DRASH: Reciting Mourner's Kaddish in this time of Pandemic and Physical Distancing
Shabbat Shalom. I know that it’s been a crazy week for everyone. I have been busy setting up on-line Services, classes and meetings for the congregation, and attending lots of on-line meetings, and have also been dealing with a soar throat that really kicked in on Monday when I was in Berkeley where Shoshana lives during the week and where my kids live with their mother as well. Then, on Tuesday the entire Bay Area was ordered to shelter in place, and not wanting to spread my soar throat or whatever it is, (my doctor told me this afternoon that I don’t need to get tested for coronavirus), I’ve turned my dining room table into my office as I’ve tried my best to keep us all connected spiritually and socially during this time of physical distancing. As my soar throat lingered, and my to-do list and email inbox grew, (I do hope to get back to many of you after Shabbat!) two questions of Jewish practice filed much of my other time: how do we handle Halachic issues of what constitutes a minyan for reciting Kaddish Yatom in this new and very challenging norm of pandemic response, and how to address what we should do as a community on Shabbat morning? Many pages of text study and many emails and many phone calls and conversations later, I am beginning to have some clarity about these important matters of tradition.
As I spoke about last week, the highest ideal in Judaism is Pikuach Nefesh, saving a life. To do so, one violates practically any mitzvah. For example, if your physician tells you that must eat a bacon double cheeseburger on Yom Kippur - you do it. If you have to drive to a hospital on Shabbat and need to buy gas or pay for tolls one does it. This is not a violation of the mitzvot, this is how they are to be fulfilled. Other than taking an innocent life, incest, or public idol worship where one should give up their life rather than do one of these most severe sins, when it’s an issue of life or death, one is commanded by Judaism to break any other commandment. The Torah says in Leviticus 18:5 one should "do the mitzvot to live by them" from which the Talmud (Sanhedrin 74a) explains that one, in general, must violate the mitzvot rather than die. That is unambiguous.
But here is what makes these questions of our congregation’s ritual practice complicated. There is no mitzvah to recite Kaddish. The rituals of mourning and how we publicly remember our loved ones are powerful, but are based on custom, not ancient sacred binding instructions. Kaddish is never mentioned in the Torah or TaNaCh, the Hebrew Bible, and it is not mention in the Talmud either. It’s a very old and profound prayer and a way to ask that God continue to elevate the souls of our loved ones, but it’s not a commandment. According to Halacha - the Jewish path of wisdom and practice - it requires a minyan to be present to recite a Kaddish, including the Kaddish Yatom - the kaddish of the mourner, literally an “orphan”. And what is a minyan? It’s 10 Jewish adults who are in the same room at the same time, and know they they are being counted in this prayer quorum, and can hear the person leading the Service and answer Amein. In Orthodox approaches, a minyan is 10 Jewish men. We as traditional egalitarian Jews have expanded the minyan to include men and women, but can we expand, or should we expand it, to included people who are not in the same room at the same time? Should our significant emotional needs for Kaddish trump the Halachic requirements of what is a minyan?
In normal situations, no. But we are not in a normal situation. We are sheltering in place. We are needing to avoid all physical contact with anyone we don’t live with. We are keeping at least six feet between us and our neighbor, or the person in the grocery store, at all times. This is what Judaism and Halachah refer to as a time of great need: a sha'at hadehak. And while this doesn’t mean that we abandon Jewish tradition or legal approaches, it mean that some say we may follow more lenient rulings.
I spent time this week studying an Israeli halachic ruling from a modern Orthodox Rabbi who serves a community in Bnei Barak. He had a question from a soldier: When the soldier is on duty, (and the same would likely apply to a doctor), and he can’t attend the synagogue, can he fulfill the requirement to hear the Megillah on Purim, or Havdalah on Saturday night, or the words of the Shaliach Tzibur - the public prayer leader - over a telephone? And if so, can he fulfill the saying of Kaddish by way of the telephone as well? After examining all of the traditional sources, including that a minyan must literally be 10 or more Jews in the same room at the same time, this rabbi concluded that in a time great need - in a crisis situation as we are in now, the soldier can telephone into an existing minyan and fulfill his Halachic obligations with a phone.
But what do we do when not even 10 people can be there in the same room at the same time? What do we do when are in a room only with our families, or by ourselves? What do we do if this situation lasts for a month, or three months, or longer? I know that the Jewish tradition says that in such a situation we simply don’t or can’t recite kaddish, but when should the tradition bend, and when should it adjust to a reality that requires thinking way out of the box?
Here is what leaders of the Conservative Movement sent out this week as written by Rabbi Elliot Dorff, the Chair of the Committee for Jewish Law and Standards: “We believe that in the current dire circumstances a more lenient position on constituting a minyan remotely may be acceptable, especially since there has been significant advances in technology. The… Code of Jewish Law does open the possibility that there may be an exception by joining in to constitute a minyan if one can see the faces of the other participants: “One who is standing behind the synagogue, with a window between that person and the congregation, even if it is several stories up and less than four cubits wide, and who shows his face to them, may combine with them to form a minyan of ten.” The possibility of a minyan being constituted by people who are not physically near each other is further expanded by Rabbi Yitzhak Zilberstein as he permits constituting a minyan for Mourner’s Kaddish where people are scattered in a field but can see each other. Recently Rabbi Haim Ovadia called attention to this source, arguing in favor of constituting a minyan by means of real-time video and audio connection between ten Jews. Therefore, in this crisis situation, we issue this ruling relying on these precedents…The participants counted for the minyan must be able to see and hear each other through virtual means and be able to respond “amen” and other liturgical replies to the prayer leader. Because reading from a Torah scroll is permitted for private study, the Torah reading may be read from a scroll without aliyot. Alternatively, the Torah may be read from a printed text, such as a Chumash or Hebrew Bible, without aliyot. A few more of us hold that it is permitted to constitute a minyan exclusively online only for the sake of reciting Kaddish Yatom. This permission of constituting a minyan solely online, whether for all prayers requiring a minyan or only for Mourner’s Kaddish, is limited to this “sha’at hadehak” (crisis situation), where for weeks at a time, gathering a minyan is not possible without risk to human life. Importantly, this permission is still subject to concerns as to how this might be accomplished on Shabbat. There are complicated issues with using video technology to participate in services on Shabbat and Yom Tov. These complicated issues should not be ignored, and congregations can bypass these challenges by offering a live streaming option at a time that is not Shabbat…(for example, Friday night before sundown, motza’ei Shabbat for Havdalah).”
So, for now, I have decided that at least for now, in this crisis situation, if we can see and hear each other in prayer, and there are at least 10 Jewish adults in the on-line Zoom room, we can constitute a minyan for the purpose of saying Mourners Kaddish. When I conclude this Facebook Service in a few minutes, I will ask that at least 9 of you join me in a Zoom chat room, and we will together recite Aleinu and Kaddish. Staying connected has never been more important. And maybe next week on my to-do list will be time to think through how to thoughtfully overcome the obstacles of gathering on Shabbat mornings. Until then, we can draw great strength from praying at the same time as we are doing now and studying together. And as the Book of Proverbs says: Torah and mitzvot “will be a cure for your bodies and a tonic for your bones” (3:8). Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Shalom Bochner
As I spoke about last week, the highest ideal in Judaism is Pikuach Nefesh, saving a life. To do so, one violates practically any mitzvah. For example, if your physician tells you that must eat a bacon double cheeseburger on Yom Kippur - you do it. If you have to drive to a hospital on Shabbat and need to buy gas or pay for tolls one does it. This is not a violation of the mitzvot, this is how they are to be fulfilled. Other than taking an innocent life, incest, or public idol worship where one should give up their life rather than do one of these most severe sins, when it’s an issue of life or death, one is commanded by Judaism to break any other commandment. The Torah says in Leviticus 18:5 one should "do the mitzvot to live by them" from which the Talmud (Sanhedrin 74a) explains that one, in general, must violate the mitzvot rather than die. That is unambiguous.
But here is what makes these questions of our congregation’s ritual practice complicated. There is no mitzvah to recite Kaddish. The rituals of mourning and how we publicly remember our loved ones are powerful, but are based on custom, not ancient sacred binding instructions. Kaddish is never mentioned in the Torah or TaNaCh, the Hebrew Bible, and it is not mention in the Talmud either. It’s a very old and profound prayer and a way to ask that God continue to elevate the souls of our loved ones, but it’s not a commandment. According to Halacha - the Jewish path of wisdom and practice - it requires a minyan to be present to recite a Kaddish, including the Kaddish Yatom - the kaddish of the mourner, literally an “orphan”. And what is a minyan? It’s 10 Jewish adults who are in the same room at the same time, and know they they are being counted in this prayer quorum, and can hear the person leading the Service and answer Amein. In Orthodox approaches, a minyan is 10 Jewish men. We as traditional egalitarian Jews have expanded the minyan to include men and women, but can we expand, or should we expand it, to included people who are not in the same room at the same time? Should our significant emotional needs for Kaddish trump the Halachic requirements of what is a minyan?
In normal situations, no. But we are not in a normal situation. We are sheltering in place. We are needing to avoid all physical contact with anyone we don’t live with. We are keeping at least six feet between us and our neighbor, or the person in the grocery store, at all times. This is what Judaism and Halachah refer to as a time of great need: a sha'at hadehak. And while this doesn’t mean that we abandon Jewish tradition or legal approaches, it mean that some say we may follow more lenient rulings.
I spent time this week studying an Israeli halachic ruling from a modern Orthodox Rabbi who serves a community in Bnei Barak. He had a question from a soldier: When the soldier is on duty, (and the same would likely apply to a doctor), and he can’t attend the synagogue, can he fulfill the requirement to hear the Megillah on Purim, or Havdalah on Saturday night, or the words of the Shaliach Tzibur - the public prayer leader - over a telephone? And if so, can he fulfill the saying of Kaddish by way of the telephone as well? After examining all of the traditional sources, including that a minyan must literally be 10 or more Jews in the same room at the same time, this rabbi concluded that in a time great need - in a crisis situation as we are in now, the soldier can telephone into an existing minyan and fulfill his Halachic obligations with a phone.
But what do we do when not even 10 people can be there in the same room at the same time? What do we do when are in a room only with our families, or by ourselves? What do we do if this situation lasts for a month, or three months, or longer? I know that the Jewish tradition says that in such a situation we simply don’t or can’t recite kaddish, but when should the tradition bend, and when should it adjust to a reality that requires thinking way out of the box?
Here is what leaders of the Conservative Movement sent out this week as written by Rabbi Elliot Dorff, the Chair of the Committee for Jewish Law and Standards: “We believe that in the current dire circumstances a more lenient position on constituting a minyan remotely may be acceptable, especially since there has been significant advances in technology. The… Code of Jewish Law does open the possibility that there may be an exception by joining in to constitute a minyan if one can see the faces of the other participants: “One who is standing behind the synagogue, with a window between that person and the congregation, even if it is several stories up and less than four cubits wide, and who shows his face to them, may combine with them to form a minyan of ten.” The possibility of a minyan being constituted by people who are not physically near each other is further expanded by Rabbi Yitzhak Zilberstein as he permits constituting a minyan for Mourner’s Kaddish where people are scattered in a field but can see each other. Recently Rabbi Haim Ovadia called attention to this source, arguing in favor of constituting a minyan by means of real-time video and audio connection between ten Jews. Therefore, in this crisis situation, we issue this ruling relying on these precedents…The participants counted for the minyan must be able to see and hear each other through virtual means and be able to respond “amen” and other liturgical replies to the prayer leader. Because reading from a Torah scroll is permitted for private study, the Torah reading may be read from a scroll without aliyot. Alternatively, the Torah may be read from a printed text, such as a Chumash or Hebrew Bible, without aliyot. A few more of us hold that it is permitted to constitute a minyan exclusively online only for the sake of reciting Kaddish Yatom. This permission of constituting a minyan solely online, whether for all prayers requiring a minyan or only for Mourner’s Kaddish, is limited to this “sha’at hadehak” (crisis situation), where for weeks at a time, gathering a minyan is not possible without risk to human life. Importantly, this permission is still subject to concerns as to how this might be accomplished on Shabbat. There are complicated issues with using video technology to participate in services on Shabbat and Yom Tov. These complicated issues should not be ignored, and congregations can bypass these challenges by offering a live streaming option at a time that is not Shabbat…(for example, Friday night before sundown, motza’ei Shabbat for Havdalah).”
So, for now, I have decided that at least for now, in this crisis situation, if we can see and hear each other in prayer, and there are at least 10 Jewish adults in the on-line Zoom room, we can constitute a minyan for the purpose of saying Mourners Kaddish. When I conclude this Facebook Service in a few minutes, I will ask that at least 9 of you join me in a Zoom chat room, and we will together recite Aleinu and Kaddish. Staying connected has never been more important. And maybe next week on my to-do list will be time to think through how to thoughtfully overcome the obstacles of gathering on Shabbat mornings. Until then, we can draw great strength from praying at the same time as we are doing now and studying together. And as the Book of Proverbs says: Torah and mitzvot “will be a cure for your bodies and a tonic for your bones” (3:8). Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Shalom Bochner
Photo taken by Alex Photo email: photo.modesto@gmail.com