When a parent dies, the oldest son has to recite the Kaddish - prayer for the dead - for the next 11 months in a synagogue with a minyan - a quorum of ten Jewish adults. It is a religous obligation of honoring the parents and it´s aimed at elevating the soul of the deceased. When not possible, a shaliah mitzva - someone that can do the obligation - can be delegated instead, in exchange of an amount of money.
This is the main topic of kaddish.com, Nathan Englander´s last book. With his usual mix of irony, sarcasm and his deep atheistic religious knowledge he delves into the world of religious obligations and the difficulty - if not impossibility of separating from one´s past.
There is a thought, or two, that I´ve come along myself more than once: how can someone think that once you are becoming religious or non-religious, your past and thoughts and encounters is simply deleted and replaced with your new life? I don´t think it is humanly possible. It´s just the projection you want to have that, in fact, you can start anew when you want, as you want.
Meet Larry, devastated by the death of his dear father, that he loved dearly. He decided to break up with religion long ago and now is sitting the shiva - the seven days of mourning - in his Orthodox sister´s house in Memphis (there are Jews there too, Orthodox too, read Tova Mirvis books for more details). He wants to honor his father in his own way, and rebelliously refused to stick to his religious obligations (`A stupid chair isn´t what makes it mourning´ allusion to the fact that during shiva the mourners are sitting on lower chairs). When told he needs to say the kaddish for the next 11 months, he evades the obligation, find a website kaddish.com (which actually exists in reality), found someone to do it instead (`It was like a JDate for the dead`), and navigates later on a porn website. As her sister Dina said, he was living a gornisht - worth nothing, in Yiddish - life.
By designating someone else to do his mitzva, he did a transfer of rights, a kinyan. Remembering his father was someone else´s job now. Remember Esav? He also trader his birthright for a bowl of lentils because he despised it.
Fast forward 20 years after, Larry is not Shuli, made tshuva - repentance - and is an Orthodox rabbi in the fictional Brooklyn´s Royal Hill neighbourhood. This flipping transition is a bit superficially featured, as we have no idea what exactly happened and how and other details. After a discussion with a kid from the school going through a rebelious phase - eating non-kosher, ignoring religious obligations - Shuli is suddenly haunted by his past, by his demise of his obligation as a Jewish son. He is becoming anxious, especially after obsessive messages sent back to the kaddish.com website are left unattended. (`What if I can´t get my birthright back?`). He desperately wants to finish his teshuva and leaving his family behind, he embarks on a mystery trip to Jerusalem, tracing the website and trying to find the person who said the kaddish for his father.
In shock, he will acknowledge that, in fact, the entire story of the website was a hoax and no one ever said the kaddish for his father. It reminds me of a story I´ve been told of someone from America who for a long time, used to send tzeddakah - charity - to a foundation and once he made aliya to Israel, wanted to visit the recipients of his donations. In reality, it was no foundation and the money were used for some personal use - like dowry for a daughter - by the recipients. Does it make his mitzvah less worthy? Not at all, as he sent the money with the good intention and the aveirah - the transgression - belonged to the person who misused the funds.
After the deception of the Dinner at the Centre of the Earth, kaddish.com brought back my interest for Englander´s reading. Truth to be told, his chiseled art of creating world through words goes in most of the cases better with short stories - which I love - and might fail once in a while the art of the novel. But sometimes depends of how large the list of topics is. In Dinner..., it was way too much, and although I can understand that modern Jewish authors feel the obligation to have their word - and novel - on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it doesn´t guarantee that they are successful in this approach. On the other hand, the list of subjects featured in kaddish.com are better outlined, hence, there is a coherence and simplicity of the frame yet allowing a complex construction of the novel and an elaborated array of symbolic layers.
Rating: 4 stars
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