Heart and Soul: Kaddish - why we pray for the dead

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, once told Michael Goldfarb of people going to their deaths at Auschwitz asking who will say Kaddish for me? Kaddish is the Jewish prayer for the dead. On the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz' liberation Michael Goldfarb explores the origins and meaning of Kaddish. How did a prayer for the dead, in which death is not mentioned, become the centrepiece of Jewish mourning?

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Michael Goldfarb, and this is the documentary, Heart and Soul, from the BBC World Service.
0:10.4	Yidgadal, Wieskada, Shemé Rabo.
0:14.8	The opening words of the Jewish prayer, the Kaddish, are a prayer for the dead in an ancient
0:20.4	recording of countered Jacob Kusovitsky,
0:23.0	who used to officiate at a synagogue which no longer exists, a ten-minute walk from my home,
0:28.2	in North London.
0:33.1	I've said these words since I was a boy, going to Hebrew school,
0:41.8	and as I've grown older, said it for my grandparents and my parents,
0:45.9	and sadly friends who died too young.
0:47.9	But like many religious rituals, I learned Kaddish by rote,
0:52.3	without a full understanding of why we Jews make this the
0:56.2	centerpiece of our morning.
0:59.7	Kaddish is a very important prayer.
1:04.8	It's the signature expression of Jewishness.
1:14.6	Kaddish has power to us because of its performance rather than its cognitive meanings.
1:24.3	That cognitive meaning can be confusing.
1:28.4	Kaddish is a prayer of mourning, but doesn't mention death.
1:31.6	So I decided to find out more from first Rabbi Herschel Gluck.
1:36.9	Kaddish is a very important prayer.
1:42.7	It expresses the essential message of Judaism of revealing God in the world.
1:52.9	Like the first words of the prayer, magnified and sanctified should be his great name.
2:01.0	And then further in the prayer, we say that his great name should be drawn down into this diverse
	...

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