It is very hard to believe that it is almost a year since Nathaniel’s passing. I still feel his presence throughout the day and miss his warm, smiling face and upbeat outlook. When Nathaniel died, we in his immediate family said kaddish for the shloshim, the thirty-day period of mourning. My husband Ruvan, our children Jonathan and Jackie, and I, were all steadfast in taking on this obligation. After all, didn’t Nathaniel deserve this last act of devotion?
As the days of that first month dwindled and we were getting close to its end, Ruvan told me that he wanted to take on the hiyuv or obligation of saying kaddish for the full eleven months (even though saying kaddish beyond the shloshim is only mandatory for the loss of a parent, not for the loss of a child or of siblings). The minute he said that, I knew that I wanted to take on the obligation as well. The desire to do for one’s child does not die with that child. Had Nathaniel had the zekhut, the privilege of living a full healthy life, chances are he would have had children to say kaddish for him. Since that was not to be his fate, who would be more appropriate to say kaddish for him than his mother? I carried him in my womb, I birthed him, and I orchestrated the life he led. For his 21 years, our lives—his and mine—were inextricably bound together. Although his father, brother, and sister were extraordinarily active members of Nathaniel’s life, I was his primary caregiver. It was out of a profound sense of loss that I took on the hiyuv of saying kaddish.
It was not easy. For those who know me, punctuality has never been my strong suit. As a dear friend told me when I started, “It’s like running to catch a train three times a day.” Despite this challenge, I rarely missed a kaddish. What I did not expect was the sometimes hostile reactions I experienced being a woman saying kaddish. I can gladly say that, for the most part, those negative experiences did not occur at my synagogue, Lincoln Square Synagogue (LSS), but at other shuls where either no one answered my kaddish or a man stood on the other side of the mehitza and tried to drown me out by loudly saying some other prayer so that I could not be heard.
When I started saying kaddish, it just so happened that I was the only woman at the time saying it at LSS, though there were many women who had said kaddish here before me. I did not know that a woman reciting kaddish was controversial and I said kaddish out loud. We now have as many as six women saying kaddish, some out loud, some in a low voice, according to the way they are comfortable, not dissimilar from the ways different men say kaddish.
“The desire to do for one’s child does not die with that child.”
On that note, I would like to address the “controversy” surrounding the recital of kaddish by women. Though the discussion goes back to the time of the Ge’onim, the seminal text in this controversy in more modern times comes from seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Rabbi Yair Bacharach in his work, Havot Yair, writes of a man who, on his deathbed, asked the rabbis of his town that a minyan be provided in his home so that his daughter would be able to say kaddish for him, for he had no son. The rabbis of the town agreed with his request. Rav Bacharach states that because a woman is also commanded in kiddush hashem and because the purpose of the kaddish is to comfort the soul of the deceased, the daughter’s kaddish is purposeful. Nevertheless, Rabbi Bacharach states that the practice should not be encouraged, lest it lead to a general weakening of the customs of the community.
Not much has changed in this debate since the seventeenth century. Those who 12 support women saying kaddish point to the fact that it seems permissible on the basis of Jewish law, as noted by the Havot Yair. Those who oppose the practice base their arguments on public policy concerns—the old “slippery slope” argument—as noted by the Havot Yair.
Still, it seems that most of the poskim or halakhic authorities to whom our community looks for guidance seem to support a woman’s kaddish. Allow me to summarize their positions:
- Rav Ovadia Yosef has an extensive teshuva (responsum) about women saying birkat hagomel (the blessing of thanksgiving for having come through a potentially life-threatening experience) from the women’s section during the Torah reading. In the same teshuva, he dismisses anticipated objections such as niddah, issues of modesty, or kol isha. He concludes “l’khol hadayot – to cover all opinions” that a woman should say birkat hagomel out loud from the women’s section and that the congregation should answer her berakha. This is certainly our practice at Lincoln Square. I remember saying birkat hagomel here on the Shabbat after Nathaniel’s birth.
- Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin has an extensive psak that says that a woman should say kaddish from the ezrat nashim (women’s section) while a man is saying kaddish simultaneously.
- Rav Moshe Feinstein in a teshuva in Iggrot Moshe is asked whether a woman may sit in the front of the men’s section if there is no ezrat nashim. He replies that she can because perhaps she is a mourner coming to say kaddish.
- Rav Aharon Soloveitchik writes, “Nowadays, when there are Jews fighting for equality for men and women in matters such as aliyot, if Orthodox rabbis prevent women from saying kaddish when there is a possibility of allowing it, it will strengthen the influence of Reform and Conservative rabbis. It is therefore forbidden to prevent daughters from saying kaddish.”
- Finally, the Rav, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, is quoted by Rav Ezra Bick of Yeshivat Har Eztion as saying, “I spoke to the Rav about the question of a girl saying kaddish. He told me that he remembered being in Vilna at the ‘Ga’on’s Kloiz’ and a woman came into the back of the beit midrash, where there was no ezrat nashim, and said kaddish after ma’ariv. I asked him whether it would make a difference if someone were saying kaddish along with her or not, and he replied that he could see no objections in either case.”
Rav Aharon Lichtenstein is quoted as having a similar discussion with the Rav, who said that a woman should say kaddish from the ezrat nashim.
One of the most interesting points of view is that of Rabbi Moshe Leib Blair of Chicago, who considered that saying kaddish is an integral part of mourning for which a woman is hayav or obligated, rather than an integral part of tefilla b’tzibur (public prayer), for which she is patur or exempt.
Although I am no halakhic authority, let me add a personal reflection about what the experience of saying kaddish has meant to me. Starting with shiva, through tefilla and saying kaddish, I found I was able to reconcile myself to the concept of a “merciful God,” a formulation that I had a great deal of difficulty with ever since I learned about Nathaniel’s diagnosis, despite being aware of the abundant blessings that I had in my life. Through tefilla b‘tzibur, and participating in it by saying kaddish out loud and having it responded to, I was able to reconnect to a relationship with Hashem that I was not sure that I would ever be able to achieve. In a fundamental way, that is the very purpose of tefilla, whether one is a man or a woman.
Too many times in the Orthodox world, a woman can get the feeling that she is just an observer of the men’s tefilla. I urge all of you to look at our davening in a minyan and consider that, regardless of which side of the mehitza one is on, people who come to daven are striving to find their connection to and peace with Hashem—equal in intent, equal in merit, and equal in importance.
May Nathaniel’s neshama have an aliya to the highest level where it so richly deserves to be.