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EmailYom Kippur Kiddish at Brandeis University Chapel
Joseph Henry Albeck, M.D.
Maryland, U.S.A.
September 27, 1987
It is a duty of the heart
to bid farewell to a father -
A duty overdue and undoable
these thirteen years and three days
since cancer conquered
his life and strength.
Standing here, now,
by a statue of Job
consecrated by ashes from Treblinka,
I recall my last view of my father -
A thin, thin man in
the anonymous degradation
of a hospital gown,
standing straight,
holding up a Kiddish cup,
praying powerfully
for the memory of his own father,
before collapsing suddenly,
at prayer's end,
in a heap of weakness
onto the bed,
to receive what proved to be
my final, silent kiss
on a forehead, over eyes
I had not the courage to meet,
though they still sparkled and shone.
I recall too, that my father
had last seen his father
standing in a line
at the Umschlagplatz
in Warsaw, in 1943.
My father escaped from that line,
and returned the same night
to that infernal place,
calling his father's name again, and again.
But there was no answer.
There was no farewell.
That scene was
my father's recurrent dream,
which he spared me
until just before
his own end,
but which I
did not fully understand,
until this moment,
until this Kiddish,
in this consecrated
time and space.
Father, where are you?
He asked.
I ask.
Job asked.
Our question
cries to the heavens,
which remain silent.
The silence
must be our comfort,
as it is theirs.
Farewell, father.
Farewell.