Special Issues in Kaddish Study in honor of dead; women reciting
Kaddish; Kaddish integrating mourners into communities; and
hiring someone to say Kaddish. The author shares a Conservative
perspective on issues surrounding the obligation to say Kaddish.
Excerpted with permission from "Death and Mourning: A Time for
Weeping, A Time for Healing," in Celebration and Renewal: Rites
of Passage in Judaism, edited by Rela Mintz Geffen (Jewish
Publication Society). Together with sitting shiva [the seven
days of intensive mourning following the burial of a family
member], saying Kaddish is the most familiar and widely observed
of all Jewish mourning practices. During shiva and afterward, at
each of the daily services, mourners recite Kaddish yatom
(mourners' Kaddish). Many mourners try to attend Shaharit
services in the morning and Minhah/Maariv in the late afternoon
in order not to miss an opportunity to recite this prayer, but
many rabbis rule that attending one service a day fulfills the
mourner's obligation. Kaddi