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R e I i g i o u s
Superstition
About Those Who Pray
For the Dead and
Bury Religion
By MAURICE SAMUEL
An
cm Exclusive Article' b th ' indictment against those
essas?-? r
“irZistWe and Zeals'hi.self again one of our «... ong.nal
thinkers.—TIIK EDITOR.
TN the centre of New 'fork M M-L 1S "',n-
I section there exist two or three Kaddishsjna
A imgues: remarkable institutions which peril. s
have not their parallel anywhere else m the wo
Morning, noon and aftern there pass ina
out of these buildings continuous streams o f w«
shippers.” 1 must use quotation marks
cannot think of a proper word, and yet fiel w
chiooers" to be a subtly inaccurate description.
Men in every walk of life, and of every class:
office boys, chauffeurs, executive* P^ers^atWer-
tisinc experts, newspapci repoiti .»
hotel' bell-boys, elevator boys, millionaires, sho -
blacks, policemen, lawyers, dentists, doctors biok-
ersCym, may copy all the professions in the Red
Book safely. They come on foot, In sulnt a>, on
street cars and in lustrous and magnificent auto
mobiles. And they come for one purpose only .
to sav Kaddish. Either it is the first year after
the death of a parent, or it is the anniversary.
There are some who come to learn how to say
the prayer. There are others who know the words
bv heart. There are few who know their mean
ing, and fewer still who speak the words out as it
thev meant anything. It is a perpetual and on
ceasing gabble from early in the morning to late
in the evening. “Yisgadal ve-yiskadash sheme
r-tbo . .” l'he prayer is said: the regulation
few minutes are spent in the place. 1'he "wor
shipper” turns and goes, hurries back to Ins raa-
chine, or to the subway, and the office or the shop.
Stop some of these men, and ask them what they
are doing. Ask them (if you arc particularly
courageous, or impudent) why they are doing it,
and what they think they are accomplishing. 1 he
answers, though they will be given in different
words, and will betray different levels
of culture, come down, surpiisingly
enough, to a standard point of view. I
don’t go to shul often. 1 o tell you the
truth, 1 really don’t believe in those things
—much. But a man has to remember his
father, you know. And besides, it can t
do harm, can it ? You never know what s
on the other side—over there. . . .
Of all the bewildering phenomena of
our time this mass phenomenon of the big
city Kaddish-sayers is the most difficult
to resolve. It would be fair to say that
[6]
(with real exceptions, of course) these frequente
of the Kaddish shuls have lost all other connec
tions with Jewish ritual. Many of them are not
even of the famous Yom Kippur-Judaism type.
'They are, like so many hundreds of thousand in
the tremendous cities of the world, rootless crea
lures. They are not attached to any group. 1 hey
have no sense of tradition. The mad, kaleido
scopic spectacle of the World-City carries them
along from hour to hour and day to day; they
have neither time nor inclination to think of past
and future, either in personal terms or in terms
of ancestry and tradition. The turmoil of the
present drowns out the thoughtful voice of the
past, and the appealing call of the future. These
men belong to an immemorial general type, which
came into existence with the first metropolis,
Babylon, or 1 hebes, or Carcenush, or whatever
it was: the mental-Apache type: the universal
cockney: the essentially irreligious megalopolitan.
Their insistent refusal (in the Jewish instance)
to give up this last one bond with their past and
their people, places one before a difficult problem:
the determination of the significance of their pray
ers. What Judaism is there in this gesture? Is
it a genuine reversion to type, or is it something
without Jewish significance.
Years ago l translated into English the Anthol
ogy which Edmond Fleg had compiled in French;
and l placed it, as the title to the translation of
the Kaddish, the words: “Prayer for the Dead.”
A distinguished Jewish scholar who reviewed the
book was scandalized by my choi title, and
took occasion to point out that Erase was
un-Jewish and untraditional. 1 no SUc ^
thing among the Jews as prayers , e dead.
Technically he was right. Years Zangwill
pointed out that the Kaddish, or unification,
was one of the most beautiful m< mg prayers
ever written. Rigidly it excludes mention of
death and the beloved dead. It ex' ms itself in
glorification of the Eternal, and implores the
blessing of peace for the whole house of Israel.
And indeed the Kaddish is one of the loveliest
turns in the Jewish ritual. In memory of the
dead, the Jew merely praises God, and sends up a
prayer for the welfare of the entire people to the
throne of grace. Let us, as moderns, think what
we will of the efficacy of prayers: the magnihcance
of the concept outlives the power of the words.
But Zangwill went on to declare, mournfully,
that human nature, “driven away with a pitch-
fork,” will nevertheless return. In spite of the
sublime intentions of the sages, the Kaddish did
take on a general character. It did undergo a
transformation, and declined from the purity of
its origin into something that is universal: not
mere remembrance of the dead, not mere consola
tion, but prayer that might do the dead some
good.
The founders of a religion, its saints and re-
newers, place a religion on the heights which few
can reach. The masses pull it down, and adapt
it to their needs and capacities.
Standing outside one of these New \ ork Kad
dish shuls, and watching the frequenters hurry
awa y, I asked myself how much Jewishness these
men represented—and perhaps how much anti-
Jewishness. For I must say frankly that in a
sense they frightened me. I have always had a
horror of the idea that one ought to pray for the
dead ; that even in death we are not sure of the
Divine mercy and need intercession. It aua\>
seemed to me such a pitiful thing t at t e i 1 -
have to bear not only the burden of their own
sorrow, but the terror that all may not go wel
with the departed. And whatever changes I went
through in my reactions to J e ^ r ual - 1 a
ways wondered at the grace and beauty of
law which forbade prayer for the dead. Mernonat.
yes, personal consolation, yes. But not P™>
a Jil in purgatory. That seemed to tne^tibk.
It seemed not only un-Jewish, but ant J
seemed to me to be the worst aspect of super tit ■
1 have thought of the fierce struggle which th
founders of, and contributors > . ■ () j Basic
ligion have put up against t e 1 , r u j a j sm
superstitions. One of the finest '?, P ounvar Js from
as a religion, was its steady P ^ t , 1( .
naturalist superstitions. It to , rocesst s
midst of cults which had turne • ‘ werf | wr „
into gods with will power. ° s winter sol-
when the sun begins to rise from h
mice; gods that rose fr T
when the earth renews herself, g . TWsP
Prayer in Memory of the dead—
By Boris Sehatz
wnen uic can... u„«r.»ct-time. The?
identified with sowing and * | ancient
gods, and their stones, abounded ^
world, and ate not unknown in Ah-
They were absent from the J - ^faf ; n , or
sent, originally, too, was ei dea(J . an d Jews
the emphasis on, the fate o And he e
were forbidden to deal in necroman ^ p , acfS .
the whole process is undone. j y remark-
in the great, irreligious cities. ront eir>ptuou>h •
able that where religion is rejected conte
superstition creeps back. hurr ving
For what 1 saw ^ ^ men v ho
to and from the Kaddish, th . ^ re .
had no other contact with - its cr ea-
ligion, with its living t hc>e frigh 1 '
tive principles, w hat I * j a g a m I
ened children of the crowds U ■
acknowledge the exception. to m-
to the jungle, to the ep v -as ^
tom. This was not J Uu A
equivalent of that emotion
phv) which is roused m >
peasant in an (Please turn
t philos°'
.uth-born
'page &
the SOUTHERN
,y AELlFE