kaddish shaleim (2022)

When I was a kid, going to services in a Conservative synagogue, the Kaddish Shaleim was my favorite prayer. (Not to be confused with the Mourner’s Kaddish — this variation on the same text is not associated with death.) It is traditionally done very close to the end of services, and is chanted fast. As a kid, I’d try to “race” the cantor to the end, to see if I could chant it faster than he did. But I loved it as a kid because, once I heard it, it meant services were almost over.

When I was first exploring what Jewish rock could be, I thought about this text and how fast it was always chanted. It seemed a perfect text to tweak to into a blisteringly fast pop-punk song. When I got into the studio to record it, my producer talked me out of doing it at the tempo I had in mind — “Isn’t that a little fast?” — and it wasn’t until this live version got recorded that the song I had in my head finally made its way into the world.