This past weekend both of my sisters came into town and we had a little Vixen Shabbaton (get it? Foxes…vixens…?). We don’t get to see each other very often, so it was really nice to spend some time together, eat good food and talk about my mom. There was a lot of laughter, which was nice, but by far the highlight of the weekend was on Shabbat morning.
I was slowly waking up, and I heard my younger sister Renana talking in her sleep. At first I couldn’t figure out what she was saying, but after a few seconds I realized she was reciting the Kaddish. She got through the entire Mourner’s Kaddish without waking up, but she did wake up my older sister, Deena, who looked over at me and asked what was going on.
“Oh,” I told her, “Renana’s gotten very frum. She can say the Kaddish in her sleep.”
When we woke Renana up half an hour later she remembered having a dream in which she ran to shul and got there just in time to say Kaddish, but had no idea that she had actually said it out loud.
Sometimes, grief is pretty funny.
(The photo is of Renana, my mother, and my cousin Abigail and it was taken in June).
Cross-posted at Blog the Kaddish
Kaddish
Pronounced: KAH-dish, Origin: Hebrew, usually referring to the Mourner’s Kaddish, the Jewish prayer recited in memory of the dead.
Shabbat
Pronounced: shuh-BAHT or shah-BAHT, Origin: Hebrew, the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
shul
Pronounced: shool (oo as in cool), Origin: Yiddish, synagogue.
