Remembering a requested Kaddish

Daniel Hillel, third from left in brown, Glendon to the right in blue

Another Texas tribute was an exchange that occurred at the banquet honoring my Dad.  A good friend from Israel stood first.  To give some background, this man, Daniel Hillel, was born in southern California.  In 1927, when Daniel was a year old, his father died.  After a business partner confiscated all the proceeds of their business, Danny's mother took her five children and joined her parents in Palestine.  Her father was a rabbi from North Carolina, and Danny was raised in the house of this grandfather, the rabbi.  Daniel had entertained doubts as he grew up, and at his bar mitzvah, Danny proclaimed his agnosticism, which naturally put a rift between Daniel and his grandfather.  I remember in my own college days reading the article Daniel had written called "Kaddish" (the blessing upon the grave) in which he described his search for his grandfather's grave.  Before his grandfather died, the old rabbi had told Danny of his confidence that Danny would someday return, in his own way, to faith.  The grandfather told Danny of his wish for Danny to read the prayer, or Kaddish, over his grave. 

The article describes a gnawing, unexplainable longing to find this grandfather's grave that had been desecrated in the war between the Jewish and Arab peoples, where tanks had rolled over headstones, scattering them so none could be identified in the future.  Danny went to an Orthodox Jewish school and found a very old gentleman who had memorized the locations of the graves.  The man had not been outside his room for years.  His health was such that he did not want to leave his room again.  Danny, at his own robust five foot two inches, took the old man in his arms and carried him to a vehicle to bring him to scout the area of the graves. 

Together, they found the broken headstone and put it into place.  Danny then gathered his four sisters, his mother to rededicate the long displaced grave with the Kaddish that his grandfather had wished to have read.  "So, even the secular man that I am, I need to honor my grandfather."  And a heart of a child turned to his father.