Old Mr. Kohen

Julian Alper

When I was a lad, maybe a teen
or perhaps even a little younger,
I used to sit in shul next to an elderly man,
or maybe he was even a bit older than that.
His name was Karl—Mr. K to me.
His younger brother—also Mr. K to me—
sat in the row in front and
called him “our kid” or sometimes “our Kaddishky.”
Real cool to call such an old man “our kid,”
and real cool to call your older brother “our kid,”
but not real cool, I thought, to call him “our Kaddishky.”

The two brothers, who were in the shmatte trade,
had sold their firm and had long since retired.
Young Mr. K went to college
and trained to be a teacher of Jewish Studies
as a retirement career.
But it was old Mr. K
who taught me a lesson about Judaism I’ve never forgotten.
He said: “Kaddish is not about remembering the dead;
it’s about teaching the living how to live.”
How cool—that’s so counterintuitive, I thought,
and how cool that an old man could be so wise,
how cool that kaddish is a prayer about life,
and how cool that I learned this lesson from “our Kaddishky.”

Kaddish was a name given by parents who were happy to have birthed a son who would say the mourner’s prayer (kaddish) for them, after their demise.