13. Similarly, if two biblical passages contradict each other, they can be harmonized only by a third passage.[1]
Mishnah Avoth 5:23; Malachi 3:4
May it be thy will, Lord our God and God of our fathers, that the Temple be speedily rebuilt in our days; and grant us a portion in thy Torah. There we will serve thee with reverence, as in the days of old and as in former years.
KADDISH D’RABBANAN[2]
Mourners:
Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world which he has created according to his will. May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, and within the life of the entire house of Israel, speedily and soon; and say, Amen.
May his great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.
- ↑ 13. In Exodus 13:6 we read: “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread,” and in Deuteronomy 16:8 we are told: “Six days you shall eat unleavened bread.” The contradiction between these two passages is explained by a reference to a third passage (Leviticus 23:14), where the use of the new produce is forbidden until the second day of Passover, after the offering of the Omer. If, therefore, the unleavened bread was prepared of the new grain, it could only be eaten six days of Passover. Thence, the passage in Exodus 13:6 must refer to unleavened bread prepared of the produce of a previous year.
- ↑ קדיש דרבנן (Scholars’ Kaddish) is recited after the reading of talmudic or midrashic passages. על ישראל ועל רבנן is a prayer for the welfare of the scholars.
THE KADDISH
The essential part of the Kaddish consists of the congregational response: “May his great name be blessed forever and ever.” Around this response, which is found almost verbatim in Daniel 2:20, the whole Kaddish developed. Originally, it was recited at the close of sermons delivered in Aramaic, the language spoken by the Jews for about a thousand years after the Babylonian captivity. Hence the Kaddish was composed in Aramaic, the language in which the religious discourses were held. At a later period the Kaddish was introduced into the liturgy to mark the conclusion of sections of the service or of the reading of the biblical and talmudic passages.
The Kaddish contains no reference to the dead. The earliest allusion to the Kaddish as a mourners’ prayer is found in Maḥzor Vitry, dated 1208, where it is said plainly: “The lad rises and recites Kaddish.” One may safely assume that since the Kaddish has as its underlying thought the hope for the redemption and ultimate healing of suffering mankind, the power of redeeming the dead from the sufferings of Gehinnom came to be ascribed in the course of time to the recitation of this sublime doxology. Formerly the Kaddish was recited the whole year of mourning, so as to rescue the soul of one's parents from the torture of Gehinnom where the wicked are said to spend no less than twelve months. In order not to count one’s own parents among the wicked, the period for reciting the Kaddish was later reduced to eleven months.
The observance of the anniversary of parents’ death, the Jahrzeit, originated in Germany, as the term itself well indicates. Rabbi Isaac Luria, the celebrated Kabbalist of the sixteenth century, explains that “while the orphan’s Kaddish within the eleven months helps the soul to pass from Gehinnom to Gan-Eden, the Jahrzeit Kaddish elevates the soul every year to a higher sphere in Paradise.” The Kaddish has thus become a great pillar of Judaism. No matter how far a Jew may have drifted away from Jewish life, the Kaddish restores him to his people and to the Jewish way of living.
According to Rabbi Pool, the Kaddish was recited after sermons some two thousand years ago. The absence of all reference to Jerusalem and the destroyed Temple, as well as its plain, unmystical language points to an early date. The reason that the Talmud does not discuss the Kaddish is explained by the fact that in those days the Kaddish had not yet been made part of the daily prayers.
The prayer על הכל, recited on Sabbaths before the reading of the Torah, embodies part of the Kaddish in pure Hebrew. Genizah fragments have been found to contain a larger proportion of Hebrew in the Kaddish.
The Kaddish, like צדוק הדין (“acknowledgment of divine justice”), recited on the occasion of a death, seems to express the sentiment: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).
The Kaddish has five different forms: 1) קדיש דרבנן, recited after the reading of passages from the Talmud; 2) קדיש שלם, the full-Kaddish, recited by the Reader at the end of the service; 3) חצי קדיש, the half-Kaddish, recited by the Reader between sections of the service; 4) קדיש יתום the mourners’ Kaddish, recited by the mourners after the service and after the recitation of certain psalms, such as the Psalm of the Day (pages 139-147) ; 5) קדיש ל(את)חדתא, an expanded form of the mourners’ Kaddish, recited at the cemetery after a burial.
