Following Goldman through his kaddish year, the period of daily prayer in honor of someone close who has recently died, we encounter the milestones that are part of the bereavement process. There is the question of how to distribute what the dead has left behind, the problem of helping the young to understand death, celebrations that go unshared, and the persistent hope that a message will arrive from Goldman's father, that it has all somehow been a cruel mistake.
Goldman describes the many ways that Judaism helps him cope with the mourning process, by providing him with a structure for his own grief and a community of support. He also writes of how the obligation to say kaddish three times a day for 11 months of the year-long mourning period helps him find his place as a Jew in an increasingly secular world. The ongoing challenge in Goldman's book, and in Jewish life, is finding a minyan, the minimum of ten men required to perform religious obligations, including kaddish. Goldman asks himself whether it would be better to fulfill his kaddish obligation by finding a new shul, where there is a better chance of finding a minyan, but decides that his real obligation is to try to say kaddish, and decides that staying faithful to his community is most important.
There is much in Goldman's book to appeal to Jew and non-Jew alike. Jews, especially those who have lost a parent -- even those who are not Orthodox, like Goldman -- will connect to the shared experience that is organized religion. Non-Jews can learn more about the Jewish mourning process and about the universality of all grief. For example, Goldman's parents are divorced. Must one also mourn separately for parents who were apart in life?
There are as many questions as there are answers. "Kaddish," writes Goldman, "binds the mourner to the past and the present." It is a promise that the dead will be survived in Judaism by his sons, and that Jews will not allow themselves to disappear entirely.
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