The Zeitgeist

 Davening in The Hall of the Dead

This story appeared in many Jewish newspapers in the US in September, 2019

The lights are lit bracketing the bronze plaque bearing the name of Herbert Barbanel, Nechemia ben Avraham Moshe. It’s up front on the right, towards the bottom of one of the giant yahrtzeit frames that fill nearly all the wall space in this small old beit medrash.

When in New York (I spend most of the year in Miami) you can find me in the second row to the right, perpendicular to the plaques of my parents. By Long Island standards this is an old room, built in the early 1950s. It has all-original brass chandeliers and casement stained glass windows. The dedication plaque commemorates the donors’ parents who were nifter in the Shoah. By Brooklyn or Manhattan measure, it’s not that old of a room. Yet this space houses what seems like the names of thousands of the dearly departed spanning most of the 20^th and up through the first 20 percent of the 21^st Century. Vacancies are in short supply. If you want to be memorialized in this small sanctuary, you’d better reserve your spot pretty soon.

Before, during and after davening my eyes wander across the walls. I see the parents, grandparents and other relatives of most of the Five Towners I know along with other members of the shul who I knew back in the day.  If you ever want to feel relatively insignificant in the panoply of Jewish life, just spend time in this room. Life is finite and it’s molded in bronze. The plethora of yahrtzeit plaques makes tangible King Solomon’s words in Kohelet that if you want to understand the meaning of life, visit a house of mourning not a house of partying. Like on the Mount of Olives when all the wall space is gone they’ll have to start double and triple stacking.

There are also very sizable metal plaques recognizing those who built the shul in 1950-51 and then those who built the annex with the social hall in 1972. All of these leaders of the community from those days are long gone. It gives you a sense of how short the lease on life truly is. In 25 or 30 years, the names of those who paid for the recent renovation will also seem like ancient history to those milling about the lobbies.

Herbert Barbanel was my father and his second yahrtzeit is coming up fast. To everyone but his kids my father was variously known as Herb, Herbie, Chem or Chemki depending on who you were in the hierarchy of family and friends and when you met him; Mr. Barbanel if you please in business. I first met him in the Fall of 1962 when I had just turned four years old. He and my Mom met and started dating on Labor Day weekend of that year. To my mother it was imperative that whomever she dated would hit it off with her son and want to be my father. No evil or indifferent stepfathers need apply. Dad fell in love with my mother and with me. We came as a package. He committed to the two us at the same time and he lived up to that commitment in heart, word and deed from the very first day together to his very last.

A real Horatio Alger story, my Dad grew up dirt poor in Brownville, Brooklyn. His father died when he was seven. He went to work at an early age and attended high school and college at night. A member of “The Greatest Generation,” he served his country in the Navy (stationed in Norman, Oklahoma of all places) during the last year and a half of World War II. He scratched and fought his way up from nothing, ultimately to sit with princes of government and captains of industry and commerce.

In 2017 when Dad passed at 90, he had some famous company. Martin Landau (89), Fats Domino (89), Hugh Hefner (91), Harry Dean Stanton (91), Jerry Lewis (91), Adam West (88), Roger Moore (89), Don Rickles (90) and Chuck Barris (87). Fame can be fleeting indeed and soon forgotten. But love, values and Torah endure in the newsfeed of forever.

Like many in his cohort, Dad lived a life of quiet heroism – it’s no small matter to send kids to Jewish day school (as many know all too well today), to camp, to Israel, to college and grad school. Dad was not very Jewishly educated but it was a priority for him to send my brothers and I to get the education he missed out on. They say a mark of a successful Jewish life is if a person has Jewish grandchildren. Dad lived to see those grandchildren and a great-grandchild – all Jewishly committed. Dad, like Noach was “righteous in his time,” the 1950s-1980s was an era of rampant assimilation with most American Jews running as far away as fast as they could from Jewish life. In the face of this Dad wanted Shabbat dinner with kiddush and motzei; celebration of the holidays and a kosher home. If you grew-up on Long Island in that era these were not the prevailing winds in the Jewish world. But against the wind he walked, which ultimately bore fruit in his descendants. V’shinantam l’vanecha. He accomplished that.

He also made it a point to always be home for dinner and to be there. Family was his first priority. When in camp, I would get a short letter from him every day. Not that the letter said all that much, but he wanted you to know he was thinking about you. As I moved into adulthood, we would speak most days, often for just a minute or two and at the end of each call he would say in his Burgess Meredith-like voice, “I love ya, kid.” To say I miss that is a major understatement. He passed just before Rosh Hashanah two years ago and not seeing him there in shul with us for the High Holidays is like a dull ache that does not fade. Dad chose to love me and I him. Often the loves we choose are greater than the loves we have to have.

So, kaddish is coming and it will be said in that room where several generations of mourners have already rent their hearts if not their clothing. There is a comfort in the ongoing continuity of kaddish – a chain that stretches back to the dawn of Jewish time. No one is truly alone or forgotten in the House of Hashem.

I continue to go to shul each day and try to live a good life in the merit of my parents and in the hope that in Olam HaBa G-d will reward this by enabling us to be together again for all of eternity.

The Zeitgeist

Portrait of my late mother, Alice Barbanel at 21.

The 90 Day Post-Mortem Mourning Report on Mom

Or, How Kaddish Helps.

I don’t know where to put Mom. Not Mom in actuality, but her portrait. Mom passed away roughly three months ago and my conundrum is where to hang a wonderful painting of her as a 21 year-old. The portrait had been languishing in my parents’ basement in a rotting frame and after her demise I rescued it (because I couldn’t rescue her) and had it remounted and reframed.

It’s not that I have a dearth of available wall space in my house, it’s that I have no idea where would be most appropriate – how often do I want to see this painting and how prominent a place do I want to accord it?

It’s not as though Mom isn’t in my heart and mind enough already. I miss her terribly and have been not just since she passed but also for the last year and a half of her life when she was afflicted with a serious case of dementia that in many ways stole her away from all of us long before she drew her last breath.

Grief is palpable, like a thick fog redolent with mist and oppressive humidity. It weighs on you by day and by night.  King David, author of many of the Psalms wrote in Psalm 6 that “I am wearied with my sigh, every night I drench my bed, with my tears I soak my couch.” My grief for Mom typically washes over me (and then exits) in a few 30 to 90 second tsunami-like waves of intense sadness and despair in the mornings and evenings (when I’m not working) and in all kinds of nightmares that pop me out of bed at 3:30 a.m.

There is no escape from the Angel of Death, we will all meet up with him eventually. The Sons of Korach, authors of many outstanding Psalms put it bluntly in Psalm 49, “Shall he then live forever, shall he never see the grave?” and “like sheep they are destined for the grave.” And so it was for my mother, notwithstanding her ferocious will to live, the Lord had other plans for her soul.

Dealing With It

Left behind in addition to her children and grandchildren is her spouse of more than five decades (no small accomplishment in this highly disposable modern world), my Dad. Unlike many in my generation, Dad has never lived alone before. He went from his mother’s house to my mother’s house. Dad loved my mother and he fought tooth and nail to keep her alive, but no man, no matter how determined and no matter how many resources he brings to bear can ultimately stay the hand of eternity.

Being a card-carrying member of The Greatest Generation, Dad may be heartbroken but he is not bent. He is resolutely steadfast, stoic and determined to still be a lion, even in winter, because he’s the patriarch of the family, a role he takes very seriously. Recent angioplasty? Handled with aplomb. Figuring out meals? No problem. Contemplating the acquisition of a new car and a significant other? Looking forward. Wallow in grief? Not his style. Got to keep on keeping on, even at 87.

Me? I’m not made of my Dad’s kind of tough stuff. My personality is more like my late mother’s for the good and for the bad (our parents are just human beings, they have their strengths and weaknesses like everybody else) which makes me a bit more sensitive to loss and the ramifications from that.

The Brothers Gibb once queried musically, “how can you mend a broken heart?” In Psalm 147 King David asserts that G-d “is the healer of the brokenhearted and the one who binds up their sorrows” which is one reason why religiously observant Jews say the Mourners Kaddish for 11 months after a close loved one has gone on to the next world. Kaddish is all about the mending.

The Jewish Mourners Kaddish, recited at services three times a day, every day, is not really so much a prayer for the dead or for the benefit of the deceased. It is rather a prayer in praise of G-d and a reaffirmation of the faith for the mourner who recites it – in a sense it’s a prayer for the living, for those left behind. It’s like an Eastern mantra (because it is repeated so often even within a given service) in that its purpose is to impart of measure of transcendental calm for someone who is anything but.

We also say Kaddish to honor the departed in the eyes of the living, as a sign of respect for their lives and the love they gave us, which is one key reason we stand while reciting it.

Until about four and a half years ago I was what could be called a “Shabbat Orthodox Jew,” my Judaism was primarily about Friday night and Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The rest of the week, not so much. Services every day? Seriously? A huge percentage of my friends were and are still like this, as is a large percentage of my shul (synagogue) so it’s not like I was alone in this lifestyle, far from it. I wasn’t even putting on tefillin (phylacteries) in the mornings. As it is for many Jews, this changes when confronted with tragedy.

It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes. The Modern Orthodox extrapolation of that are increases in prayer and observance when dropped into that aforementioned foxhole. And dropped I was, big time. Concurrent with the then impending collapse of my business due to the recession and all its attendant personal financial challenges, my former wife decided to leave our home and file for divorce – a divorce I absolutely didn’t want. This threw me into two years of steady grief and intense anxiety owing to feeling as though I had part of my very soul ripped out and wondering how I’d put my life back together. It was so bad for a time that my friends and family were seriously worried about me. The stress of it all triggered a raft of serious health issues as well (which thank G-d are now mostly behind me). Confronted with these disasters I took to donning tefillin in the mornings and praying at home for the good L-rd’s mercy and salvation.

Just as things started to ease-up for me after a couple of years and I had a few months of relative tranquility, just then my mother started her two year steady descent into death by dementia, which put me back into daily high anxiety mode, meaning I essentially just spent a combined total of more than four years in a perfect purgatory culminating in my mother’s demise, which brings me to Kaddish.

To say the Mourners Kaddish you have to be a part of a Minyan, a quorum of 10 Jewish men (you can’t say it home alone) and where there’s a Minyan, there’s a service and in these services it is most often the obligation of a mourner to lead the prayers, particularly during the week. That’s going to get you into shul every day.

For me Kaddish works as a grief mitigator. In the Minyan there are folks just like you, who in the words of Bill Clinton, “feel your pain,” because they’re going through it themselves. It’s a Hebrew and Aramaic language support group with the people there also imploring the Almighty to prop you up. By forcing the mourners to lead the services it propels the mourner to publicly overcome his grief and acts as a catharsis of sorts as the barrage of Hebrew psalms and prayers wash over you and move through you. I wish there were Shiva and Kaddish for divorce, as it probably would have helped at the time.

When I was a kid in sleep away camp I remember that at Shabbat services (this wasn’t a religious camp, so what limited services we had were sandwiched in between a steady diet of nonstop sports) we kids would all look on in fascination at who might be saying the Mourners Kaddish, as the notion of this kind of loss was unimaginable to a 10 or 12 year old. Now I’m the guy standing for Kaddish at Shabbat services. In the very large shul I attend, somehow even though there are many mourners at the daily services, on many a Shabbat I seem to be the only person in a room with more than 400 people that needs to say Kaddish, so there I am often on Saturday mornings as the solo point person intoning the ancient Aramaic of the Mourners Kaddish to a hushed hall.  Cycle of life.

Not being married now, or anywhere near close to it and not having had kids I sometimes wonder who will be there to say Kaddish for me? I’m sure my brothers will, but that’s not the same thing.

On my way from shul a couple of Saturdays ago I ran into an acquaintance from the neighborhood who had also recently lost his mother. I asked him how he was doing and he asked me back, “how is the 11-month prison sentence going for you?” “Prison sentence?,” “Yeah, all that Kaddish for a year.” He was viewing it as something of a punishment. I told him that it’s actually been helpful for me but most significantly, I said that “my mother was always there for me, always. For sure I can be there for her for 11 months, it’s the least I can do.”

And so, in line with that, I have to find a place in my home to hang that painting of her, because that and Kaddish publicly demonstrate what I felt for her and my gratitude for all she did for me.