CONCLUDING PRAYERS: (2) KADDISH 
MEDITATIONS BEFORE THE KADDISH
LIGHT AND MEMORY — THE LIGHT OF MEMORY
Cantor Andrew Bernard

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The pre-Kaddish meditations in Mishkan T’filah (pp. 592–597) reflect our enormous struggle to understand and reconcile ourselves to death. There is a degree of irony — don’t you think? — that death, the most universal of experiences (no exceptions; no exemptions) should, at the same time, be one of the least understood in all of human existence. And yet this most basic of struggles brings us back to the fundamental task of religion, which is to provide the framework within which we might wrestle with the unknowable questions: why are we here? do the events in our lives have meaning? what happens when we die?

“When cherished ties are broken, and the chain of love is shattered….”
Death is a unique doorway: one passes through it in only one direction and there is no opportunity to get a glimpse of what is on the other side. When a loved one passes through that doorway, the equilibrium on the side of the living is forever disrupted. A thread in the delicate web of human interaction is broken and each life that is touched is thrown into chaos. Healing is the process through which we strengthen or reconfigure those threads in an effort to create a new equilibrium. As for what lies on the other side of the doorway…it remains unseen.

“When tears dim our vision or grief clouds our understanding, we often lose sight of God’s eternal plan.”
The common themes of the pre-Kaddish meditations are light and memory. While light is a multi-faceted symbol in our culture, its original purpose was to initiate the transformation of chaos into order. God creates light first because subsequent elements of creation are incomprehensible without it. In the aftermath of death, darkness envelops us. Grief blinds us. We can neither see or even imagine a way forward.

“…we are more than a memory slowly fading into the darkness. With our lives we give life.”
Darkness elicits more fear than even the bleakest of landscapes. When God brought light upon the earth, the landscape began to take form: the waters became distinct from the sky; the continents from the oceans. With light, our new reality comes into focus. We begin to get our bearings and perhaps take our first, tentative steps ahead.

“And so it is with the people we loved — their memories keep shining ever brightly….”
And although death breaks the physical and existential bond with our loved ones, it cannot extinguish the internal light — the light of memory. While we cannot see what has become of them beyond the doorway of death, we continue to experience their presence through memory. Healing entails not only redefining our relationships with the living but forging a new, ongoing relationship with the dead. We continue to learn from them and grow as we reflect upon their lives. Their stories become our stories. Their gifts and accomplishments inform our own.

“For your life has lived in me,…your word was gift to me.”
I struggle the most when a question pops into my head that I know is best answered by that special person who is no longer here. I suffer the emptiness most when the one person who could truly appreciate what I just accomplished is no longer around to share it with. But healing…healing has begun when I understand instinctively the answer they would have given; when I know how proud they would have been — how proud they are — of me.

“You can love me best by letting hands touch hands….”
Transforming the memories of our loved ones into a world of action lights a path for us and for those we touch. Some assume their loved one’s role at work, in the community, or in their synagogue. Others create foundations or pursue hands-on charitable work in tribute to them. For me — and I imagine many others — bringing their memory into the world comes through simpler and more modest means: a helping hand, a shoulder to cry on, a random act of kindness. Whenever we act from the inspiration of those we’ve lost, their memory becomes an ongoing presence in the world.

“In the faces of men and women I see God….”
And in struggling with the loss of those we’ve loved, we turn our emptiness into a new wholeness, we turn the light of their memory into their eternity, and we reach out a hand to the One who is the Source of love and joy.

“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei rabbah….” 

Andrew Bernard has served as cantor at Temple Beth El in Charlotte, NC since 1999, and is in his fifth year as chaplain specialist at the Levine Children’s Hospital. He was invested as a cantor in 1998 and did his CPE residency at Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati before moving to Charlotte. He is currently a vice-chair of the URJ’s Joint Commission on Worship, Music and Religious Living.

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