What happens when you die?

Well, I surely don't know. That is precisely why I started saying The Mourner's Kaddish, a Jewish prayer in honour of the dead when my father recently died. It is frequently assumed that "saying Kaddish" is the bastion of men. Most prayer obligations in Judaism are.

The idea is that each time the mourner says Kaddish, it elevates the deceased person's soul. Now obviously we have no way of knowing if that is in fact the case or not. Committed religious people insist that it is. But, really, how do they know for sure? No one has ever come back to confirm or deny that it works.

It works essentially like this. When your parent dies, the male child or children are supposed to say Kaddish three times a day for 11 months. After a designated period of time, there is no possible room to elevate the soul and the deceased person's slate is clean so that they can now go to The World To Come.

In the event that there is no male child, it seems to me that the standard procedure is either that the husband of the daughter says Kaddish or (and this is looked upon with disdain in many communities), the daughter pays someone to say Kaddish who is going to go to synagogue anyway.

However, as with everything in Judaism, there is more than one opinion. After a bit of looking around, I found out that there are some who believe that it is better for a natural born child of the deceased to say Kaddish -- even if that child is not a male child!!!! Good enough for me.

I knew that my brother would never say Kaddish to the extent that I felt it should be said, so I decided to do it myself. No one in my immediate family cares if I do this or not. When I told my mother that I was saying Kaddish everyday, she said: "Oh that's nice." I didn't even bother to tell my brother or sister. They would just think it was part of my Holy Roller needs.

I am also not trying to make a feminist point or hold myself out as something special. I am just concerned that since I don't know what happens after we die, that I better not leave a stone unturned. I don't want my father's soul sitting at the bottom of the barrel because no one took the time to help move it to the World To Come. And until someone can prove to me that such a place does not exist, why take the chance?