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The ESP of the Jewish Way of Life  Roll your mouse over each circle to find the questions. Click on circles for more about Jewish ESP!
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| The
Kaddish and the Grateful Dead by Rabbi Michael Feshbach |
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Q: Can you please explain the
Mourner’s Kaddish?
A: Some day I am going to make a long list of rabbinic faux pas. You know, the kind of misstatements that live on in infamy, like "The Father, the Son and the Holy Spigot" line in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. For me, the worst misstatement of my rabbinic career was not so amusing. It happened in Florida. I had been a rabbi for all of three weeks.The Erev Shabbatservice began at 8 p.m. At 7:59 p.m. someone handed me a note: Jane Schwartz would like you to read Barb Cohen’s name with the Kaddish list tonight. And, of course, come the end of the service, I read Jane’s name with the list, not Barbara’s. The phone call came to the president of the congregation at midnight."How could the rabbi do that? He’s put a curse on me!! He read my name as dead!! This means I am going to die!! What I learned from my mistake was lesson number one in the power of the Kaddish. The words of the Kaddish themselves appear, in only slightly different forms, many times throughout the service. They are not in Hebrew,but rather in Aramaic, the language of the "street"when the Kaddish was introduced and represent a doxology, a praise of God. The real Jewish prayer for the dead is "Eil Malei Rachamim",God who is merciful, since the Kaddish does not once mention death or mourning. The Kaddish within the service functions as punctuation; the short (reader’s, or "half") Kaddish is like a comma, in between two sections of the service.The fuller version is like a semicolon. That’s why the Kaddish appears so many times in a traditional service. But the Mourner’s Kaddish serves a different function. It is not a division between parts of the service; it is a part of the service all by itself. The Kaddish is believed to have had its origins in the ancient Near Eastern legend of the "grateful dead". (And yes, that is where the group got its name.) The theory regarding its origin has to do with the little-discussed and much-misunderstood concept of life after death in Judaism. Although we speak about it much less than they do in Christianity, classical Judaism does have a view of the afterlife. It is a world to come where the righteous people of ALL monotheistic faiths will find themselves in a sort of waiting room in the sky called limbo. Hence the lack of proselytizing in Judaism; we do not need to save anyone’s souls if they are already good people. Although not defined in detail anywhere in our tradition, this place is apparently seen as a place for us to wait before final judgment — a place where the sins of our life are purged. The ultimate evildoers (murderers, rapists, and idolaters) will not be admitted to the world to come. Nor, however, will they be punished forever. They will simply cease to be. But those guilty of serious but not quite as heinous crimes may be kept for up to a year in limbo. Hence the custom of saying Kaddish for eleven months, since our loved ones, who may have had a lot of sins to purge, still couldn’t possibly need an entire year. Why the Kaddish? Well, our tradition teaches that the performance of mitzvot (religious obligations) attracts God’s attention. And if we do a mitzvah in someone else’s name, well, then,we can call God’s attention to that person. It is certainly a mitzvah to praise God. Thus the Kaddish, a praise of God, in the name of a loved one, is said in the hope of moving them along from limbo to their permanent condo in the sky all the more quickly. For which, of course, our dear departed will be,well, eternally grateful.They will be… the grateful dead. That is why the obligation is on a loved one,who knew the person, to show up at services and say their name. It is an obligation we take on for the members of our family, or for those to whom we are very close. It is also why making sure that a name is read at a service is praiseworthy — and why the mourner is the one to rise in traditional services, to call further attention to the one for whom we are saying Kaddish. The current Reform argument for saying Kaddish at each service for all those slain in the Shoah, the Holocaust, who have no one to say Kaddish for them makes sense in this light. But there are some who question the need to do this at each service. Beyond the afterworld explanation is a this-world rationale for saying the Mourner’s Kaddish. Namely, that especially at a time of pain and sorrow, we must still find the strength to praise God — an affirmation of our faith and our decision to embrace life in spite of our grief. In addition, it is an opportunity for our community to literally gather and rally around us to show us support in our time of mourning. It is said that the Mourner’s Kaddish is a prayer that binds generation to generation. It is, and it can. But for each one of us,may it be a long time before we have the cause to say the words of the Mourner’s Kaddish. Rabbi Michael Feshbach is the author of many articles and is one of the rabbis who responds to questions on Jewish.com’s "Ask a Rabbi". He is currently Senior Rabbi of Temple Beth Am in Buffalo and will soon be the Senior Rabbi of Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase. |
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Having
a richer SPIRITUAL life.
