A Daughter’s Kaddish

My Year of Grief, Devotion, and Healing

A woman breaks with Jewish tradition to honor her late father in this moving memoir of faith, grief, and transformation.

A Daughter’s Kaddish recounts Sarah Birnbach’s year-long odyssey through an unfamiliar world of prayer. To honor her beloved father following his death, Sarah undertakes a Jewish mourning ritual historically reserved for males—despite her father’s request that she hire a male to do so.

A novice worshipper and single working mother, Sarah commits to re-citing the Mourner’s Kaddish every morning and evening in the presence of a quorum of ten people (a minyan) in synagogue for eleven months. She incorporates this traditional religious and spiritual practice into her already hectic twenty-first century life while struggling with the distress of grief. As she travels the country for work, Sarah must find a synagogue with twice-daily prayer services in every city she visits, an undertaking that brings many challenges—such as encountering gender-based objections to her prayer practice, her daughter’s near-fatal car accident, and her mother’s dismissiveness—along with many blessings.

Throughout her year of mourning, Sarah learns the importance of community to help mourners heal. A Daughter’s Kaddish reminds us that grief is a universal experience with no expiration date, and that ancient rituals have a place in our contemporary society.

$18.95
ISBN: 979-8-89138-337-1
SKU: 18-1318-01
Categories:Memorable Biographies and Memoirs, Amplify Publishing, Memoirs and Biographies

“A thoughtful meditation on sacrifice, memory, gender roles, and of course—grief.”

—A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically

“A heartwarming, sometimes heart-wrenching, and always honest story.”

—Rabbi Mindy Avra Portnoy, rabbi emerita, Temple Sinai, Washington, DC, and author of A Tale of Two Seders

“Birnbach’s love letter to her father is a meditation on grief and the power of a spiritual practice to transcend our most painful losses.”

—Michelle Brafman, author of Washing the Dead

“Sarah Birnbach has made a major contribution to the literature of bereavement. She weaves together her personal story, grief, and spiritual development into a work that will move readers of diverse backgrounds and experiences.”

—Kate Thompson, author of Therapeutic Journal Writing

“A brave and beautifully crafted memoir of love, loss, and enduring faith, rich with emotionally resonant stories. A Daughter's Kaddish is enlightening, enlivening, and profoundly inspiring.”

—Kathleen Adams, LPC, founder/director, Center for Journal Therapy, and coauthor of Your Brain on Ink

“Sarah Birnbach embraces a custom that has been for so long the province of men. As we see on these pages, she—and we, her readers—are the richer for it. And we can only imagine that her father is smiling down on her with joy."

—Ari L. Goldman, author of Living a Year of Kaddish