Kaddish
By:
Leon Wieseltier
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Average Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Description:
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 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.
Description:
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
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 2000-02-08
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Kaddish -- A tour de force! - Wieseltier's book is a tour de force! Erudite, accessible, touching and deeply personal. I listened to the book during the 11-month mourning period for my mother z"l and found Wieseltier's learning stunning -- in depth and breadth, in his authoritative handling of the source material, and profoundly comforting as well.
Theodore Bikel's reading is pure magic.
Now I'd like to see Kaddish available on DVD so that a wider audience can more easily listen to Wieseltier's work.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Amongst the best - I was given this book when saying kaddish for my mother. I found it insightful, learned and scholarly and not in the least bit indulgent as suggested by other reviewers. Its entirely accessible as one can dip in and out of its pages at will and find interesting and thought provoking material at almost every turn. A touch repetitious yes but then again the ritual of kaddish is itself repetitious but in each recitation perhaps a glimmer of meaning anew. I have been recommending it for the years since and just bought a copy for my bookshelf.
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
KADDISH - Erudite and scholarly, but written in a friendly reader manner. Still a slow but enjoyable read even with a Judaics background of names, history etc.
Written at least at a college level or higher.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
A Sincere, Intellectual, and Philosophical Masterpiece - If you are a religious scholar who is interested in the ancient origins of prayers offered for the dead, no academic research ever published will provide the abundance of insights that can be found on the pages of Wieseltier's "Kaddish."
My book is now dog-eared, highlighted and underlined; and I have a lengthy collection of quotes that I carry with me and continue to review for new meaning. The trick is to read it slowly and often.
"Paper is stronger than stone. The Jews knew this."
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
Moving and learned reflection at times - The reactions to this book are extreme with many people deploring the author's pomposity and self- indulgence and others finding his reflections deep and moving. I read the book with a strong sense of its being a sincere effort to understand how to truly mourn for a parent. I did however sense what one reviewer on Amazon a Mr.Wexler pointed out, that the author says little about who his father really was, shows no great personal connection to him. I too in truth was bothered by the question of making use of a religious rite, or participating in it when one shows an absence of faith in the religion itself. And this raising the real question of what we actually are doing when we are saying Kaddish. If we are not trying to lift up the person's soul, if we do not believe that G-d is truly listening to us then what are we doing?
When I said Kaddish for my father it led me into deeper and deeper connection with the Jewish community , and I would even dare to say brought me closer to G-d. People are different and there is no reason the author of this book should necessarily have gone through a Teshuvah experience in saying Kaddish. But in a way that is what the Tradition truly demands. And that is one aspect of truly honoring and respecting the memory of a parent.
I appreciate the many deep meanings found in the author's explorations but I would have been more positive toward the work had I sensed it was in some way moving toward being a real religious example for others.
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