And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end (Ecclesiastes 12:12) A pdf version of this essay can be downloaded here [*] Years in brackets refer to an individual’s or book author’s year of birth Thought experiment for the day: Anyone born 1945 would be pushing towards 80 and mostly past their prime. So name any Charedi sefer written by someone born post war that has or is likely to enter the canon, be it haloche, lomdus, al hatorah or mussar. Single one will do for now — IfYouTickleUs (@ifyoutickleus) July 27, 2022 A tweet in the summer which gained some traction asked for a book by an author born from 1945 onwards that has entered the Torah and rabbinic canon or is heading in that direction. I didn't exactly phrase it this way and some quibbled about 'canonisation'. The word does indeed have a precise meaning though in its popular use it has no narrow definition. Canonisation, or ‘entering the canon’ is generally understood to...
"44 years", they marvelled, just as they did last year and just as they will keep doing year after year with incremented numbers while measuring their own life by her death.
But 44 years it is and still it feels like this. Still it hurts and still the ground is cold. This morning AL, now with a white beard, recalled how as a kid on his bike at the corner in Clapton Common he heard the news. BS namechecked her and wanted to know if it was only that one name. PF stroked his unfurled almost navel length beard, fresh and untangled after the mikveh, as he told of the photo he has of my mum with myself and my siblings.
Forty four years.
Others commented on the freshness of the croissant sandwiches while the shy boy stood quietly at the side eyeing the food but too timid to approach the adult table where death was being served up with Scotch. Less shy were the drinkers sipping Lechaim from sample-size cups. In some shuls they wish you a long life but here they're more concerned with the soul's elevation.
My nonagenarian pa had joined for shacharis. Over whisky and croissants his memory of pre-war Munkach was being tested, triggering a rant from him on the petulant Chasidic battles of his childhood.
"How old were you?", someone enquired.
"Ten and a half."
Happy now?
"Do you remember her?"
Obviously not happy.
How long does it take to forget an absence woven into the fabric of your life? Can you un-remember a loss that's with you daily even with the little that you comprehend of it 44 years later? What a sham is motherly love if she took off when you barely knew her and then spending the rest of your life missing what you hardly knew you lost?
So you do your filial duties, paying a debt you barely owe, sounding your voice in the ancient Kaddish, making up for the sounds you could not make, for the silenced voice you dared not sound, the voice which the only person made to listen to was gone for good.
There is no cure and nothing to fill the hole dug fresh when US, himself a boy from an older class, called me out of class to tell me I must go home. The school where they said Tehilim for her during assembly when I was told off by the headmaster for chatting. "They're saying Tehilim for your mother" he said in his Yekkish accent. Because your mum dying of something nobody’s bothered to tell you about isn't enough. You must also shut up.
And so after a few hours during which two of the four freshly-minted orphans spent at FB, a benign neighbour trying to break the news by incessantly hypothesising, “What if your mother were not to get better? What if she were to die?”, home we were sent. For Uncle Y. to tell us from the remove of a room's length and beside our father's red eyes "Der mameh's neshome is aroyf in himel". (Your mother's soul has gone up to heaven.) Oh, has it? Well, wonderful. And then followed by the Chevre Kadishe's scalpel slicing into my purple v-neck jumper. ST, a cousin who’d been pacing the house, was now insisting I must leave the house for the levayeh. The funeral from which I was saved by ES, the other kind neighbour with her arm round me on the couch, who said I may stay inside.
The same uncle telling me the next morning that I would have to say Kaddish. I had delayed opening my eyes that morning wishing to myself it was all a bad dream. But at ten and a half that at least could be excused. Less so the Kaddish I would run away from to escape the prying eyes desperate to catch a glimpse of the nature-defying kid surviving daily without a mum. Perhaps he'll slip up on the tongue-twisting Aramaic and it'll give them something more to feel sorry about.
It's night again and I've paid my dues visiting your deserted stone on a cold and windy morning. Yeah, it’s been 44 years and time to close up that hole for another year.