The Aramaic word "Kaddish" (קדיש) generally refers to the "Mourners' Kaddish", one of the mourning prayer in the Jewish religious tradition. Kaddish is also the name of a monthly podcast hosted by Student Rabbi Ariana Katz that "focuses on mourning ritual and customs, features first person storytelling and interviews, uses Jewish tradition to contextualize and deepens themes of the show, and holds space at the intersection of life and death." Recently, a mutual friend, the lo

On the night my mother died, it snowed. I got the call from the hospital, and drove through the flake-laden darkness to her hospice room for the final time. Death had wiped away all signs of stress, my mom looked peaceful and at least ten years younger. I sat with her body for a bit, eventually moved to gather the flowers and cards and the blanket that had been knitted just for her. I paused at the door for one last look, and then the coroner came to take her away. The rest o

Death baffles us. It’s a curious quirk of American culture, that so much attention is lavished upon the beginning of life, and so little on the end. Instead, there is a whole set of ideas and mentalities and the industries that have sprung forth from these ideologies, conscious or not, on the concealment of aging, the denial of decay. There is a number of broadly accepted practices that exist solely on our fear and avoidance of the most natural counterpart of life: death. F