Rating: 
Summary: Thoughtful, intense, sincere, indulgent, wonderful.
Review: I've never experienced a book quite like this. Stacatto, but not disjointed. Scholarly, but not opaque. Heartfelt and personal, but slightly aloof. The most striking aspect for me was the vivid impression of the simultaneous struggle with and between grief and text, tradition and transcendence, mind and soul.
Rating: 
Summary: I prefer not to call this a book
Review: In the second week of saying Kaddish for my mother, a dear friend mentioned something he learned from this book. So I started to read it. After 40 pages I concluded that this was the single worst book I had ever read. Other reviewers have invoked the author's pomposity, self-absorption and smugness that comes through in the text. As an erstwhile professor of Jewish studies, I found much more troubling the awful tasteless scholarship - a little bit of this - a little bit of that. Can I say I found the book revolting? The way W. tells the story of how the Kaddish came to be instituted in the 12th century made me want to stop saying the prayer and run out of the synagogue. Early on W. says he prefers not to call the Jewish house of worship a synagogue. Rather he wants to call it a shul. Huh? It was downhill from there, believe me. I prefer not to call this a book. I'd rather just call it a DOA. I'm saying Kaddish for this flop.
Rating:
Summary: Scholarly Review of Mourning
Review: In this book Leon Wieseltier shares his experiences and studious approach to prayer in the year following his fathers death.It is contemplative in nature but rigorous in its search for meaning in mourning. Moving.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, thoughtful and deeply felt
Review: It's impossible to categorize this book, because it simply doesn't fit into any conventional category. I'll have to explain exactly what it is: a journal kept by the author in the year after his father's death, in which he researches, ruminates, and comments on Judaism. The book is so intense that I got the impression that he spent the entire year (a) saying kaddish and (b) sitting in a tea room poring over ancient manuscripts. It's a privelege to get a chance to peek into the results of an entire year of study -- not to mention the mind of the author, who at times is brilliant. He is not trying to apologize for anything or to prove anything: he is simply, and honestly, thinking. This is not a book to be read in one sitting; I found myself reading a few pages at a time and then thinking about them. But the book is so well-written that I was in no rush to finish.
Rating: 
Summary: this book is a controlled and passionatly intellectual resar
Review: Kaddish is a controlled and passionately intellectual research in the origins of the mourner's Kaddish. The author uses the death of his father, and therefor the necessity of saying Kaddish, 3 times a day, for a year to inquire into Jewish practice, history, theology and philosophy. This book is neither a memoir nor a textbook for scholars. It is instead a tribute to the Jewish wisdom of the mourning process. Having heard the author speak, I understand why he did not want autobiographic material, why he chose boundaries around his privacy. He wanted intellectual pursuit, not voyeurism. Don't try to read it all at once. Pick it up at random and savor it.
Rating:
Summary: A Remarkable Book, but Who is It For?
Review: Leon Wieseltier has created a singular work, exploring 2,000 years of Jewihs tradition and thought about death and mourning in the aftermath of his own father's death. The breadth of his knowlegde is amazing, and all the more so given that he is something of a non-believer. As a religious Jew, I found his discoveries and his re-examination of his own faith to be moving.The work has two flaws. The first is its length. And while you can excuse its length as being a product of the vast amount of lore and law he sifted through, he occasionally rambles and jumps off the topic. The other flaw is that I just can't iamgine too many people wanting to read this. If you're more devout than I, you might find his agnosticism offputing. If you're of a secular bent or not Jewish, why would you want to read this at all? That such a work got published is a sign that Jewish philosophy is part of the mainstream. But I wonder how many people are like myself and have the patience and curiosity to dive into this book. Maybe it should have been more accessible. Or maybe it's best that some books make the readers work to learn something, the way the author did in writing this. If you are of the right patience and of the right religous bent, however, tead this and cherish its beauty.
Rating:
Summary: A Remarkable Book, but Who is It For?
Review: Leon Wieseltier has created a singular work, exploring 2,000 years of Jewihs tradition and thought about death and mourning in the aftermath of his own father's death. The breadth of his knowlegde is amazing, and all the more so given that he is something of a non-believer. As a religious Jew, I found his discoveries and his re-examination of his own faith to be moving. The work has two flaws. The first is its length. And while you can excuse its length as being a product of the vast amount of lore and law he sifted through, he occasionally rambles and jumps off the topic. The other flaw is that I just can't iamgine too many people wanting to read this. If you're more devout than I, you might find his agnosticism offputing. If you're of a secular bent or not Jewish, why would you want to read this at all? That such a work got published is a sign that Jewish philosophy is part of the mainstream. But I wonder how many people are like myself and have the patience and curiosity to dive into this book. Maybe it should have been more accessible. Or maybe it's best that some books make the readers work to learn something, the way the author did in writing this. If you are of the right patience and of the right religous bent, however, tead this and cherish its beauty.
Rating:
Summary: Irritating
Review: My overall description of this book is "irritating." It is self indulgent, pompous and tiresome. The author experiences the death of his father, as billions have before him. He ruminates about it, as billions have before him. However, an unconstrained ego leads him to believe that his ruminations are somehow worthy of publication.
Rating:
Summary: For lack of a minyan, the world
Review: Religion prescribes, the heart follows what it knows best. I put down this book after a few choice lines began to move me. Will I pick it up again. Yes. It moved me to write a brief dirge of my own: The dogma surrounding "proper" recital of the Kaddish mirrors the Kaddish itself. In the stern and meaningless dictum that one surround oneself with ten strangers (a "minyan"), that helpless submission to authority which the prayer itself articulates is acted out through a grim farce. Ten strangers bowing, muttering, departing. Why not a churchful of Christians singing hymns to what "surpasseth understanding"? That a solitary rewording of the most ancient prayer to the spirits of the departed should have no worth, while a group robotic recitation of guttural sounds in a language that does not flood up from the heart should, and for one stipulated year, rescue my dear dad's soul from what I helplessly fear, is ludicrous. Ginsberg was right. The Kaddish is what you make it, how you say it, and the value of your particular Kaddish is not for the world to judge. May I be the first to rate this review useless, but not the last to praise Wieseltier's fine book.
Rating:
Summary: Eye Opening and Profound
Review: Simplistic books on religion abound and Judaism is not immune to authors who try to capture its essence in a nut shell. How refreshing then, that a work appears on the subject of Jewish mourning which defies categorization. Leon Wieseltier maintains at his fingertips worlds of learning, both religious and secular. He refers to the rarest and most precious Jewish literature on mourning and legal responsa. The author makes reference to harsh historical realities and he gleans profound philosophical insight. The scholarly treasure is then enriched with a year's worth of personal experience and anecdotes. We are invited into the life of the author, a thoughtful and reflective mourner. Contradictory messages appear thoughout and there is little rhythm from one page to the next. And so it should be, because the complexity of a life lived in front of God and amongst real people deserves nothing less. The book's overall effect is to portray a mignificent mural stained with millenia of tears and tradition.
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