Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir

The other reviewers have all given this excellent book the only reasonable rating -- five stars. I concur with their judgment and also with their descriptions of what the book is about. My take is just a bit different, however. I found the book inspirational and consoling, as they did, but I was struck mainly by how unusually informative it is, and in several ways. The author is a seasoned reporter (now a professor of journalism at Columbia), and, perhaps without specifically intending to, it is this craft that gives his book its very specific value. As someone who is not a stranger to synagogue life in New York City, I found the description of modern Jewish Orthodoxy (Manhattan style) eye-opening. Goldman writes with great sympathy about this social milieu, but (and you sometimes have to read carefully and slowly) he does not shrink from telling it as it is. Very much unlike the usual in-house sentimentality that is found in synagogue bulletins, there is hard-headed, incisive reporting here. Read carefully, keep your eyes open ! (I will not spoil your enjoyment by giving away just what it is that I found so hard-headed and unsentimental).

Living a Year of Kaddish lets us look in on a man's search to come to grips with the devastating loss of his father, something I recently experienced. Reading this book gave me great comfort and I thank Ari Goldman for baring his soul in a way that helps others.

This is a lovely book which shows how the Jewish ritual of Kaddish helped the author come to grips with his father's life and death, as well as his own life. Being an Episcopalian married to someone whose Mother was Jewish (but did not attend temple), I found the author's description of his shul, the life within it, and the practice of prayer to be extremely powerful and informative. And the spiritual journey that the author embarked upon in the process was engaging. I had read his early book about his sabbatical at Harvard Divinity School, and was inspired by that work as well. The sharing of personal stories helps all of us live. Thanks to this author for again helping us on our own journeys.

Living a Year of Kaddish portrays one man's search to come to terms with the loss of his father. But it does more than that: it shows, with vivid and stirring vignettes, how the most painful pages of a life (divorce, estrangement, and death are some of the ones Goldman grapples with) need not be turned with the bitterness of a victim, but can be read with the openness of a student who is willing to learn, and to grow. Goldman is an Orthodox Jew, and as the title of his book makes clear, he draws first and foremost on the religious and cultural traditions that have shaped his family for generations. But he does not write for fellow believers alone. A keen-eyed observer with a gift for distilling the universal from the particular, he speaks in terms that will resonate with a wide and varied readership.

When Ari Goldman was six, his parents divorced. They were as different as the North and South poles. Goldman remained part of each of their lives through his commitment to 1950's-style Orthodox Judaism. In September 1999, Ari Goldman turned fifty. He had a party. The next morning he got a call. His father, 77, was dead in Jerusalem. The funeral would be in a few hours, since Shabbat would soon begin in Israel. Goldman tore his shirt and began to mourn. He sat shiva for his father only one day, since Sukkot started the next day. He went on to mourn for his father for the required 30 days, and then the full 11 months. Ari inherited his father's tallit (which he wore and made his own). In this memoir, he tells the reader about the people he touched and those who touched him during his year of saying kaddish. He writes that while the kaddish will not bring back the dead, it will bind one to the community horizontally, and redeem a death vertically. Ari finds that so many people have their own kaddish stories to share with him, and he shares some with us. In this book, he knits a story being an "avel", of mourning, of loss (loss of parents, loss of one's regular seat in the synagogue). He writes about mentoring, on modeling an upright life to his kids, and his brand of Fifties-style Judaism. There are also asides on the various people he meets when he seeks out shuls in which to say kaddish on the road. He explores his daughter's conflicts when she is forced to move to the women's side of the mechiza at the age 12. He reflects upon the power of the kaddish and how the passage of time changes his approach to the prayer and the process. He honestly asks himself why he tells people he is mourning. Is it a badge on his lapel? Is he seeking some sort of status? Comfort? Honor? It is a story of loss, of growth, as well as the fascinating story of how his neighborhood shul became resurrected.