Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

As Jews, we connect in two ways, and we can characterize these forms of connectedness as horizontal and vertical.  

Our horizontal connection is the community we create at Congregation Kol Ami. It is set in the here and now — caring about and supporting the lives of others in our synagogue community and working to stay in contact, even during a pandemic. It is that sort of connection that served as the catalyst for our weekday Zoom Shaharit service — 15 minutes of prayer and a little study from 8 to 8:15 a.m. every weekday. We have been doing this since the beginning of the pandemic last March.

The vertical is how we connect from one generation to the next, all the way back to our patriarchs and matriarchs in the Torah. Our most immediate vertical connection is honoring the memory of our loved ones who are no longer with us. We place great importance on observing yahrzeit — the anniversary each year of the death of a loved one.

One important ritual in observing a yahrzeit is to recite Kaddish Yatom, the Mourner’s Kaddish. However, in order to do so, we need a minyan, a quorum of 10 Jewish adults. This has not been a problem for our Shabbat worship, but it is much more challenging in our weekday-morning Zoom worship. It is here that we are reaching out to you, our Kol Ami family.

We are looking to engage our community to honor our most important memories, and to make sure that everyone in our congregation who wants to recite Mourner’s Kaddish on the date they are observing a yahrzeit have a minyan present to do so.    

If you have a yahrzeit coming up, particularly (but not only) if you want to recite Mourner’s Kaddish at a service on that date, please emall the following information to yahrzeit@kolamikc.org:

1.  Name of the loved one being remembered.

2.  The date of the yahrzeit, both on the English and Hebrew calendars, if you have that information.

3.  The mourner(s) observing the yahrzeit, and the relationship(s) of the mourner(s) to the loved one being remembered.

In order for us to do all we can to get a minyan together for the date of the yahrzeit, we would need the information no later than two Sundays prior to the date of the yahrzeit.

We look forward to the blessing of strengthening our community through supporting one another as we honor our most cherished memories, and to the blessing that comes with honoring those memories.