me, that My compassion would
31. This line alludes to Amos Etinger’s “Lach Y’rushalayim” (For You, Jerusalem): Lach Y’rushalayim bein chomot ha-ir/Lach Y’rushalayim or chadash ya-ir/b’libeinu rak shir echad kayam (“For you, Jerusalem, between the town walls/For you, Jerusalem, a new light will shine/ in our hearts there is only one song/for you, Jerusalem”).
32. In the future, I hope to deal with special Kaddish versions written for the remembrance of the Holocaust.
