Sixteen years ago, Tsits Eliezer 22;17 was asked about the appropriateness of a father saying kaddish for a teenaged child of his who had passed away.  We might instinctively dismiss the question as insensitive, but R. Waldenberg’s answer enlightens us about more than just kaddish.

The questioner had two reasons to think that the father’s kaddish was pointless. First, Sanhedrin 104a asserts that the Mishnah left Amon, an evil king, off the list of those who lost their share in the World to Come, so as not to dishonor his son, Yoshiyahu.  Challenged as to why that wouldn’t lead to leaving Menasseh off the list so as not to dishonor his father, Hizkiyahu, the Talmud answers that a son can help a father, but not the other way around.  If so, the kaddish would seem futile.

Second, there is a well-known tradition (although it turns out that it’s in Yerushalmi Bikkurim 2;1, which took me awhile to find) that the Heavenly Court does not punish us for our actions until we are at least twenty (at first glance, this is because the Talmud assumes that teenagers are not fully developed enough to be considered responsible for their actions; interestingly, this suggests that the Talmudic picture of emotional and intellectual development is closer to our contemporary one than we might have thought).  If so, the deceased had no sins for which he will be punished, so why would the father say kaddish?

First Do No Harm

Tsits Eliezer takes up each of the questions in order. He starts with Noda Bi-Yehuda Tanina Orach Hayyim 8, who was asked a similar question.  The 18^th century rabbi said he didn’t know of a tradition for a father to recite kaddish for a child, but was also not opposed to it.  He did note that the father would have to yield to anyone saying kaddish for a parent.  This reminds us of a time, not so long ago, when only one person in shul recited kaddish, and the question of who got to recite it could become quite tense.

A generation and a half earlier, Shvut Yaakov agreed, with two important additions. First, he proposed that the father say kaddish during the additional three times they did so after Aleinu (he does not specify what those are, and our custom is to have only one such kaddish).

I note that the urgency of the case there was limited by the fact that the deceased’s daughter had been gathering a minyan in her home so that she could say kaddish.  Shvut Yaakov was clear that since there was already a child saying kaddish (and he registers no objection to a woman doing so), there was less concern about the father getting the opportunity. We’ll see this again below, but this is already a first reminder that kaddish was seen as something done on behalf of the deceased, and once it was being done, there was little feeling to want to have as many recitations of kaddish as possible.

When Fathers Can Help Their Deceased Children

Then Shvut Yaakov adds two reasons that the father’s kaddish, in this case, could be expected to help the son.  He limits the whole comment that a father cannot help a son to when the son has committed serious and significant transgressions, such as those that lose him his share in the World to Come. That fits the context of discussion where the point was made, but it does not explain why it should be.  Neither Shvut Yaakov nor Tsits Eliezer enlighten us further, so let me try.

One piece of the puzzle, I believe, is the Jewish understanding that children are, in some sense, replacements of their deceased parents. That explains inheritance law, where the property automatically and immediately devolves to the children upon a parent’s passing; the children have not acquired the property, it simply moves to them.  Once the parents are gone, the children step in to their place.

An ordinary Jew has many connections within the world of Torah, mitzvot, and service of God.  For such a Jew, I think Shvut Yaakov was saying, the actions of those who cared enough about him or her to say kaddish, etc., can certainly redound to his or her credit.  A Jew who has acted so evilly as to cut him or herself off not only from the Jewish community but from the World to Come has lost that set of interconnections, has become a stranger to the Jewish people. After such a person’s unrepentant passing, family and friends cannot draw him or her back in by force of their will or good deeds.

The evildoer’s children, on the other hand, are him, in a sense. If they act well and properly, their merits inform the parent’s legacy, making him or her less completely evil, and perhaps good enough to be rehabilitated into the World to Come.

The Power of Prayer

Tsits Eliezer adds that a Tosafot in Sotah 10b seems to go a step further than that.  The Talmud there had questioned why David haMelech repeated the word “beni, my son” eight times in his mourning over Avshalom when he heard that he had been killed.  The Talmud says that the first seven removed Avshalom from the seven levels of Gehinnom, purgatory, and that the eighth, in one opinion, brought him into the World to Come.

Tosafot there questions how that could be, considering that fathers cannot provide merits for their sons.  Among the answers, Tosafot says that the Talmudic denial of the father helping the son was only where the father either chose not to, or we did not know the father’s wishes.  If the father chooses to pray for the son’s betterment, that would work, Tosafot says.  So Tosafot seems to think that others can pray for the deceased and have that positively impact their standing in the eyes of God.

There thus seems to be solid support that the father can say kaddish, although not at the cost of getting in the way of others with greater rights to that communal recitation.

No Punishment for Less than Twenty?

The second question, that the Heavenly Court does not punish those under twenty, assumes that the kaddish is recited only to help the deceased’s standing before the Heavenly Court.  I stress this because it is an assumption about the essential nature of kaddish that Tsits Eliezer never questions but that I think many have lost sight of.

We say kaddish, we should remember, because we assume that our relative, and all Jews, will be found wanting, and we want to mitigate the punishment the deceased will be suffering in the World of Truth.  This awareness of our lacks, if we paid attention to it, might salubriously help us remember to try to improve ourselves, so that our time in Court will be less embarrassing, when that day comes.

Tsits Eliezer notes that Noda Bi-Yehuda addressed this question as well; his fundamental answer was that it was the questioner’s place to question the workings of God’s mercy.  The exact phrasing, be-hadei kavshei de-Rahmana lama lach (in the suppressed matters of the Merciful One, why are you there?), references an interesting Talmudic story about Yeshayahu and Hizkiyahu haMelech.

Why Hizkiyahu Almost Died Before His Time

Berachot 10b envisions Sancheriv’s siege of Jerusalem as a tense time, in which Yeshayahu and Hizkiyahu should have been consulting. In the Talmud’s rendering, each thought he was too important to go to the other, so God made the king ill and sent the prophet to visit him (a side note: in the Talmud’s view, at the same time as Jerusalem was under siege and Sancheriv was miraculously destroyed, the king was bedridden, deathly ill).

Yeshayahu tells the king that he is going to die (not usually how to handle a sickroom visit), for his failure to have children. Hizkiyahu protests that he knew they would turn out evil (as they did).  Yeshayahu responds: Behadei kavshei de-Rahmana lama lach?  Note that the reply accepts the accuracy of Hizkiyahu’s premonitions, but objects to his letting that affect his fulfillment of a Biblical obligation.   So, too, Noda Bi-Yehuda was saying, we say kaddish for the deceased, and it is not for us to try to construct theories of when to say it or not, based on how we assume it works.  This is even though kaddish is a post-Talmudic innovation; Noda Bi-Yehudah seems to be saying that once Jewish tradition decided that kaddish was effective, we cannot question when or how it works (I note that Tsits Eliezer later cites Sdei Hemed, who knows of no opinions that would say kaddish for a child who passed away before having any kind of awareness of the world—since such a child clearly has no sins, there really is no reason to say kaddish).

Noda Bi-Yehudah adds proofs of his point, one of which is particularly fascinating. He says that by the logic of not saying kaddish for someone who passes away before twenty, if a nineteen year old died and left behind a five or six year old child, that would call for denying his child the right to say kaddish, which he sees as patently ridiculous.

First, technically, do the math on how old this parent would have been when he had the child. Second, note that he assumes—despite operating in an environment where only one mourner said kaddish at a time—that the five year old would have the same rights as any other bereaved orphan.

Teenagers Aren’t Really Free of Culpability for Their Actions

Tsits Eliezer closes with a strong refutation of the applicability of the whole idea that under twenty we are free of liability for our sins. He cites a slew of authors who dismiss that Yerushalmi as aggadah, meaning that it has importance and value, but not in halachic contexts.  Noda Bi-Yehuda’s version is particularly emphatic, expressing astonishment at the possibility that the world would be a law-free zone for teenagers, who could kill and fornicate and all other abominable acts, without any Heavenly response.

Noda Bi-Yehudah instead suggests that the Yerushalmi only meant that the Heavenly Court would not avenge those transgressions in the sinner’s lifetime, but that our final judgment includes all the sins we committed from the time we understood what we were doing (even from before Bar or Bat Mitsvah).  Alternatively or additionally, he points out that sin blocks and reduces the reward we would get for our good deeds, a result of the contaminating nature of sin.  Whether or not we get punished for sin, it affects who we are, which can justify saying kaddish for its mitigation.  Which is how Tsits Eliezer closes, that this father can certainly say kaddish for his son, and we can all pray for a time when such tragedies no longer occur.