Prelude to the Kaddish for my Grandfather's 7th Yahrzeit

We call the time from when a person is born, til when they die, a “lifespan”. But there doesn’t seem to be a word in English for the measure of time from when a person dies until the present, though there should be. Perhaps other cultures less uncomfortable with death have such a word.

I periodically think about this concept, usually around yizkor or people’s yahrzeits, but not necessarily. For example, it was a little weird for me last year on Election Day when I realized that if my mother’s death-span were a person, she’d be old enough to vote.

This fall, my grandfather’s death will enter second grade.

That’s a little past when kids learn the alpha-bet, but it’s around when most children start to really read in earnest. If he were a child at my synagogue, he’d be entering Hebrew school in the fall, and learning his alef-bet.

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “Oyfn Pripetchik,” a haunting melody written by Mark Warshavsky, an attorney and good friend – and travel and performing partner – of Sholem Aleichem. How fortunate that he encouraged Warshavsky to write down his songs, now so familiar, and yet almost lost to history:

Oyfn pripetshik brent a fayerl, Un in shtub iz heys;
Un der rebbe lernt kleyne kinderlech dem alef-beys;
Un der rebbe lernt kleyne kinderlech dem alef-beys.
Zet zhe, kinderlech, gedenkt zhe tayere, vos ir lernt do;
Zogt zhe noch a mol un take noch a mol: Komets alef “o”.

A little fire is burning on the hearth, And it is hot in the house,
And the rebbe is teaching the little children the Aleph Bet.
See now children, remember dear ones,
What you've learned here; repeat it again and again
Aleph with a kametz is pronounced "o"!

Shortly after I joined the Beth Am choir, we learned this song for Shavuot. I was driving my grandfather to some appointment or other, and listening to a practice tape my friend Margot made so that I could learn the music. Of course he immediately recognized the song (and, for that matter, Margot’s voice) and teared up. My Grandfather was not an especially sentimental man, so I didn’t understand this. Then he supplied the missing verses that the choir was not singing:

When you get older, children,
You will understand that this alphabet
Contains the tears and the weeping of our people.
When you grow weary, children
And burdened with exile,
You will find comfort and strength
within this Jewish alphabet.

The melancholy of the tune finally made sense to me. Formerly saccharine and sentimental, it became profoundly moving.

Now when I hear it, I hear all of the words, whether they’re sung or not, for I know what comes next. I see my son, David, maybe four years old, curled up with his “Pop-Pop”, who is singing a Yiddish lullaby from his own youth. I hear a fellow congregant Judith Klavans playing it on the flute as a prelude to the Kol Nidre service, an offering on her mother’s first yahrzeit.

I hear it on Shavuot, the very day of my Grandfather’s yahrzeit. And I think of him as a little boy, entering school for the second time.

(c) Elizabeth Lorris Ritter
June 17th 2005
11 Sivan 5765