Tefillah 086

49:
In many congregations each of the items that we have been discussing is followed by the Mourner's Kaddish, Kaddish Yatom. In some situations that can constitute an extraordinary number of times that this Kaddish is recited in concatenation. Here, for example, are items all of which usually occur at the end of Musaf and each of which might well be followed by the mourners in the congregation reciting Kaddish:

• Aleynu
• Shir ha-Kavod (Hymn of Glory)
• Psalm of the Day
• Psalm 27

And let us not forget that in many congregations the hymn Eyn Keloheynu will already have been followed by a passage of learning which concluded with mourners reciting a variant Kaddish, Kaddish de-Rabbanan.

(We discussed Kaddish de-Rabbanan in Tefillah 010. We discussed the Daily Psalm in Tefillah 038 and Tefillah 074. We discussed Aleynu in Tefillah 084 and Tefillah 085. And we discussed both Shir ha-Kavod and Psalm 27 in Tefillah 085.)

50:
Such a plethora of Kaddish recitations – up to five times in only twice as many minutes – is not the best of situations. When Kaddish is recited so often it detracts from its importance in the minds of the congregation and it is in grave danger of becoming some kind of magical formula in the minds of the mourners themselves. In ideal conditions Kaddish is one of the most sublime prayers than our liturgy possesses, and it is a shame that in many (most?) congregations its gold is turned into dross by the alchemy of repetition and misconception.

51:
The name of the prayer Kaddish derives from the Hebrew word for 'holy'. It bears this name because when it is recited both the reciter and the listeners are ascribing to God one of the major attributes of the Deity: sanctity. God declares, through the prophet Ezekiel, that there will eventually come a time when

When we recite Kaddish (the celebration of God's holiness) we pray that this promise be fulfilled as soon as possible. In the first two words of the Kaddish we are obliquely quoting the above passage:

When the congregants hear this encomium they respond:

This is the essence of the Kaddish and it is clearly a prayer that God manifest His sovereignty over all mankind in the very near future, because that will signify the ultimate perfection of the human race and that "the world has become perfected in the Kingdom of the Almighty", as we have said but a short while earlier in Aleynu.

52:
When we first discussed Kaddish in this series of shiurim – Tefillah 010 – we noted that

A careful perusal of almost any decent translation of the prayer will reveal that it contains not the smallest iota of reference to death, bereavement, mourning and so forth. So, how did a prayer that was originally recited in the House of Study come to be associated with Mourners? Furthermore, how did it come about that a truly sublime prayer, requesting the ultimate perfection of the human race, which should therefore be recited with the utmost dignity, and also, according to many decisors [poskim], should be recited sparingly – how did it come about that it has been 'downgraded' to a ritual formula that is often recited ad nauseam? We shall, God willing, address this question in our next shiur.

To be continued.

When we discussed Aleynu (Tefillah 084) we mentioned that in many countries the Jews were forbidden to recite these words and in 1703 in Brandenburg, Germany, by imperial edict police were stationed in the synagogues in order to enforce this prohibition!

Haim Halpern asks:

Did the German police know the Alenu tefillah? Were they specially trained or were they Jewish?

I respond:

Here are the facts as I understand them:

Franz Wentzel was a Jew who converted to Christianity. In the burning zeal of his new faith he accused the Jews that during Alenu they jump and spit in derision of Jesus. An edict was issued against the prayer in September 1700. In additon, an investigation was instituted, to which Jewish representatives were also called. The upshot of this investigation was a second edict which was promulgated on August 28 1703. The rubric of the edict read as follows:

According to the main provisions of the edict the prayer could only be recited in the synagogue and in a loud voice; and a Christian official was appointed to see that the edict was obeyed. I would imagine that the Christian 'inspector' was either a cleric, a pastor, learned in Hebrew or, as Haim surmises, he was trained to watch for "spitting and jumping" during the recital of a prayer.