Lifestyle
My Dad’s Death Taught Me How to Pray
As part of “Believing,” The New York Times asked several writers to explore a significant moment in their religious or spiritual lives.
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I was many weeks into reciting kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer of mourning, for my father when I realized I did not know how to pray.
Oh, I knew the words and the melodies for the daily services I was attending — my father made sure of that, bringing me and my sisters to synagogue every Shabbat of our childhoods. I even knew what they meant, thanks to seven years at a Hebrew-speaking summer camp and four serving as Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times. I knew the choreography: when to sit, stand, bow, touch my fingers to my forehead or open my palms skyward.
I knew it all well enough to occasionally take my rightful place, as a mourner, leading the little group at my local Conservative synagogue some Sunday mornings.
What I was clueless about was God. How to talk to God, how to think about God, whether I believed in God, what he — my father — had believed. I knew what the words of the ancient texts meant in English, but not what they meant to me.
I decided maybe a year before Dad died that when the time came, I would take on the obligation of saying the Mourner’s Kaddish daily for 11 months, as outlined in Jewish law.
I had always found Jewish mourning rituals to be the most powerful part of our tradition. The communal aspect spoke to me: Kaddish is one of the prayers that require a quorum of 10 Jews, known as a minyan, and I appreciated both that I had to show up in public to fulfill this commandment and that strangers had to show up to make it possible. The daily commitment was daunting, but also appealing; a challenge, an opportunity, a statement to myself, to everyone around me and to my dead father that he and our tradition mattered to me.
Kaddish was also something I associated with Dad, whose booming voice whenever he was reciting the prayer on the anniversary of a loved one’s death still echoed in my head.
In the days following his death at 82, some of the loveliest memories people shared with us revolved around this ritual. How Dad made sure that prayer leaders did not go too fast for newbies or drown out women. Or how Dad had reconciled with his own father after decades of distance so he could say kaddish for him with less baggage.
I was excited, as a feminist and mostly Reform Jew, to take on an obligation that historically was the province of Orthodox men. The pandemic had made kaddish much more accessible and diverse: There was a Zoom minyan somewhere to dial into most hours of the day, some rooted in the traditional morning service, others involving meditation, study or song.
Everything made sense except the prayer part.
Kaddish may be the most famous Jewish prayer, infused into the broader culture — Sylvester Stallone recited it in “Rocky III,” and one of Allen Ginsberg’s most famous poems shares its title. It dates back to the first century B.C., and its Aramaic text does not mention death. Rather, it is a paean to God’s strength and sovereignty.
May your great name be blessed for ever and ever, is the central line. Blessed are you, whose glory transcends all praises, songs and blessings voiced in the world.
Scholars interpret this prayer being used for mourning as a declaration of acceptance that death is part of God’s plan. That works if you believe there is such a plan; if you believe in God; if you know what you believe.
Most mourners say kaddish in the same place most days, but my Reform synagogue only has services on Shabbat, so I stitched together a mosaic of minyans. (I’d decided to say kaddish once daily, not the traditional three times, usually at a morning service.)
On Sundays, I went to the Conservative shul in my town, and on Fridays, the Reconstructionist one. The other days, I’d video call into congregations across the United States, sometimes joining the ones where my sisters were saying kaddish, in Washington and Chicago. I said kaddish at a joint Passover-Ramadan breakfast, aboard New Jersey Transit commuter trains and outside a refugee center in Tbilisi, Georgia. I was good at focusing on Dad during the kaddish itself. But during the rest of the half-hour service — listening to the other prayers, reading memorial messages posted in the virtual chat on the side of the screen — my mind often wandered. Sometimes I checked Slack or email. I worried that I really wasn’t doing it right.
Back in religious school, I’d learned the mystical concept of keva and kavanah, Hebrew words that translate to “routine” and “intention.” The idea is that if you chant the same words every day, eventually, moments of connection will come. Kavanah is also translated as “sincere feeling” or “direction of the heart.”
I remembered asking, as a kid, how we would know when we got to kavanah. I don’t remember getting a good answer. Decades later, I was stuck in rote recitation — keva, keva, keva.
Until, as part of a Jewish study retreat in Maryland, I went on a walk in the woods with Rabbi Brent Chaim Spodek.
He called it a “soul stroll,” which sounded pretty hokey, but also as if it had a decent chance for kavanah. He led a little group on a light hike around a pond, stopping at beautiful spots to offer a few thoughts about the meaning of our familiar prayer book.
When we got to the central prayer, 19 blessings known as the Amidah, Rabbi Spodek summed it up as “Wow! Please? Thank you.” And that’s where it happened. I learned how to pray on my own terms.
“Wow” — shevach in Hebrew, or praiseworthiness — is about God’s awesomeness. Rabbi Spodek said he spends a minute or two pondering the miracle that is creation. That there is a (narrowing) climate in which humans can thrive. Plants and animals to nourish us.
“Please” — bakashot, or requests — is where we ask for things. Let my husband’s surgery succeed. Help my kid find his footing. Make me listen more. Big things, hard things, things we really need.
“Thank you” — hoda’ot — is like a gratitude journal. A yummy breakfast. A talk with an old friend. A walk in the woods.
It was hokey. But it worked. For the rest of my 11 months, whenever my mind wandered, I’d close my prayer book and close my eyes and try a little wow-please-thank you.
It did not instantly transform me into a believer. I still struggle, especially on the “wow” part, sometimes finding myself wow-ing God for making humans who figured out some technological, athletic or artistic miracle.
There are always plenty of pleases. And thanks, especially, for the nine other Jews who showed up so I could say kaddish for Dad, whatever he believed.
Jodi Rudoren is head of newsletters at The New York Times, where she previously spent 21 years as a reporter and editor. From September 2019 to April 2025, she was editor in chief of the Forward, the leading Jewish news organization in the United States.
The first time Pop’s Social, a catering company in South Orange, N.J., that specializes in dirty soda, served an alcoholic drink at an event, something strange happened.
At the event in December, its nonalcoholic offering, a spiced pear-cider seltzer with vanilla and peach syrups, cream, lemon and cold foam, was a hit. The Prosecco-spiked version? Not so much.
“People were more interested in the mocktail than the cocktail,” Ali Greenberg, an owner of the business, said in an interview.
Dirty soda — a customizable blend of soda, flavored syrup, creamer and sometimes fruit, served over pebble ice — has been crossing into the mainstream for years, especially after the cast of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the hit reality show that premiered in 2024, frequented Swig, the Utah chain that started it all.
But its reach has gone far beyond the Mormon corridor, and its rise in popularity has dovetailed with an overall decline in U.S. alcohol consumption. “There’s not a lot of Mormon people in our neighborhood,” said Greenberg. “But there are a lot of people who are sober-curious or not drinking.”
The reality show, which follows a group of Mormon influencers in Utah, helped popularize dirty soda beyond the Mountain States and inspired a wave of TikTok videos on the subject. Swig rapidly expanded — growing from 33 locations in Utah and Arizona in 2021 to now more than 150 locations in 16 states — along with other Utah chains, and spawned copycats nationwide.
Dirty soda has joined other Mormon cultural exports, like tradwife influencers, a “Real Housewives” franchise in Salt Lake City and Taylor Frankie Paul, the Bachelorette who wasn’t, that have captivated America.
With the recent rollouts of dirty soda at McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and Dunkin’ — behold the Dunkin’ Dirty Soda: Pepsi, coffee milk and cold foam — and the appearance on grocery shelves of Dirty Mountain Dew and a coconut-lime Coffee Mate creamer for homemade dirty sodas, we may have reached peak dirty.
The idea for dirty soda came out of a desire for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has millions of followers in Utah and surrounding states, to have more options for social drinking, as the church prohibits the consumption of alcohol, hot coffee and hot caffeinated tea.
When Swig introduced dirty soda in 2010, it filled a need, providing a pick-me-up for car-pooling moms and an after-school treat for their kids. It was quickly adopted by many in the community.
“In other cultures, parents go, they pick up their coffee in the morning, and for me and for a lot of my other friends’ parents, it was, ‘Let’s go pick up our dirty soda,’” Whitney Leavitt, a breakout star of “Mormon Wives,” said in an interview.
Leavitt was surprised when her dirty soda order became a recurring question from reporters in recent years. “They were so excited to hear all of the different syrups and creamers that we add to our drinks to make whatever your go-to dirty soda is,” Leavitt said. (Hers is sparkling water with sugar-free pineapple, sugar-free peach and sugar-free vanilla syrups, raspberry purée, a squeeze of lime, and fresh mint if she’s “feeling really fancy.”)
In April, Leavitt became the chief creative and brand officer at Cool Sips, a beverage chain based in New York that sells dirty sodas.
“Mormon Wives” inspired Kaitlyn Sturm, a 26-year-old mother of three from Jackson, Miss., to post recipes for dirty sodas on her TikTok. The one she makes the most contains Coke or Dr Pepper, homemade cherry syrup, a glug of coconut creamer and a packet of True Lime crystallized lime powder, which she combines in a pasta-sauce jar filled with pebble ice. “It kind of has become like a ritual, where I make one for my husband as well, and we have it most evenings,” Sturm said in an interview.
The trend has also hit fast-food menus. The new “crafted soda” menu at McDonald’s is riddled with dirty soda DNA. The Dirty Dr Pepper, with vanilla flavoring and a cold-foam topper, is the chain’s version of what has shaped up to be the universal dirty soda flavor. Since 2024, Sonic, beloved for its porous, soda-absorbing pebble ice, has offered “dirty” drinks — your choice of soda plus coconut syrup, sweet cream and lime.
These drinks might feel new, but there are antecedents in the Italian sodas of the ’90s (fizzy water and a pump of Torani syrup); the Shirley Temple (ginger ale or lemon-lime soda with grenadine and maraschino cherries); and the egg cream, a tonic of seltzer, chocolate syrup and milk. And what is a dirty Dr Pepper with cold foam if not a descendant of the root beer float? “It’s just a soda fountain from 125 years ago,” Kara Nielsen, a food and beverage trend forecaster, said in an interview.
Though Leavitt moved to New York City with her family in December, her dirty soda ritual has remained consistent, with one key difference. “In Utah, we don’t get to walk to dirty soda shops,” Leavitt said. “We have to drive there.”
Annuals include flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums. They grow fast but won’t come back the next spring (though they will drop seeds and possibly propagate). Perennials like lavender and sage will return year after year, but they may take longer to grow. Wildflower and pollinator packets often contain both annual and perennial seeds but are frowned upon by some serious gardeners, because the selection can be haphazard and ill-suited to the area.
It’s a good idea to exercise a little situational awareness. How much rain can you expect? How much sunlight? Dig the earth and feel it between your fingers — is it sandy? Loamy? These are things to keep in mind as you prepare for your journey into horticultural chaos.
“You want to prepare your soil, your site, at least a little bit,” said Deryn Davidson, a sustainable landscape expert at Colorado State University Extension in Longmont, Colo. “Try to get rid of weeds. Make sure the soil is ready to receive seeds.”
Davidson, who has written about chaos gardening, strongly advised covering the seeds with a layer of soil, lest they become bird food. As for watering, that depends on where you live, she added. On the whole, though, the formula is straightforward: “Soil, sun and water is what these seeds need,” Davidson said.
Not everyone is a fan of the trend, or at least the way it has been portrayed on social media. “Nature is not chaos — nature is pattern,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass,” which recommends imbuing modern life with Indigenous wisdom.
“It seems unrealistic,” Kimmerer said of the chaos gardening videos she has watched. The feeling of effortlessness they convey — a common social media effect, almost always the result of deft editing — seems to elide the work that goes into a garden, whether chaotic or not, she suggested.
“I want my garden to be natural and biodiverse,” she said. “That’s a good impulse. I don’t think this technique is going to get you there, but that’s an important impulse.”
Boitnott, the maker of the viral video, offered a simple reason for why chaos gardening has become popular: “It just makes you happy.”
Admission: I suffer from eyestrain. Even right this very second. As a reporter working on a computer more than eight hours most days, my eyes often feel fatigued and itchy by evening.
I’m not alone: More than half of the U.S. population lives with computer vision syndrome, also known as digital eyestrain, and nearly 16.4 million Americans suffer from dry eye syndrome. So I was especially excited to stumble on New Vogue Spa, in the City of Industry, which offers a relaxing, if intriguing, treatment called “Eyeball Care” — something I’d never heard of before at a day spa.
New Vogue Spa is an Asian-style spa with Korean and Chinese influences. The spa’s offerings include massages and body scrubs — I was curious about the “Red Wine Body Scrub” — but I couldn’t help exploring eyeball care, which was much needed after my 50-minute drive from Silver Lake. (The City of Industry is about 30 minutes from downtown L.A. without heavy traffic.)
So it came to be that I found myself lying on a massage table, wearing what looked like protruding diving goggles, with clouds of cool, aromatic steam oozing from both sides of it and engulfing my face. A spindly plastic tube extended from my forehead to the “Eye Spa” machine. Serene spa music, a blend of classical piano and loudly chirping birds, trilled in the background as the machine sloshed and gurgled. It felt like lying, creekside, in a spa robe wrapped in a blanket of chamomile and rosemary-scented fog.
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As my esthetician, Jenny Chen, adjusted the eye mask and added essential oils to the mist, New Vogue manager Lesley Xie explained that the 60-minute, $125 Eyeball Care treatment aims to hydrate and stimulate blood circulation in the eye area, decrease puffiness and dark circles and aid eye fatigue and dry eye syndrome.
“It’s really helpful for overall eye health for people who are on computers for a long time or sleep really late or who are reading a lot,” she said.
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1. The Eyeball Care treatment included a mask filled with cool, aromatic steam to help relieve fatigued eyes. 2. Slippers in the Himalayan Salt Room.
Xie said that eyeball care treatments are common in China. When she was growing up in Guangdong in Southern China, elementary school students were given a break every afternoon to perform “eye exercises,” which involved gently massaging pressure points around their eye areas, for 5-10 minutes.
“It released eye stress because we studied from eight o’clock in the morning until almost noon time,” she said. “It was a break for our eyes to prevent nearsightedness and tired eyes.”
New Vogue Spa’s treatment was supremely relaxing from the onset — part Head Spa, part facial, part eye care. Chen began by massaging my scalp for about 10 minutes, as I tried not to fall asleep.
Next she cleaned my face, applied massage cream and gently massaged my face and eye area, manipulating the outer corners of my eye sockets as well as under my brow bones and on my temples. She was precise and firm but careful — as she pressed on the outside corner of my eye, I felt tension draining down the side of my cheek and neck.
Esthetician Jenny Chen conducts “Golden Eye therapy” on reporter Deborah Vankin.
Xie said the massage is based on traditional Chinese medicine, focusing on stimulating acupressure points around the eyes.
“Gentle massage of these areas is believed to help promote blood circulation, relax the muscles responsible for focusing and relieve visual fatigue,” she said. “While it’s not a medical treatment for vision conditions, it’s widely used as a preventative and restorative method.”
The massage was followed by “Golden Eye therapy,” during which Chen used an electronic device on my face with a metal roller ball on it. It uses “ultrasonic vibration technology,” Xie said, to help the skin absorb the applied moisturizing cream and combat eye puffiness.
The main event was the “cooling steam therapy,” which Xie said was meant to be calming and refreshing and help relieve tired eyes. Chen fitted me with what looked like an enormous diving mask that quickly filled with cool, hydrating mist — I felt droplets of water dripping from my eyes and down my cheeks. The Eye Spa machine uses a “cold mist atomization process,” Xie said, “that disperses micro-particles of moisture combined with soothing essential oils.”
At the end of my treatment, Chen gave me under-eye gel pad masks, for added hydration, while conducting one last head massage. She applied moisturizing eye cream, face cream and sunscreen before sending me off.
Dr. Kristina Voss, an ophthalmologist with Keck Medicine of USC, was enthusiastic about the Eyeball Care treatment.
“It sounds wonderful. Anything that makes you feel good, I generally support,” she said. “It sounds safe because they’re not putting pressure on the eye. Direct pressure on the eyeball [is dangerous]. And I’d be nervous if they were putting something in the eye, but they’re not. Steam, or even cool condensation from a humidifier, is effective for dry eye. Massaging pressure points probably doesn’t treat dry eye, but could potentially treat eyestrain or tension headaches that can be interpreted as eyestrain.”
Los Angeles Times features writer Deborah Vankin inspects her eyeballs after her treatment.
Temporary relief aside, however, Voss warned that the treatment is not a replacement for seeing a doctor if a condition is ongoing.
“It’s relaxing and complementary to a doctor’s dry eye treatments — like medicated drops or in-office treatments — but it’s not a simple fix or cure all,” she said. “Ongoing doctor’s care would be important.”
After my treatment, I was invited to linger in the co-ed Himalayan Salt Room and Red Clay Room or woman-only spa area, complete with a warm soaking tub, lounge area and treatment rooms for body scrubs. (I skipped the adjacent New Vogue MedSpa, where you can get botox, dermal filler or microneedling treatments.)
Guests are also treated to a cup of homemade snow fungus tea (made from tremella mushrooms) with a single jujube, or red, date, floating inside. New Vogue makes a fresh batch every morning for guests, simmering the collagen-rich drink so long it becomes somewhat gelatinous.
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1. The Himalayan Salt Room. 2. The co-ed lounge area. 3. The Red Clay Room.
“Snow fungus focuses on deep hydration and skin plumping, while red dates support circulation and a healthy glow,” Xie said, calling the concoction “a warm bowl of snow fungus and red date soup.”
I can’t speak to the medicinal benefits of snow fungus tea. But after a glass of the warm, woody-tasting drink — together with the hour-long tension-taming eye treatment — I saw the world in a whole new way while walking out the door: clearly, from a relaxed perspective and with the bigger picture in focus.
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