Kaddish for Those Ungrieved or Stuck in Our Hearts

by Robin Berman/Tsiporah B’er. October 21, 2023

Robin Berman has been a member of Nahalat Shalom for 19 years. She has studied with Lev Shomea and is a certified Mashpiah (Spiritual Director).

This is for those lost to life in war, violence, prejudice, neglect or just gone.

For souls wandering unfound and unacknowledged.

For all the families and descendants of families

who to this day sniff the air, the land, the seas - searching for hints of

ancestral bones remembered, or unknown and unatoned.

Unacknowledged at oneness lost - lives in sighs, anger, rages, in fears

beyond reason, and in hearts heavy,

with unknown, ungrieved generations

full of unnamed love - that need a place to rest.

This kaddish is for all the hearts injured by that weight of nameless

loss.

For our hearts to let go of what is and is not ours,

so the full tikkun gedolah of the scream of shofar blasts of hearts,

will at last release us from unknown, unacknowledged anguish,

worn heavily like a badge of love, hidden by tainted smiles,

which until that shofar call, blocked the flow of life's blood,

interfered in the beating of hearts.

We put down the torch we bear for our invisibles.

Claim our unknown with soft whispers, tears, and loud shouts

of thanks for the beauty, mistakes, and challenges of their lives.

Their full humanity so woven with ours,

makes us again whole, united, and at one.

We sing thanks for the return of ancestral family

and for lifting this weight from our hearts.

In place of burial,

we lay down this talisman of pain

shoveled backward through time,

transformed to reverberations released

into time and space

and finally… laid to rest.

Shema.