Kaddish

24 or so hours ago, a 13 year old boy tidied his room, laid out his photo albums on the kitchen table, sent messages to his closest friends' E-mail and parents' SMS; and then went out into the darkness of the wee hours of the morning and shot himself in the head with his father's pistol before the rising sun.

He went to Odelia's school, a year ahead of her. She went to his funeral, and I went because she had never been to one and I knew she wasn't prepared for what she would see.

They brought the boy to the graveyard and the father, prompted word for word by our Rabbi, said:

"The Lord gives. The Lord takes. Blessed be the Lord."

Nothing can describe a broken father asking forgiveness from his son deaf and dumb, or a mother's scream when they start to throw stones and soil on his body.

30 years ago a girl and I decked out like grown-ups and went to Leonard Bernstein's "Kaddish" at Portland's Civic Auditorium. The music was heaven. But somewhere after intermission a soloist began to read angry and defiantly to God; and I heard enough blasphemy, grabbed my girl and made for the aisle in righteous indignation.

I've heard the prayer for the dead, Kaddish, before. Many times. I'm a Jew now.

"Let His mighty name be blessed forever and ever more."

Amen

"And blessed and praised and glorified and exalted and extolled and honored and adored and lauded be His name."

Amen

I stood there in the cemetery listening to the father. I don't know him. I don't know if he was numb with pain or valium, or if he is a man of great faith.

I listened to a father forced to praise his Maker in the hour of his agony, and I was incensed no less than I had been 30 years ago.