Mourner's Kaddish and Its Connections: Psychoanalytic Thoughts on Mourning in the Jewish Religious Context

To the Memory of Barbara Milman

The Kaddish (Qaddish) is a liturgical prayer praising God—that is, a doxology. It is written in Aramaic. Scholars trace some aspects of this prayer to as far back as ancient Palestine (Judea) before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and the Babylonian exile; although, as Ismar Elbogen (1913/1993) says, Kaddish was also “preserved and developed thanks to Babylonia, where it also achieved recognition as one of the ‘pillars of the world’” (p. 81; cf. Pool, 1964, pp. 20-24).1 Today there are several types of Kaddish, and recitation of one of these concludes each major section of any Jewish service. A quorum of ten adult Jews (a minyan) is required for the recitation of Kaddish.

Here I will be primarily concerned with psychoanalytic aspects of the so-called Mourner's Kaddish, literally, Qaddish Yatom (Kaddish of the orphan). This particular Kaddish is recited at the end of a service and after certain Psalms (Petuchowski, 1983, p. 36). Although the context of the Mourner's Kaddish within the service has to do with death, death is not mentioned in the prayer itself. Neither is there mention of either the deceased or of any bereaved person(s), orphaned or otherwise. Instead, the “great name” of God is the center of attention: