A WEEKLY LETTER FROM OUR EDITOR IN CHIEF |
A WEEKLY LETTER FROM OUR EDITOR IN CHIEF |
WATCH: Adam Langer interviewed cast members of the original 1950s Broadway and touring productions of “The Diary of Anne Frank” |
I said kaddish for my father last night in a room full of Muslims. Yes, I am aware that only Jews count for a minyan, and there were more than enough. This was at my synagogue in New Jersey, where we ended Passover with “Breadfest,” a dinner that doubled as iftar for local Muslims breaking their daily Ramadan fast. For every man wearing a yarmulke there was a woman in hijab, and they all said “Amen” together as I finished with the line asking God to “make peace for us, and for all Israel, and for all who dwell on earth.” |
After dinner and kaddish, Rabbi Marc Katz showed our Muslim guests the synagogue’s new Torah. (Jodi Rudoren) |
It’s a little awkward, this “Breadfest” idea. Our guests from the Peace Islands Institute — a Muslim group of mostly Turkish immigrants that promotes interfaith dialogue — had not had a morsel or a sip since sunrise. Many of us Jews, meanwhile, had spent the last eight days in holiday-gorge mode, bereft of bread but more than making up for it with matzo balls and matzo brei and macaroons. So we let them at the buffet first. As we dug into the most delicious lentil soup I’ve ever tasted, my friend Peri Smilow and I chatted with a 28-year-old civil engineer named Saja, who grew up in Irbid, a city of some 2 million in northern Jordan. Saja told us that she could not find an engineering job near her home after finishing university. A couple of years later, she won the U.S. visa lottery — and landed in New York just before it was gripped by COVID-19. After a lot of lockdown loneliness and months working as a cashier in a bodega and a clerk in a medical office, Saja finally got a civil engineering job — in New Jersey, which is how she happened to end up at “Breadfast.” It was the first time she’d ever set foot in a synagogue, and she told Peri she’d been a bit worried about it. But soon we were in something of a comparative-theology conversation. It started with what Saja called “messengers,” meaning prophets. She noted that Muslims honor Muhammad above all but also Jesus and Moses and the patriarchs. We explained that Jews don’t really see any of the prophets as adjacent to God in a parallel way to how we understand that Muslims consider Muhammad or Christians think of Jesus. Peri said she sees the Torah itself more in that role —“we are a people of laws,” was how she put it — which was not an analogy I’d have thought of, but not necessarily one I disagreed with. Then we got into the afterlife. Saja confirmed our sense that Muslims see everything on earth as a precursor to heaven or hell — that doing good and avoiding sin and praying and fasting on Ramadan is all about securing that future for your soul. Peri and I struggled a bit to explain Jewish beliefs about heaven and hell and the world to come — because there are so many different Jewish ways of thinking about these things, and also because it’s far less of a focus in our Reform Judaism. Then I shared something I had learned only during these recent weeks of reciting kaddish. There is a Jewish concept called gehinnom, which is often translated as hell but may be more akin to purgatory. “A place of torment for the wicked after death,” is how the Jewish Virtual Library puts it. Having one’s children recite kaddish is said to redeem such a person from gehinnom and allow them to, essentially, get to heaven. And here’s a lovely part: It is said to take 12 months to redeem the most severe sinners, so our tradition of honoring our parents with 11 months of daily kaddishes is a way of signaling that, of course, they would never need the full year’s worth. I asked Saja whether Muslims add any special prayers to their liturgy after a loved one dies. She explained Janazah, the funeral prayer, which is said in the presence of the dead body before burial, to seek forgiveness for them and all dead Muslims. But she also told us about her father’s sister, who died in August, who was sweet and kind and “never bothered any person in her whole life.” “Until today, I remember her every single night,” Saja said. “Every night I just say, ‘May God make you among the people who goes to heaven.’” That’s about when my rabbi, Marc Katz, came over and asked if I wanted to say kaddish. |
One of the benefits of saying kaddish is how it creates space and structure for our grief: a few moments each day to think about the person we lost. |
My dad fulfilled his 11-month obligations to say kaddish for his own parents at Orthodox synagogues — mostly the one he helped build in Newton, Massachusetts, but also minyanim he’d drop in on while visiting me or my sisters in Washington or Chicago and Brooklyn. My daily kaddish since he died Feb. 7 has been more of a mosaic. I’ve recited it many times at my own Reform shul, of course, but also at the Conservative and Reconstructionist ones in my town of Montclair, N.J., which have in-person services on Sunday and Friday mornings, respectively. I regularly Zoom into the beautiful davening at B’nai Jeshurun in Manhattan, and when I can’t make their 8 a.m. start because I have to catch a train into the city, I virtually join my sister's congregation in D.C., Adas Israel, at 7:30. I’ve also tried the creative online services at Mishkan in Chicago and Ikar in Los Angeles, and really love the 15-minute afternoon Torah study + kaddish minyan offered by My Jewish Learning. One Wednesday when I arrived early to pick up my twins from religious school, I did an evening kaddish with their 10th grade class — my rabbi's idea, so the kids could experience the mitzvah of making a minyan for a mourner. This morning, I joined a shiva minyan on a Montclair front porch, for a man I do not know whose 100-year-old mother died during Passover, keeping my kaddish to a whisper to honor his more immediate loss. One of the benefits of saying kaddish is how it creates space and structure for our grief: a few moments each day to think about the person we lost. I try to hear my dad's booming voice in my head saying the words — Yitgadal v’yitkadash — with me, and I often wonder what he would make of his little girl wearing his tefillin while standing in her kitchen reciting his name into a computer screen. He certainly would never have imagined saying kaddish among a roomful of Muslims, and frankly neither did I. |
My friend Peri Smilow showed Saja, who’d never stepped into a synagogue, around the sanctuary. (Jodi Rudoren) |
Saja and many of the other Muslims ducked out during dinner to say their evening prayers in our sanctuary. They were curious about the ark and the Torahs inside it, so after we finished kaddish, Rabbi Katz took one of the scrolls out and unrolled it a bit. He explained that each handwritten Torah takes a scribe working full-time a year to complete. He noted that the scrolls are made of cow hide, stitched together with thread made of cow intestine, using a needle fashioned from a cow bone rather than metal, because metal is a weapon of war. He told them how some 600 members of our congregation had helped put finishing touches on this particular Torah, which our clergy assistant Ronni Pressman donated in memory of her amazing husband, Freddie. It was a far more meaningful way to end Passover than my typical takeout pizza. Too bad the next time the holidays overlap seems to be in 2054. |
Thanks to Matthew Litman for contributing to this newsletter and Laura E. Adkins for editing it. Shabbat Shalom! Questions/feedback: [email protected] |
YOUR WEEKEND READS A FREE, PRINTABLE MAGAZINE OF STORIES TO SAVOR OVER SHABBAT AND SUNDAY |
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| Ben Platt, Leo Frank, Daniel Gordis, Evan Gershkovich, the Rugrats — they’re all in this week’s edition. Plus: an essay from a resident of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, who spent Passover attending the heart-rending funerals, two days apart, of two sisters and their mother who were killed in a terrorist attack. And a look at the myths and songs inspired by a Jewish couple who perished on the Titanic for the 110th anniversary of the ship’s sinking ... which is tomorrow. Download the printable (PDF) ➤ |
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WATCH: PLAYING ANNE FRANK |
I’m hoping you’ve been listening to our podcast diving deep into the cultural history of The Diary of Anne Frank, from the original 1955 Broadway production through the Oscar-winning 1959 film and several high school versions just last year. Earlier this month, podcast host and Forward executive editor Adam Langer talked live with several former members of the earliest casts — actors who had not seen each other in 70 years. Click below to watch their conversation. |
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A BINTEL BRIEF: MY EX SAYS I’M NO LONGER JEWISH |
(Illustration by Mira Fox) |
They cited West Side Story and The Big Lebowski. Some readers offered to accompany our convert to synagogue in solidarity, others cursed her former husband in English and Yiddish for suggesting her Judaism was invalidated by their divorce. Readers responded with outrage and support to our latest Bintel Brief advice column, in which culture writer Mira Fox reassured a woman who converted to Judaism that she remains a member of the tribe no matter what her rotten ex-husband has to say. While Mira leaned on Talmudic citations, many of those reacting on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit pulled more from popular culture. Like this rewrite of of West Side Story’s “Jet Song”: Once you’re a Jew, you’re a Jew all the way,
from your first challah slice to your last dying day.
Once you’re a Jew, when the schmaltz hits the pan
You’ve got latkes around, you’re a Hanukkah Man. |
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| Mira Fox was named a finalist this week for the Deadline Club award in Arts Reporting. The honored article was her deep dive into an all-Mormon production of Fiddler on the Roof during its 50th anniversary year. It’s rare to finish “a longform narrative about the intersection of two very different religious groups and emerge with a newfound sense of hope rather than despair,” her editor, Adam Langer, wrote in his nomination. But this one leaves you wanting “to raise a toast and declare, Fiddler-style, ‘To Life!’” Read the story ➤ |
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