Grieving Through Art: ‘A Father’s Kaddish’ To Screen At Jewish Center Of The Hamptons

When Steven Branfman sits down in front of an audience, he tells them that no question is too personal.

For him, it is the only way forward.

What comes next is often emotional, provocative and enlightening, he said, as he steps back into the most painful chapter of his life, reliving the loss of his 23-year-old son, Jared, who died in 2005 after battling cancer.

But through sharing their story, Branfman also reconnects with his son — the bond they shared as potters, the love they had for each other — and, in turn, he hopes he can help others who may be experiencing similar pain, as he continues to heal himself.

“I really like doing them, despite the fact that I know, at some point, I’m going to be crying,” Branfman said. “It just is what it is.”

Over the past two years, each talkback has followed the screening of “A Father’s Kaddish,” a documentary that explores Branfman’s first year of grief through the art of creating pottery at his studio in Massachusetts. Every day, for 365 days, he made one chawan — or a Japanese-style tea bowl — in honor of his son, who had made countless bowls himself.

The ritual became Branfman’s personal kaddish, which mirrored reciting the traditional Jewish daily prayer of mourning. But religion aside, the message of the film — which will screen on Thursday, August 25, at 7 p.m. at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton — is universal, explained director Jen Kaplan.

“I felt like this story needed to be told and it’s important because he also chose an art form to grieve,” she said. “It wasn’t just about saying kaddish in a synagogue, which people do, but that he then turned to clay — which is his love and his work — to create this homage to his son.”

To those who knew him, Jared Branfman was a light. He was outgoing, heartfelt and “remarkable in every way,” his father said. He graduated with honors from high school, excelled at multiple sports — track, soccer and wrestling — and showed a true affinity for clay, which he studied at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University.

“He was first attracted to making bowls. And the bowl, while it looks like a very simple shape, is one of the most complicated shapes to do well,” Branfman said. “He became an expert bowl maker — expert to the point where his fellow students and classmates at Alfred would come to him and talk to him about the bowl, and so would his teachers.”

During his junior year, Jared Branfman started complaining of back pain. His medical team discovered a benign spinal tumor, which was removed, but left him paralyzed from the waist down. After relearning how to walk, he went to the doctor for a routine MRI and, when the scans came back, they saw his spinal cord lit up with tumors. He was 21 years old.

“It was devastating. It was shocking. It was not something that we expected,” Branfman said, “and that’s when the cancer journey began.”

Over the next two years, Jared Branfman’s condition oscillated between periods when he was tumor free to others when he was not. When he visited the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for treatments, his first stop was always the Jimmy Fund Clinic to say hello to the children “and make them feel comfortable,” his father recalled.

And, throughout his journey, Jared Branfman never stopped making pottery.

“He was making pottery right up until his final diagnosis — and even after that, while his cognitive ability was still pretty acute,” his father said. “That last month, when he had the final diagnosis, not knowing whether his survival was gonna be weeks or months … he was making work right up until the very end.”

About a month after learning that the tumors had migrated to his brain, Jared Branfman died on September 27, 2005. After the patriarch, his wife, Ellen, and their son, Adam, sat shiva for the following seven days — a Jewish tradition that allows time and space for mourning — he returned to his studio, without the intention of making anything.

It had always been a respite for the potter, but now, it wasn’t. So, he left.

“Jared’s image was everywhere — photographs and his work and the memories of him and his brother being there, sitting next to my wheel as children, eating ice cream while I was making pots, or Ellen coming over with takeout and the four of us having dinner in my studio,” he said. “This is just natural. This is just part and parcel of what artists do with their families. It was just too painful. I wasn’t ready to remember.”

The next day, he came back. And even though it still felt uncomfortable, he spontaneously grabbed some clay, sat down at his wheel and made his first chawan. Then, the following day, he made seven more — catching up with the days since his son’s death.

“And then I made one a day for a year,” he said, “and those are the only pots I made for that entire year, as my own personal kaddish.”

In the Jewish tradition, through reciting the mourner’s kaddish every day in community for the year following the death of a close relative, it is meant to help someone move through the experience. It may involve a daily charitable act, study, prayer, or reading in their love one’s memory.

For Branfman, it was pottery — or, more specifically, the chawan.

Sitting at his wheel, working with the clay had a contemplative, meditative quality, much like reciting the kaddish every evening. Each day held a “single, solitary act of making,” Branfman recalled, until all 365 kaddish chawans were sculpted and fired in his kiln.

For the next nine years, they were left to rest on two sets of shelves — 7 feet high and 4 feet wide — covered in clear plastic to protect them from dust. He saw them each day and, every so often, he would pick one up and hold it, connect with it, and then put it back on the shelf with the others.

“And then, one day, I did and it spoke to me,” Branfman said. “It said, ‘It’s time.’ It’s as simple as that. It was not a conscious decision. I didn’t go to them and say, ‘Am I ready? Is it time to do them?’ It was just a spontaneous feeling.”

After the 365 bowls were glazed and fired once more, the artist, his wife and a colleague arranged them in chronological order on two shelves ringing the Thayer Academy Gallery — a tangible representation of Branfman’s year of grief, a decade later.

He called it, “A Father’s Kaddish.”

“Until I had them all laid out and stood back and looked at them, that’s when I saw them like that for the first time,” he said, his voice cracking. “I was overwhelmed and I just started to cry.”

Within 45 minutes, the opening reception was shoulder-to-shoulder, Branfman said. Some people he expected to come, others — like his son’s childhood friends — he did not. And among the attendees was Rabbi Josh Franklin of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons.

“The most extraordinary art exhibit I’ve ever attended was when Steve displayed all 365 bowls in a gallery, and I got to see his entire kaddish experience unfolding before my eyes,” he recalled. “When the bowls went up for sale, I purchased one to be displayed in my living room. Every curve, color and crevice is saddled with emotion.”

At the exhibition reception, over 100 chawans sold and about 120 bowls remain available for purchase — outside of those that the family will keep, including the first, the last, and the one made on Jared Branfman’s birthday. The artist will bring a selection to the screening on Thursday at the synagogue, which is just the third location that the film has screened to a live audience.

The final cut was ready in April 2020, just as COVID-19 pandemic restrictions moved most in-person meetings to Zoom, where more than 30 virtual screenings and Q&As have been held. In February, the 30-minute film won the audience award for best documentary short at the Denver Jewish Film Festival.

“There are many different ways to tell a story, there are many different ways to grieve a loss, there are many different ways to live a life,” Kaplan said, “and I think that’s all a part of it for me.”

It took Branfman years to be able to visualize his son’s name in his mind after his death, let alone say it out loud. After every Q&A, when he is inevitably reduced to tears, his wife asks him if he is going to keep doing them — and each time, he tells her, “Yes.”

“The exhibition in 2015 that spawned the film was my embarkation of putting myself out there and if I don’t open myself up to any kind of question that somebody has, then it’s not complete — then I’m not helping people,” he said, adding, “I want people to leave the event feeling like something has been added to their lives.”