Has reciting mourner's kaddish daily had an effect on me?
Tuesday, June 24th, 2014 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lethargic_manI'm over halfway through my period of reciting kaddish now, and have still only missed thirteen services in total, so far. So, you may be wondering, has all this davening with a minyan three times a day changed me?
That's what I wondered when I went to study for three weeks at the Conservative Yeshiva (and davening there twice a day) seven years ago. One hears of all these young people going off to Israel to study in yeshiva and coming back "Aished"; was I in danger of that happening to me too?
As it turned out, the answer was no. When I was young, I was much more credulous and uncritically respecting of authority than I am now. And so perhaps I would have been in danger of being brainwashed had I gone to an Orthodox yeshiva when I was eighteen, but that was not the case going to a Masorti/Conservative yeshiva in my mid thirties. Eventually I realised it wasn't that I might change due to studying at the yeshiva; rather I went to study at the yeshiva because I had already changed myself. (The idea of studying at a yeshiva would have been quite inimical to me just a few years beforehand.)
And so, davening with a minyan three times a day hasn't changed me at all. I didn't change before I started doing it, and I haven't changed since (aside from a mild exasperation at the length of services); and when my period of reciting kaddish ends, I will happily go back to pretty much never attending shul midweek, but doing a little davening daily בְּיִחוּד, as I had been doing beforehand, and indeed still do now on the odd occasion when I'm not able to daven at shul in the morning (mostly when I've got a 'plane to catch back from Berlin on a Monday morning).
That's what I wondered when I went to study for three weeks at the Conservative Yeshiva (and davening there twice a day) seven years ago. One hears of all these young people going off to Israel to study in yeshiva and coming back "Aished"; was I in danger of that happening to me too?
As it turned out, the answer was no. When I was young, I was much more credulous and uncritically respecting of authority than I am now. And so perhaps I would have been in danger of being brainwashed had I gone to an Orthodox yeshiva when I was eighteen, but that was not the case going to a Masorti/Conservative yeshiva in my mid thirties. Eventually I realised it wasn't that I might change due to studying at the yeshiva; rather I went to study at the yeshiva because I had already changed myself. (The idea of studying at a yeshiva would have been quite inimical to me just a few years beforehand.)
And so, davening with a minyan three times a day hasn't changed me at all. I didn't change before I started doing it, and I haven't changed since (aside from a mild exasperation at the length of services); and when my period of reciting kaddish ends, I will happily go back to pretty much never attending shul midweek, but doing a little davening daily בְּיִחוּד, as I had been doing beforehand, and indeed still do now on the odd occasion when I'm not able to daven at shul in the morning (mostly when I've got a 'plane to catch back from Berlin on a Monday morning).
