|
|
Article: Kaddish.(Review)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- January 29, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Leon Wieseltier Alfred A. Knopf, $27.50, 588 pp.
Dennis O'Brien
On March 24, 1996 (Nisan 5, 5756), Leon Wieseltier's father died. "One of the most dreaded eventualities in a man's life has overtaken me," he writes, "and what do I do. I plunge into books! I can see that this is bizarre. It is also Jewish. Anyway, it is what I know how to do." Dining the succeeding year, the son steadfastly participated in the traditional mourner's kaddish owed to a father. But just how traditional is kaddish? And what does all this ritual amount to after all?
Wieseltier, the literary editor of the New Republic, "plunges into books" to answer these questions. The ...