The Prayer That Does Not Mention Death

The Kaddish is the doxology that punctuates every Jewish prayer service and that mourners recite for eleven months after a death and on its anniversary. It is written mostly in Aramaic, the everyday language of the Jews of the rabbinic period, which is one sign of its origin as a congregational response outside the fixed Hebrew liturgy. Its structure turns on a communal answer, may His great name be blessed for ever and ever, and its whole content is the magnification and sanctification of God's name and a prayer for peace.

What is most often remarked is what it does not say: the mourner's Kaddish, the prayer most associated with death in Jewish life, does not mention death, the dead, or grief. It is instead an act of praise placed in the mouth of the bereaved, and the tradition offers several readings of why, that the mourner affirms the justice of God at the hardest moment, that the merit of leading the congregation in praise benefits the soul of the departed, that recovery lies in returning to the community's ordinary words. Its power in Jewish life is out of all proportion to its plain content, which is simply that God's name be exalted.