My Dad loved baseball games. At the ballpark, we would sit together, eating our peanuts, discussing each nuance of possibility. “Baseball is like poetry,” Dad would say, where innings become rhythms of pace and pause. Father and son, side by side, the diamond before us.
Dad would relish his one beer, after which a touch of foam inevitably appeared on his mustache. This always made me smile. Dad seemed to know everything about the game. “Now’s the time for a hit and run!” or “Time to bring in the southpaw!” He rejected sitting too close to the field. “Perspective, John.” Dad was a kid again, all smiles, excited, revved up. How I loved being with him at those games.
Kaddish. Kaddish is what one says when a parent passes. It is the Torah way. Saying the Kaddish prayer, like doing any mitzvah here in our physical world where the deceased no longer can, has the extraordinary ability to lift the soul of the deceased higher and higher. As such, the experience of Kaddish is for me, a connection to my dear father, a connection to my Dad.
Kaddish is also something of a marathon: three times a day at shul for 11 straight months, leading the prayers, praying loud enough so that all can hear and follow. It takes breath, consistency, endurance, resilience. It takes a fastidious rearranging of work schedules and vacations. It takes honor and love.
And if you’re late to shul, by chance, then you’ve missed that moment to say Kaddish. Opportunity lost. I confess to some restless nights, fearful that I would slip up.
Dad, I will not let you down. You and Mom brought me into this physical world. I’ll be there.
And Dad, you lovingly wrote to me years ago that although you considered yourself at peace knowing that I would be your Kaddish. You wrote: “It’s always good to have an ace in the hole.” I embraced those words, Dad, like a soldier.
And so it was not by accident that at the end of my 11 months of Kaddish that I went to a baseball game. Celebrate my Dad. As the crowd roared in the background, those nine guys meant everything to me.
To say Kaddish one needs a minyan, a quorum of 10 men. In the Torah world, we are not alone. Needing nine Jewish men to join me, Rabbi Silverman came to the rescue, as he had already organized a “Jewish college students night at the ballpark” for that very game.
Now, I can’t tell you the names of any of those college students who left their seats for me, none of those young men who spared their time to help a fellow Jew say Kaddish for his deceased father. But there they were—some knew Hebrew, some did not, but that didn’t matter. Simply being there was the key, the power of 10 Jews together.
For without all 10 of us, whether they understood fully or not, I would not have been able to say that last Kaddish, the culmination of 11 consistent months, of 990 minyans, of never missing once. And so, as the crowd roared in the background, those nine guys meant everything to me.
As I walked back to my seat, I realized how much my Dad would have loved the whole scene. I could feel him there with me, smiling, thanking me, loving me and then urging me to get back to my seat soon, not to miss another pitch. Tears welled up inside me as I took that walk, another goodbye to my father.
As I approached my seat, there was my son, caught up in the moment, the thrill of a ballgame, pistachios in hand.
He looked up at me with a big smile on his face, and said: “Hi, Dad!”
Dr. John Yaakov Guterson received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He now resides in Pittsburgh, Pa., with his wife, Amy, where he works as a psychiatrist.
Reprinted with permission from Chabad.org
