Kaddish [Paperback]

Leon Wieseltier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 8, 2000

Winner of the 1998 National Jewish Book Award

"An astonishing fusion of learning and psychic intensity; its poignance and lucidity should be an authentic benefit to readers, Jewish and gentile." --The New York Times Book Review

Children have obligations to their parents: the Talmud says "one must honor him in life and one must honor him in death." Leon Wieseltier, a diligent but doubting son, recites the Jewish prayer of mourning at his father's grave, and then embarks on the traditional year of saying the kaddish daily.

Wieseltier's highly acclaimed Kaddish is the spiritual and thoughtful journal of one of America's most brilliant intellectuals. Driven to explore th origins of the kaddish, from the ancient legend of a wayeard ghost to a 17th-century Ukranian pogrom, he offers as well a mourner's response to the questions of fate, freedom, and faith stirred up in death's wake. Lyric, learned, and deeply moving, Kaddish>/b> is suffused with love: a son's embracing of the traditon bequethed to him by his father, a scholar's savoring of its beauty, and a writer's revealing it, proudly unadorned, to the reader.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Leon Wieseltier's Kaddish is a completely new kind of book. It is not quite philosophy, autobiography, history, or Midrash, but it blends all of these genres into a narrative of Wieseltier's grief during the year following his father's death. Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, is a mostly unobservant Jew whose grief compelled him to observe his religion's rituals of mourning, daily attending synagogue to recite the Kaddish (the traditional Jewish prayers of mourning). He also delved deeply into a vast range of texts describing the history and spiritual significance of these prayers. And he wrote incessantly, describing with force and clarity the process of bringing his mind and heart to bear on the grief that consumed him. Perhaps the best way of describing this moving, illuminating, hopeful, awe-filled book is to quote a stray line from the first page of the book's first chapter: "Out of tears, thoughts." --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

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.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (February 8, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375703624
• ISBN-13: 978-0375703621
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #349,729 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful journal/journey, February 7, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Kaddish (Hardcover)

This "Gentile reader" (as compared to the 19th century "gentle reader") loved this oh-so-Jewish work. Mr. Wieseltier's book is meditative and beautiful, more like bedside reading (dip in a bit at a time) than a strict narrative. I have read with some bemusement the reviewers here who didn't like it. They seem threatened by an intellectual man who uses his full intellect to consider his faith, or lack of it. Personally, I found this book elegant, engaging, and full of warmth and even occasional humor. My own father is dying, and it helped me ponder his circumstances while thinking about my eventual response to his impending death. Magnificent work.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars scholarly, pedantic,even, yet somehow emotional too, May 1, 2000

By 

"taboreb" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kaddish (Hardcover)

I could not wait to read this book. And I could not put it down. I was filled with awe at the scholarship of Jewish people when the rest of Europe was illiterate and uncivilized. I was amazed by the compassionate (and occasionally not so compassionate) views the rabbis had towards mourners and mourning. I learned more than I had thought I could about this odd practice, which Wieseltier made odder still. I agree with all the comments about narcissism, pomposity and the like becuase the author epitomizes those traits and others like them but in my opinion the book transcends its author's limitations and was utterly fascinating in its breadth and depth. As it maddened me at times and lost me in its obscurity at others I was among those who couldn't put it down. By having slogged through this mighty tome, I felt that my kaddish for my own father was enriched.

And in the end, with all the pedantry and scholasticism and weight, the author ends in a spiritual and emotional way.

I imagined him having a relationship with his father in death, through the creation of this book, that he could not have during his father's life. And to that, amen.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, thoughtful and deeply felt, December 16, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kaddish (Hardcover)

It's impossible to categorize this book, because it simply doesn't fit into any conventional category. I'll have to explain exactly what it is: a journal kept by the author in the year after his father's death, in which he researches, ruminates, and comments on Judaism. The book is so intense that I got the impression that he spent the entire year (a) saying kaddish and (b) sitting in a tea room poring over ancient manuscripts. It's a privelege to get a chance to peek into the results of an entire year of study -- not to mention the mind of the author, who at times is brilliant. He is not trying to apologize for anything or to prove anything: he is simply, and honestly, thinking. This is not a book to be read in one sitting; I found myself reading a few pages at a time and then thinking about them. But the book is so well-written that I was in no rush to finish.