Phyllis Jowell Memorial Shiur (handout)

Machzor Vitry
A tale of Rabbi Akiva: he was walking in a cemetery by the side of the road and encounter in there a naked man, black as coal, carrying a large burden of wood on his head. He seemed to be alive and was running under the load like a horse. Rabbi Akiva ordered him to stop. “How come you are doing such hard work? If you are a servant and your master is doing this to you then I'll redeem you from him. If you're poor then I'll give you money.” “Please, sir,” that man replied, “do not prevent me, because my superiors who will be angry.” “Who are you? Rabbi Akiva asked, “and what have you done?” The man said, “the man whom you're addressing is a dead man. Every day they send me out to chop wood and they use it to burn me up.” Rabbi Akiva said to him: “My son, what was your work in the world from which you came?” “I was a tax collector and a leader of the people, I showed favor to the rich and killed the poor, and more, I transgressed many serious trangressions.” He said to him: “Have you heard nothing from your superiors about how you may relieve your condition?” “Please, sir, do not detain me, for you will irritate my tormentors. For such a man as I, there can be no relief. Though I did hear them said something – but no, it is impossible. They said that if this poor man had a son, and his son were to stand before the congregation and recite the prayer ‘Bless the Lord who is to be blessed’ and the congregation were to answer ‘amen’, and his son were also to say the kaddish and they answer ‘May God's great name be blessed’, they would release him from his punishment. But this man does not know if he had a son. He left his wife pregnant and he did not know whether the child was a boy, and even if she gave birth to a boy, who would teach the boy Torah? For this man does not have a friend in the world.” Immediately Rabbi Akiva took upon himself the task of discovering whether this man had fathered a son, so that he might teach the son Torah, and install him at the head of the congregation to lead prayers. “What is your name?” he asked. “Akiva,” the man answered. “And what is the name of your wife?” Shoshniva.” “And the name of your town?” “Lodkyia.” Rabbi Akiva was deeply troubled by all this and went to make his inquiries. When he came to that town, he asked about the man he had met, and the townspeople replied: “May his bones be ground to dust!” He asked about the man's wife, and he was told: “May her memory be erased around the world!” He asked about the man's son and he was told: “He is an arel – even they did not bother to circumcise him!” Rabbi Akiva promptly took him, circumcised him and sat him down [to teach him]. But the boy refused to receive Torah. Rabbi Akiva fasted for 40 days. Then a heavenly voice was heard to say: “For these you mortify yourself?” “But Lord of the universe,” Rabbi Akiva replied, “it is for You that I am preparing him!” Suddenly the Holy One Blessed Be opened the boy's heart. Rabbi Akiva thaught him Torah and the reading of the Shema, the 18 blessings, and the benediction after meals. He presented the boy to the congregation and the boy recited the prayer ‘Bless the Lord who to be blessed’ and they answered ‘May the great name be blessed’. And he said the kaddish, and they answered "May God'st great name be blessed'. And after that he taught him mishnah and Talmud, laws and aggadot, until he got very wise, and he is Rabi Nachum HaPakuli, - and how many sages came from him!) At that very minute the man was released from his punishment. The man immediately came to Rabbi Akiva in a dream, and said: “May it be the will of the Lord that your soul find delight in the Garden of Eden, for you would have saved me from the sentence of Gehenna. When you made my son enter the house of gathering/synagogue, and he said the kaddish, my terrible sentence was ripped up. And when you made him enter the house of study, all my judgments were cancelled. And when he became wise and was called 'my teacher' my seat was put in Gan Eden with the righteous and pious ones, and they crowned me with many crowns. And all this was through your merit”. Rabbi Akiva opened his discourse with: “Your name, oh Lord, endures forever, and the memory of You through the generations!” (Ps. 135:13) For this reason it became customary in the evening prayers on the night after Shabbat are led by a man who does not have a father or a mother, so that he say can say Kaddish and say “Bless the Lord who is to be blessed.”

Peninei Halakha 7, HaRav Eliezer Melamed (edited)
There are four [common] versions of Kaddish:
1) Half-Kaddish. This is the essence of the Kaddish. It is called Half-Kaddish so as to distinguish it from other Kaddishim which contain further additions. In any section of prayer where a prolonged interruption is undesirable, Half-Kaddish is recited.
2) Kaddish-Titkabal, also called Kaddish Shalem (Full-Kaddish). The chazan recites this Kaddish after the conclusion of the Amidah. In it, before the addition of Kaddish Shalem, a request is added that our prayers be accepted.
3) Kaddish Yehei Shelama, This is recited after saying verses of Scripture, and contains an added request for peace and good life for us and for all Israel. We conclude, “Oseh shalom bimromav… v’imru Amen”. Since this Kaddish is usually recited by people who have lost a parent, it is also called Kaddish Yatom (Mourner’s Kaddish).
4) Kaddish d’Rabbanan. This Kaddish is recited after learning rabbinic teachings. Before the addition of Kaddish Shalem, we add a prayer in this Kaddish for those who learn Torah, that they should merit long and prosperous lives.
Responding Amen to these additions is not as important as responding to the main part of the Kaddish. Therefore, one may not interrupt the recital of Birkot Keriat Shema and Pesukei d’Zimrah in order to respond to them

Originally, writes Rabbi Naftali Zvi Roth,(7) the mourner brought relief to the deceased by reciting "Barekhu" in his capacity as hazzan and thereby eliciting the congregation's praise of God in response. But not everybody has the ability to act as hazzan (or get one of the few aliyot available on a Shabbat); minors would thus not be able to exercise their responsibility towards their deceased parents. Therefore, he maintains, the early authorities enacted the saying of Kaddish after the recitation of Psalms, which is outside of the formal prayer service, to provide an opportunity for those who could not act as hazzan

Henrietta Szold’s letter to Haym Peretz on saying Kaddish
for her mother, 1916.
New York September 16, 1916 It is impossible for me to find words in which to tell you how deeply I was touched by your offer to act as “Kaddish” for my dear mother. I cannot even thank you — it is something that goes beyond thanks. It is beautiful, what you have offered to do — I shall never forget it. You will wonder, then, that I cannot accept your offer. Perhaps it would be best for me not to try to explain to you in writing, but to wait until I see you to tell you why it is so. I know well, and appreciate what you say about, the Jewish custom; and Jewish custom is very dear and sacred to me. And yet I cannot ask you to say Kaddish after my mother. The Kaddish means to me that the survivor publicly and markedly manifests his wish and intention to assume the relation to the Jewish community which his parent had, and that so the chain of tradition remains unbroken from generation to generation, each adding its own link. You can do that for the generations of your family, I must do that for the generations of my family. I believe that the elimination of women from such duties was never intended by our law and custom — women were freed from positive duties when they could not perform them, but not when they could. It was never intended that, if they could perform them, their performance of them should not be considered as valuable and valid as when one of the male sex performed them. And of the Kaddish I feel sure this is particularly true. My mother had eight daughters and no son; and yet never did I hear a word of regret pass the lips of either my mother or my father that one of us was not a son. When my father died, my mother would not permit others to take her daughters’ place in saying the Kaddish, and so I am sure I am acting in her spirit when I am moved to decline your offer. But beautiful your offer remains nevertheless, and, I repeat, I know full well that it is much more in consonance with the generally accepted Jewish tradition than is my or my family’s conception. You understand me, don’t you?

Almost a quarter of a century ago, when the issue came up in a chapter of Yavneh, the National Religious Jewish Students Association, I asked one of the Yavneh student leaders who was then learning with the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, to put the question to him. Rabbi Ezra Bick (now at Yeshivat Har Etzion) wrote back:
I spoke to the Rav about the question you asked concerning a girl saying Kaddish. He told me that he remembered being in Vilma at the "Gaon's Kloiz" -- which wasn't one of your modem Orthodox shuls -- and a woman came into the back (there was no ezrat nashim [ladies section]) and said Kaddish after ma'ariv. I asked him whether it would make a difference if someone was saying Kaddish along with her or not, and he replied that he could see no objections in either case -- it's perfectly all right." Coincidentally, checking around, I came across a number of people who remember such incidents fromEurope, including my father (in my grandfather's minyan-he was the rav in the town).
Indeed, many people remember such occurrences. For example, Rabbi Pinchos Zelig Prag, gabbai of the Mir Minyan (the famous Brooklyn shul the core of whose members are former students of the Mirrer Yeshiva who came to America after the Second World War by way of Shanghai), told me that one of the congregants, Rabbi Moshe Maaruch, who was born and raised in Vilna and who studied at the Mirrer Yeshiva recalled that when his cousin died leaving an adult daughter and no sons, Rabbi Hayyim Ozer Grozinsky had allowed her to say Kaddish daily in the synagogue, another recalled that the Hafetz Hayyim had similarly ruled.
Prof. Yaffa Eliach(13) relates similar occurrences in her study of Eisheshok. Tsipora Hutner Kravitz, wife of Rabbi Yosef Kravitz, recalled to Dr. Eliach that in 1935, when she was 14 years old, her brothers were out of town when her father, Rabbi Naftali Menahem Hutner, the dayan of the town, died. She said Kaddish at the graveside and continued to say Kaddish in both the town's New Bet Midrash and Shtibel until her brother returned. She recalled that at the same time Gitel Gordon, then 18 years old, said Kaddish in the Shtibel. Another townsman recalled that when the girls said Kaddish, they wore a beret and stood in the men's section in the first row to the right of the amud(14)
Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin also recalled that in his youth young women said Kaddish.(15) He also allowed women to say Kaddish in shul, provided they remained in the women's section.(16) He noted that in past times, when only one person said Kaddish, that person would stand in the front of the shul, something inappropriate for a woman. Now, though, when everyone says Kaddish together from their respective places, the woman can say Kaddish.
Rabbi Soloveitchik also insisted on the woman staying in the women's section. Men at the time I had asked Rabbi Gerald J. Blidstein (then a faculty advisor to Yavneh and now at Ben Gurion University@ about the issue, he wrote to me:
The Kaddish matter is as follows. I was asked about the question last year, and looking into it, could find no reason beyond general policy, for forbidding it.
I spoke to Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein z'l, who had the same reaction and said he would ask the Rav [Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, his father-in-law], which he did when I was on the other end of the phone. [Rav Lichtenstein] put the question to him, and then was directed to ask me whether the girl was stationed in the ezrat nashim. I, of course, answered in the affirmative, and the Rav then said that of course she could say Kaddish.
While European rabbis apparently did not insist on this, I suspect that the insistence by the American poskim that women stay in the ezrat nashim stemmed in no small part from their opposition to the mixed seating that was gaining hold in many American synagogues.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
Kaddish is a response to death. Instead of resigning oneself to a sense of meaninglessness that accompanies a confrontation with death, one turns to tradition and its call to action. Through the Kaddish we hurl defiance at death and its fiendish conspiracy against man," .
When the mourner recites "Glorified and sanctified be the great name...," he declares more or less the following: No matter how powerful death is, notwithstanding the ugly end of man, however terrifying the grave is, however nonsensical and absurd everything appears, no matter how black one's despair is and how nauseating an affair life itself is, we declare and profess publicly and solemnly that we are not giving up, that we are not surrendering, that we will carry on the work of our ancestors as if nothing had happened, that we will not be satisfied with less than the full realization of the ultimate goal of the establishment of God's kingdom ....(6)
Not only is the mourner willing to make such declarations about himself, but he calls out to the congregation to join him. It is the elicitation of the communal response "Amen. Yehe shemey rabba ..." which is traditionally seen as the main merit of saying Kaddish.