Dvar of the Day, Rabbi Adam Scheier, March 18, 2020

Transcript

Hello everyone, this is your dvar of the day for Wednesday March 18th, the chai of March, the 22nd day of Adar in the year 5780.

There’s a principle in Judaism that when we can’t do something that we don’t—when we don’t have the ability to physically fulfill a particular commandment ,that we talk about it and perhaps even include it in our prayers as a way of fulfilling it. The words of our liturgy are k’ilu, the Hebrew word k’ilu, as if may these words be as if I have actually performed the action. One of the actions in which we’ve heard from our community that so many are pained not to be able to fulfill is that of the Kaddish, in particular of the mourners Kaddish. Very difficult not to say the mourners Kaddish when one sees one’s obligation to say this, an obligation not only to oneself in the prayers, but an obligation to the deceased as well. And so, we’ll talk for a few moments about that Kaddish as a way of perhaps k’ilu, as it were, fulfilling the Kaddish one of the sources of the Kaddish comes from the Talmud in tractate brachot, which tells a story about Rabbi Yossi and how he was walking and he came across one of the ruins of Jerusalem and encountered Elijah the Prophet. It’s a fascinating story, but he asked Elijah, he pressed Elijah for some lessons to learn from that encounter. One of the lessons that Elijah said is that when Israel enters, when the people of Israel enter a study hall or a synagogue and they say the words y’hey shmei hagadol m’vurach, may G-d’s great name be blessed similar to what we say in the Kaddish that G-d, as it were, k’ilu k’vyachol, G-d as it were, nods G-d’s head and says praiseworthy is a king whose subjects praise the king so in his house.

And the Aruch HaShulchan in nineteenth-century Lithuania, Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein noted that the Kaddish prayer was instituted as part of our daily prayers, or as part of our prayer cycle, in the time of the leaders of the great assembly – anshei knesset hagedolah – in the wake of the destruction of the first temple, meaning at a time where they no longer had G-d’s house they needed a way at least to praise G-d as they once did when G-d’s house was standing.

And perhaps this reason that the prayer is so closely associated with mourners, with those who have lost something or someone significant to them, there are ways in which we try to restore presence without being physically present with someone but at least to connect in some way as the prayer is connected to the presence of the temple so do our prayers connect to the presence of those whom we love. Of course, this is a prayer that’s deeply connected to the concept of minyan, of having a quorum for prayer, the Kaddish is connected to that, and there’s much discussion right now about what the possibilities are of reciting Kaddish in a virtual manner or in some other way and that will be discussed in our dvar of the day tomorrow. Have a good day, stay safe, be well, and be healthy.