a little bit of light to get us through the final days Who: Emma and Judah What: Checking in When: April 4, afternoon Where: Garfield high school Warning: Likely low Status: In Progress
Judah said the Mourner's Kaddish every day even without a minyan — you weren't supposed to say it alone, a prayer of grief and consolation that was meant to be shared with a community. Maybe there was a full minyan of ten adult Jews in Garfield, if you wanted to go around and do a whole census, but Judah hadn't done that. There were people all over the city who didn't have a minyan, people struggling to stay alive in small numbers, and he liked to think there were at least ten mourners in Seattle saying the same words, even separated by ruins and rubble. May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us and for all Israel. They all needed that much, and he'd told his own congregation any number of times: You don't say Kaddish for the person you lost. You say it for yourself.
So he would say the morning or afternoon service, whenever he had the time to spare, in a quiet corner facing east, and if anyone wanted to join in or ask questions that was fine. Usually it was just him, but today he'd unexpectedly heard one of the kids respond from behind him in garbled Aramaic, droning it in the singsong tone that had probably become very familiar just by osmosis: "Ya hey shay raba mavorack, ya blah blah ulmay almaya, yiiiitbaraaaak!"
"Yeah, I'm choosing to take that as affectionate sarcasm because you find my routines so comforting," Judah had said, flipping a page in his siddur and moving on. "You're welcome."
And he did have routines, which he tried to make regular and boring, some semblance of stability even if things were never going to be normal again. He was making the rounds this afternoon under the pretence of collecting the trash, mostly interested in checking in with everybody, a quick you okay, need to talk, anything? It felt less invasive to ask those questions while doing chores, rather than making a bigger deal out of it. He paused near Emma's corner, when he got to her, and knocked on the doorframe. "Got anything that needs to go out?" he said, indicating the garbage bag. He didn't expect a verbal answer, but he thought it was good to keep inviting her to talk. Sometime she would. "How're you doing today?"