Saying Kaddish With My Sister
Saying Kaddish With My Sister was born in the aftermath of my mother's death in March 2001. My sister and I agreed to say Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, for her every week for a year, and we managed it, even cross-country and long-distance. I found our ritual, and the efforts
we had to make in order to keep it, very comforting. I wondered how people who did not get along with their sisters, and who did not have the comfort of this kind of ritual, would fare when a parent died.
While we were doing all this, the ongoing Intifada in Israel intensified its violence, and then September 11th happened.
A Traveling Jewish Theater mounted a staged reading of the play May 12, 2004 at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.
Four years later, the play had its premiere in West Bloomfield, Michigan, produced by the Jewish Ensemble Theatre (www.jettheatre.org)
The photos on this page are scenes from the San Francisco reading. The
actors are:
Deb Fink as Rachel, sister
Susan-Jane Harrison as Lydia, sister
Naomi Newman as Lorraine Horowitz, the mother
Louis Lansman as Max Horowitz, the father
Cathleen Riddley as Oprah/God
