- Hardcover: 588 pages
- Publisher: Knopf (Sep 14 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0375403892
- ISBN-13: 978-0375403897
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 14.2 x 3.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 748 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #919,717 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Leon Wieseltier's Kaddish is a completely new kind of book. It is not quite philosophy, autobiography, history, or Midrash, but it blends all of these genres into a narrative of Wieseltier's grief during the year following his father's death. Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, is a mostly unobservant Jew whose grief compelled him to observe his religion's rituals of mourning, daily attending synagogue to recite the Kaddish (the traditional Jewish prayers of mourning). He also delved deeply into a vast range of texts describing the history and spiritual significance of these prayers. And he wrote incessantly, describing with force and clarity the process of bringing his mind and heart to bear on the grief that consumed him. Perhaps the best way of describing this moving, illuminating, hopeful, awe-filled book is to quote a stray line from the first page of the book's first chapter: "Out of tears, thoughts." --Michael Joseph Gross
From Publishers Weekly
When his father died in 1996, Wieseltier began to observe the Jewish rituals of the traditional year of mourning, going three times daily to synagogue to recite Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Between the prayers and his daily work as literary editor of the New Republic, he sought out ancient, medieval and modern Jewish texts in an effort to understand the history and meaning of Kaddish. He discovered that early texts dictated that the mourner's kaddish be recited only on Saturday nights, but the prayers were prolonged so that the souls of the sinners of Israel released from Gehenna would not hurry back to hell. Wieseltier reports that through his study and practice of Kaddish he realized that the past is at the mercy of the present. "The present can condemn the past to oblivion or obscurity," he notes. "Whatever happens to the past will happen to it posthumously. And so the saga of the family is also the saga of the tradition." Wieseltier provides a work of history, philosophy and spiritual memoir where he deals with the meaning of freedom and the perplexity of tradition. His book demonstrates how the practice of religion meets the needs of a troubled soul.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
Everything struck hard. Read the first page
Front Cover | Excerpt
Everything struck hard. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Excerpt
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Listening to friend may teach your heart,
By
This review is from: Kaddish (Paperback)
A friend of mine told me about this book, using wonderful words and thoughts which I will share with you. He said about "Kaddish by Leon Wieseltier":"In these times of war and cruelty, deep sentiment and spiritual introspection are indeed a balm to one's feeling on life, especially when you mediate about death and the immortality of love. This journal of the soul is a moving and beautiful work, generated by mourning a loss: the diligent and doubting son investigating the memory of death. I feel a better father and a better son now, and on closing this book I wish to thank Wieseltier for bringing me to discover my spiritual side in a more profound and fulfilling way. Like him and with him, I join his thought and quote: "I am in a mind to bless. Blessed be the book, the page, the verse, the word, the letter". And blessed be the author for sharing with us his path to illumination." I wish I could say it as he did, believe how he do. May the reading of "Kaddish" will teach my heart and sole. Amen.
5.0 out of 5 stars
For lack of a minyan, the world,
By A Customer
This review is from: Kaddish (Paperback)
Religion prescribes, the heart follows what it knows best. I put down this book after a few choice lines began to move me. Will I pick it up again. Yes.It moved me to write a brief dirge of my own: The dogma surrounding "proper" recital of the Kaddish mirrors the Kaddish itself. In the stern and meaningless dictum that one surround oneself with ten strangers (a "minyan"), that helpless submission to authority which the prayer itself articulates is acted out through a grim farce. Ten strangers bowing, muttering, departing. Why not a churchful of Christians singing hymns to what "surpasseth understanding"? That a solitary rewording of the most ancient prayer to the spirits of the departed should have no worth, while a group robotic recitation of guttural sounds in a language that does not flood up from the heart should, and for one stipulated year, rescue my dear dad's soul from what I helplessly fear, is ludicrous. Ginsberg was right. The Kaddish is what you make it, how you say it, and the value of your particular Kaddish is not for the world to judge. May I be the first to rate this review useless, but not the last to praise Wieseltier's fine book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful journal/journey,
By A Customer
This review is from: Kaddish (Hardcover)
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
