Our new national mourner’s kaddish

My father of blessed memory died on December 3, 2024. Since then, I’ve been saying the mourner’s kaddish. I was not a stranger to Jewish prayer before my father’s passing, but I also wasn’t a consistent attendee of daily minyanim (prayer quorums). To say the kaddish, one needs ten Jewish adults (ten Jewish men in Orthodox communities). Now I seek out these minyanim for the morning, afternoon and evening services, every day, seven days a week.

In Israel, it is easy to find a minyan. When I am traveling, it’s a little harder. But I have learned how to find them, and over the past four months I have prayed at 56 different synagogues and minyanim, in five countries. I’ve said kaddish with a sparse crowd in the magnificently grand Stadttempel in central Vienna; with an eclectic group of travelers in the boisterous duty-free shop at the Athens airport; and with a friendly gathering at the Chabad House in Knoxville, Tennessee. This past Passover, I said kaddish with tens of thousands attending birkat kohanim, the priestly blessing, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. And after finishing a hike near the Dead Sea, I said kaddish in a small ultra-Orthodox shtiebel in the Negev desert town of Arad.    

While the venues are different, the kaddish itself is the same. When my eleven months of saying kaddish come to an end, I will have recited the prayer about 2,500 times. It has become sort of like a mantra. I know it by heart. I know when to pause for sefardim who add a few extra words. When reciting the last line, my feet take the traditional three steps backward automatically as if moving on their own.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba… Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name… This mantra is like a signpost that punctuates my day. It is as if, as an antidote to the grief of losing a loved one, we stubbornly and defiantly and repeatedly declare – again and again and again – our conviction that God will make His presence felt on Earth, that His name will be glorified, and that He will bless us with abundant peace.

There has been a lot of grief here in Israel over the past 18 months, and many Israelis have found themselves saying kaddish for a parent or a spouse or a sibling or a child who was taken tragically and violently and unfairly too soon. One of the ways our visual environment has changed in Israel has been the proliferation of stickers to memorialize fallen soldiers, murdered Nova festivalgoers, or others killed in this devastating war.

These stickers are everywhere. You see them at bus stops and train stations, covering signposts on hiking trails from the Golan to the desert, stuck on storefront windows, car bumpers, electrical boxes, and on the glass display case of my favorite bakery. These stickers are at Ben Gurion Airport and in the Old City of Jerusalem, and on nearly every metal streetlamp pole as I walk around town in Ra’anana.

Just like the kaddish is a mantra that punctuates multiple moments of my day, these stickers pervade our daily lives in Israel countless times from morning to night. And just like the kaddish, the stickers for the fallen typically contain mantras that stubbornly and defiantly and repeatedly – again and again and again – declare a conviction that better days lie ahead, that God will make His presence felt on Earth, and that He will bless us with abundant peace.

The mourner’s kaddish is in medieval Aramaic, and the formulation is at least eight centuries old. The stickers of the fallen contain slogans in modern Hebrew – sometimes using slang, other times quoting from scripture – but always fresh and meaningful to the people they are memorializing. It is as if the ancient Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, have now been supplemented by Pirkei Banim U’Vanot, a new Ethics of our Sons and Daughters.

Most of the stickers follow the same pattern: next to the deceased’s name and smiling face is a phrase or sentence of memorial. And what is striking is how positive, how inspiring, how hopeful these phrases are.

Many urge us to smile. Like the sticker in memory of Sgt. Roni Eshel, 19: “Do everything with a smile. It’s easier.” Or the one in memory of Staff Sgt. Birhanu Kassie, 22: “There are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all.” Others are about love: “I hereby accept upon myself to love,” in memory of Cpt. Yaron Chitiz, 23. Or the sticker in memory of Master Sgt. (Res.) Dan Wajdenbaum, 24: “Hug the person next to you.”

Some are deep professions of faith, like the sticker in memory of David Newman, 25, who grew up haredi and was murdered at Nova: “Everything falls apart – for the better.” Or the one in memory of Yehonatan Hagbi, 18, murdered while visiting his grandparents in Moshav Yakhini: “I believe, despite the difficulty and great pain, that everything is from Hashem.”

Others emphasize humility: “He who talks doesn’t act, and he who acts doesn’t talk,” in memory of Sgt. Uriel Peretz, 23. Or selflessness: “The greatest quality a person can have is the ability to make another person happy,” in memory of Staff Sgt. Shachar Fridman, 21. Some stress unity: “It only works together; we won’t succeed alone,” in memory of Maj. Jamal Abbas, 23. For others, the theme is joy: “Be happy, because happiness is contagious,” in memory of Staff Sgt. Itay Parizat, 20. Others express unbridled optimism, like the sticker in memory of Cpl. Hadar Miriam Cohen, 18: “The flowers will bloom again – you’ll see, it will be okay.” Or the one in memory of Cpt. Yarden Zakay, 21: “Find the good in everything.”

War is brutal. The loss and pain are unbearable. As we approach our second Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) since that horrific Shabbat morning in October 2023, I have been taking the time to read these stickers as I walk down the street. It forces me to stop multiple times with every mundane errand. And collectively, the stickers literally overwhelm you with both grief and hope. With loss and love. With the images of hundreds of beautiful, smiling, young men and women who are with us no longer, and with incessant, relentless messages of optimism, courage and faith.

The mourner’s kaddish is similarly unrelenting. Throughout the day, it seems I am always running off to minyan to declare that God will bring peace to the people of Israel. This is in our DNA. When faced with adversity and loss, we overwhelm it with unyielding declarations of optimism and hope. So of course we plaster our towns with these stickers. It is in a way what we have always done.

“What are you worried about? Everything is good,” in memory of Sgt. Ariel Sosnov, 20. “To life, to life,” in memory of Sgt. 1^st Class Sivan Weil, 20.

It is our new, national mourner’s kaddish.

Stickers on a door in the Mahane Yehuda market, Jerusalem. Photo by the author.