“I appeared to Avraham, to Yitzchak and to Yaakov...” (6:3)
This the third of a series of tributes to my mother (hk’m) who passed away just under a month ago.
When my father (a”h) was saying kaddish for his own father, he once told me something very honest. He said he felt a little disappointed with the kaddish. “It doesn’t say anything about the person who passed away,” he said; “it doesn’t describe their life, their goodness, their uniqueness. It just says Yisgadal v’Yiskadash Shemei Rabbah — may Hashem’s Name be magnified and sanctified.”
In Parshat Va’era, Hashem tells Moshe: “Va’era el Avraham, el Yitzchak, v’el Yaakov b’Keil Shakai, u’shmi Hashem lo nodati lahem - I appeared to Avraham, to Yitzchak and to Yaakov in the name of Keil Shadkai, but my name Hashem, I did not make know to them.” The Avos lived in a reality where G-dliness was naturally present, where faith did not need to be asserted. It did not need to be made known to them. Moshe lived in a world of exile — a world where Hashem is concealed, where His presence must be made known, it must be declared.
Every soul, every neshama, is a unique revelation of Hashem in the world. When a neshama leaves, a channel of light is gone. And that is precisely why kaddish does not speak about the departed; because the task of the living is not to describe what was, but to restore what is missing. My mother, Hareni Kaporas Mishkavah, had a light that people sensed immediately. When she left this world, something went quiet, that unique light left the world.
And so when I say kaddish I am proclaiming Hashem’s greatness because, when my mother passed away, that greatness became a little less self-evident in this world. By saying kaddish, I am bringing back some of that radiance that my mother’s neshama revealed in this world.
