Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Ari Goldman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 2003

The best-selling author of The Search for God at Harvard continues his spiritual quest in this heartfelt and poignant account of the year he spent saying kaddish for his father.

The day after Ari Goldman celebrated his fiftieth birthday his father died of a heart attack, and Goldman began the ritual year of mourning required by Jewish law. There were the obligations (the daily recitation of kaddish in a
synagogue quorum of ten), the prohibitions (no listening to music or buying new clothes), and the self-examination that the death of a parent and the mourning rituals triggered. Death meant coming to terms with a father he loved but never fully understood, in part because of his parents’ divorce and its stormy aftermath.

Goldman explores the emotional and spiritual aspects of spending a year in mourning, as he examines its effects on him as a husband, father, and member of his community. Left without parents (his mother died four years earlier), he is no longer a son to anyone, but he comes to understand that through the daily recitation of kaddish, he can both connect with and honor his mother and his father in a way that he could not always do during their lifetimes. And in his daily synagogue attendance—usually near his Manhattan home but also, during the course of his travels in Israel, the Catskills, and France—he finds his fellow worshipers to be an unexpected source of strength, wisdom, and comfort.

Living a Year of Kaddish is a deeply affecting journey through grief, loss, and acceptance—a book that will resonate for people of all faiths who struggle with the inevitability of losing the ones they love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Goldman (The Search for God at Harvard; Being Jewish), a former New York Times reporter who is now an assistant dean at the Columbia University School of Journalism, offers a clearly written autobiographical memoir that appears at first glance to be simple and straightforward. In fact, it is a profound and sophisticated examination of human relationships, particularly between a son and his parents. A modern Orthodox Jew, Goldman writes about observing the ritual requirements following the death of his father, as he had done four years earlier for his mother. Among these rituals is the obligation to "say kaddish" each day for 11 months. This Aramaic poem, which praises God, is recited in daily prayer services in the synagogue with 10 men present. In the memoir, Goldman describes the people he met and the experiences he had as he fulfilled this commitment. More importantly, he uses this as an opportunity to explore his relationships with his parents, who divorced when Goldman was six. Finding himself an orphan at age 50, Goldman forthrightly shares his ruminations about the meaning of this status, and sensitively scrutinizes the implications of such insights for his relationships with his wife, children, brothers and friends. What comes across with crystal clarity is the remarkable personal growth Goldman achieved during this period. His narrative has an inspirational quality for everyone confronting the inevitable loss of parents.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

A Jewish son is duty bound to recite the kaddish prayer daily for an 11-month period after his father's death, an act of reverence for a deceased parent. In the midst of grief and personal loss, it is an expression of faith and trust in God. Professor Goldman, author of The Search for God at Harvard (1991), examines the spiritual and emotional aspects of this ritual and how this period of mourning affected him in his role as a father and husband. "Sometimes I think of my whole life as a search for my father," Goldman writes, regretting that after his parents had been divorced 44 years earlier, he saw his father as only a "distant presence." Goldman describes the daily recitation of kaddish in an Orthodox synagogue near his Manhattan home and recounts his friendship with the nine other men required by Jewish law to make a minyan. The book is a poignant chronicle of bereavement and solace to be read by Jews and non-Jews alike who mourn the loss of a loved one. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Schocken Books; 1st Edition, 1st Printing edition (August 26, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805241841
• ISBN-13: 978-0805241846
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,267,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a prayer renews him; a book renews you, August 27, 2003

By 

Larry Mark "editor of MyJewishBooks.com" (nyc) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Value of Religious Rituals in Confronting Grief, October 16, 2003

By 

Paula D. Matuskey (Ellicott City, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than a memoir..., September 18, 2003

By 

Chris Zimmerman (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living a Year of Kaddish: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.