Mourner's Kaddish

Honoring Those We Have Lost

The Mourner’s Kaddish is a prayer that Jews recite during the year of mourning and on the Yahrzeit—anniversary—of a loved one’s death. The prayer is not a lamentation about grief and loss, as we might expect. Instead, the Mourner’s Kaddish praises God. We honor our loved ones by testifying publicly to our faith, by refusing to succumb to anger and despair, and by expressing our gratitude for the blessings in our lives.

Memorial Day is our national Mourner’s Kaddish. It’s when we commemorate the people who have given their lives to protect our country, and when we mourn the victims of hatred and war.

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The Mountains Are My Temple

Last Friday was my dad’s Yahrzeit. (You can read about Dad’s adventures, love for his family, and service to his community here.) I chose to honor Dad by going on my favorite hike, the (aptly-named) Mountain View and North Face trails high above the Lauterbrunnen Valley. This choice is not as eccentric as it might sound; as a kid I loved exploring and would dart down every path into the woods, and Dad would come along, to keep me safe and probably also because he, like me, was curious where the path led.

The hike began unpropritiously. My weather app, which errs on the optimistic side, had predicted sun, but the clouds were heavy as I climbed into the car. On the drive there, I couldn’t help noticing that the mountains were still capped with snow. Would the trail even be open? I wondered. I rode a nearly-empty cable car up to the start of the hike and hoped for the best. The trail was indeed open, so I set out on the first segment of the hike, which ascends steeply up through the woods. By the time I emerged from the woods, the clouds were beginning to clear. For the rest of the hike, the clouds blew past, giving glimpses of the mountains ahead of me. There was snow all around, but very little on the path itself. I felt as though Dad were accompanying me and clearing the way, just as he did when I was a little girl.

There’s God!

Whenever Dad would see sunbeams streaming through the clouds, he would exclaim, “There’s God!” On the one hand, he was making a joke about those kitschy religious landscape paintings we’re all familiar with. But on the other hand, for most of us the awesome beauty of nature does evoke the sense of a greater power outside of us—be it God, Mother Nature, the universe, or however we think of it.

In spite of the religious theme of this post, I am actually pretty secular. I go to the mountains to be astonished and overpowered by the magnificent vistas all around me, and it’s then that I think, “There’s God!”

My hikes also remind me to look for smaller, less-obvious miracles. After I took the photo above, I turned 180 degrees to take the photo below, of the mathematically-precise, tesselated leaves of these yellow gentians, and of the cheery wildflowers bravely pushing up through the frozen ground. There’s God!

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But say we don’t have any handy nearby mountains. We can still look around us for signs and wonders right in our own neighborhood. I am currently reading John Green’s excellent book The Anthropocene Reviewed and just finished a chapter about the importance of paying attention. Green takes his little boy, Henry, on a hike through the woods. He keeps “trying to get my oblivious two-year-old to appreciate the landscape.” Instead, Henry picks up a fallen oak leaf and hands it to his dad.

I soon realized it wasn’t just a brown leaf. Its veins spidered out red and orange and yellow . . . and the more I looked at that leaf with Henry, the more I was compelled into an aesthetic contemplation. . . .

Marveling at the perfection of that leaf, I was reminded that aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether you look as what you see. From the quark to the supernova, the wonders do not cease. It is our attentiveness that is in short supply, our ability and willingness to do the work that awe requires. [pp. 32–33]

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My mom’s friends pay attention. They remembered that Friday was the anniversary of Dad’s death, and they didn’t want Mom to be alone on such a sad day. They postponed their Memorial weekend plans, got the whole gang together, and took Mom out to dinner at their local hangout. There’s God!

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Speaking of dining together, I stopped at a favorite restaurant for my traditional end-of-hike beer, which I enjoyed in warm conviviality with the other customers. From our perch on the patio, we greeted strolling tourists of all ages who came from—by my count—about a dozen nations, and we basked in the awe-inspiring splendor of the Alps, sipping our drinks (or quaffing them, if you’re me; hiking is thirsty work!). I was reminded of A. E. Housman’s immortal words, “And malt does more than Milton can / To justify God’s ways to man.” There’s God!

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Dad died around 8:45pm CST on May 23, 2024. At 8:45pm CET on May 23, 2025, this double rainbow appeared in front of our house. Thanks for checking in, Dad! I love you, and I miss you.

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How about you, readers? What inspires you? Do you have any special rituals for honoring the people you have lost? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Tidbit

When I was a high school teacher, I had the honor of singing Ravel’s setting of the Kaddish for our school’s Holocaust Remembrance Day service in Washington’s National Cathedral. The performance below, by Hagar Sharvit, is stunning. Sharvit’s rich, velvet alto stops time. She imbues the prayer with meditative, transcendent awe.