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The Dead Live On Through The Deeds Of The Living

It is a fundamental principle of Judaism that God never closes the books on a life as long as the ripples of that life are still moving and churning. This is the meaning of the Pesikta’s statement quoted by R’ Bachya that we referenced in the “Source of the Mourner’s Kaddish” article; the dead can receive atonement through the charity of the living. True, the Heavenly accounts of reward and punishment, mitzvah and sin, are limited to the deeds of the lone individual being judged. But, in far more than a symbolic sense, the deeds of the living are those of the departed.

The child who contributes to charity in memory of a parent, the descendant whose heart is warm and hand is open because of the spiritual legacy of ancestors he never knew — these are truly part of the spiritual treasury of the departed. Such deeds occurred because of Jewish fathers whose determination surmounted hardship and ridicule, because of Jewish mothers whose faith and warmth overcame bare cupboards and enticing futures for their children, because of deeds that seemed to be instinctive and natural and unimportant and quixotic and impractical and forgotten as soon as they were done — yet could not be buried by the sands of time. God knows and notes them in His ledger.

So the dead find atonement in deeds they never contemplated, but that are nevertheless theirs.

So it is, R’ Bachya continues, with one who recites Kaddish in the synagogue. Kaddish is a public declaration that God’s Name will be sanctified. That Jews long for that time and proclaim their confidence that it will come is in itself an act of sanctification. Rational people have wondered for centuries why Israel does not resign itself to the disappearance decreed for us by all the laws of history. We do not disappear. We do not even ‘resign ourselves to our fate,’ whatever that means. We confidently predict that God’s Name will yet be exalted and sanctified, blessed and praised — by everyone, even those who presently deny Him most vehemently.

(Excerpted from The Artscroll Kaddish, Mesorah Publications, New York)


Read about the need of the deceased for Kaddish