Monday, July 6, 2020

It’s hot in the hallway where we do the afternoon prayers. The air conditioning is on, but light streams in through the tall windows looking out over the atrium. The space heats up. The man in front of me opens a window. Construction noise blasts in. Workers are finally finishing the flooring in the atrium, securing wood-like slabs over the sand that is over the plastic that is over whatever was there before they started. I think it was cement. It’s been so long that I don’t remember. The construction noise drowns out the prayers. The man in front of me quickly closes and latches the window. The prayers continue. The man who led the prayers for the past few months won’t be doing it for the next four weeks. For the past eleven months, he had been saying the Mourners’ Kaddish for someone close to him. A myth tells that very wicked people are punished for twelve months after death. Saying Kaddish for them alleviates that. We stop at eleven months. We don’t want people to think that the person that we are mourning was wicked. At least that’s one of the myths. Twice as many stories have been told about what happens after death as there have been people to tell them. At most services, whoever leads the prayers says Kaddish. So the usual man isn’t doing it. Today, another coworker leads the prayers. No two people lead them in quite the same way. While the other leader’s chanting shifts among three pitches like a bugle call, this one rocks back and forth between two pitches a minor third apart. He also tends to pause at the end of phrases rather than barreling straight through. When he says the Kaddish, one of the verses is a lot longer. I have only caught some of the words that he adds. Afterwards, some of us look out the window. We admire the craftsmanship of the flooring and wonder what the final result will be. In the corner, one of the laborers is doing his own afternoon prayers. He has laid down a rug. He shifts between standing, kneeling, and bowing far forward so that his head touches the ground. Though they flow in different languages and in different directions, the building is suffused with prayers.