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2017-03-19
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Kaddish

Summary:

"Those English, his wife says. They cling much too firmly to tradition. Give it so much power over them. I am glad we are more enlightened, understand that tradition just isn't worth that.

And Isidore (not Israel, never Israel, not for some years now) Levinson quite agrees.

(Except when he doesn’t. But he never tells his wife of those times.)"

 

A character study of Isidore Levinson, father of Cora Crawley (née Levinson), and what he left behind.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Those English, his wife says. They cling much too firmly to tradition. Give it so much power over them. I am glad we are more enlightened, understand that tradition just isn't worth that.

And Isidore (not Israel, never Israel, not for some years now) Levinson quite agrees.

(Except when he doesn’t. But he never tells his wife of those times.)

Isidore marries Martha Barrington in a church, under nothing but the ceiling, and only the alter floor beneath him.

Nothing cracks, nothing breaks.

After all, there is no one to say Kaddish for him, though his parents might have, had they been alive.

(There’s no Aramaic mourning, but there are no words of Yiddish or Hebrew congratulations either. Just pleasant nods, handshakes, lobster at the reception.)

He’s an American, he thinks. And he’s not marked by anything: not pogroms, not payos, not the indents phylacteries might have left on his arm. He’s an American, dammit, and if he wants to get ahead, he must leave all of that old-world nonsense in Odessa with his parents’ corpses.

He goes to church with his wife on Sundays.

He never goes to shul again.

(But he walks past it on Yom Kippur every year, because he never forgets the lunar date, hears the hazzan chant vidui from where he stands on the curb. He’s not marked by anything, but sometimes he leaves a bruise on his chest when he pounds it as he stands listening.)

When his son is born, he names him at once, not eight days later at the bris, because there is no bris.

(He never forgets the lunar date, and his wife goes into labor on Hershel Levinson’s yahrzeit.)

Harold Levinson is baptized and never learns that he was named after his grandfather Hershel.

Cora Levinson is baptized too and is named after no one.

When Cora marries an English earl, he doesn’t say Kaddish, because he has no one to say Kaddish for. Cora isn't Jewish, after all.

Instead, he walks her down the aisle, eats lobster at the reception they throw at Downton Abbey.

(His daughter is to govern an Abbey. His fortune, hard earned with his goyishe name and goyishe wife and goyishe children, has saved an Abbey. Were he a different sort of man, he might laugh at the inherent symbolism in that.

Instead, he eats more lobster.)

When he dies, with Cora across the sea, and Martha and Harold beside him, no one says Kaddish or sits Shiva.

He is buried in the finest clothes, his casket open at the funeral.

He never meets Atticus Aldridge, but if he had, he might have said I hear your first name is Ephraim, might have said be sure you know what you’re doing, might have said you are already ahead; you don’t need to throw away your people, throw away who you are for it, might have said, I’ll give you my blessing anyway, one heretical Jew to another, might have said I won’t say Kaddish for you.

“Not that I recall,” says Cora when Lord Sinderby asks whether it was difficult having a different religion from her father.

Not for you, perhaps, Isidore would have said, were he there.

When Lord Sinderby asks whether she is ashamed of her father, Cora responds: “We never changed our name.”

You didn’t, Isidore would have corrected her. But you never knew me as Israel.

Notes:

It seems that a bit of a lexicon might be helpful.

"Kaddish" refers to the Mourner's Kaddish, an Aramaic blessing that is said upon the death (or yahrzeit--the anniversary of the death) of an immediate family member. For a lot of time, and for some people still today, parents would say Kaddish for their child if the child married a non-Jew, as if to signify that the child was "dead to them." Other Jewish funeral customs (referenced here) include having a closed casket at a funeral (or no casket at all), dressing the deceased in plain white clothing, and observing a mourning period (or "sitting shiva").

In European Jewish tradition, it is also customary to name children after a deceased relative, and to wait to name a baby boy until a bris or ritual circumcision ceremony, eight days after birth.

Traditional Jewish weddings take place outside, under a wedding canopy, and the groom steps on and breaks a glass during them.

Yom Kippur is the Jewish Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, which is a lunar calendar. During Yom Kippur, the vidui, a repentance prayer, is chanted. As a part of this it is traditional for people to beat their breasts.

A hazzan is a cantor, or someone who leads a synagogue (shul, in Yiddish) congregation in prayer.

Jewish dietary law forbids eating shellfish, including lobster.

"Peyos" refer to specific curls that traditional Jewish men wear in their hair, and "phylacteries" are leather boxes that traditionally Jewish men wrap around their arms for morning prayers.

"Goyishe," means "non-Jewish."

 

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