Draft. This siddur is waiting for a rav's review. For a halachic question, ask your rav.
Hebrew, then English. Open "What it means" under any line for the explanation.
For someone in mourning, or marking a yahrzeit (a death anniversary). Everyone else answers where marked.
קדיש יִתְגַּדַּל וְיִתְקַדַּשׁ שְׁמֵהּ רַבָּא
Mourner's Kaddish: Made great and made holy be His great name
May His great name be made great and made holy
The Ohr Zarua (a law book by Rabbi Yitzchak of Vienna, 1200s) says that where he lived and in the Rhineland, an orphan said this Kaddish after Ein Keloheinu. In France no one minded if the boy had both parents. He backs his custom with the Rabbi Akiva story in the Story section. In his telling, the son says Barchu or Yitgadal and the congregation answers.
Ohr Zarua, Volume II 50Everyone: "Amen." Then the mourner goes on:
בְּעָלְמָא דִּי בְרָא כִרְעוּתֵהּ וְיַמְלִיךְ מַלְכוּתֵהּ וְיַצְמַח פּוּרְקָנֵהּ וִיקָרֵב מְשִׁיחֵהּ
in the world He created as He wanted. May He make His kingdom rule, make His rescue sprout, and bring His anointed one near,
in the world He created as He wanted. May He make His kingdom rule, make His rescue sprout, and bring His anointed king, the Mashiach, near,
Everyone: "Amen." Then the mourner goes on:
בְּחַיֵּיכוֹן וּבְיוֹמֵיכוֹן וּבְחַיֵּי דְכָל בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל, בַּעֲגָלָא וּבִזְמַן קָרִיב וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן.
in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of all the house of Israel, quickly and soon. And say: Amen.
Everyone, out loud: "Amen," then this line. The mourner says it too:
יְהֵא שְׁמֵהּ רַבָּא מְבָרַךְ לְעָלַם וּלְעָלְמֵי עָלְמַיָּא.
May His great name be blessed forever and for all time.
Two different things are said here. "Amen" answers the one saying Kaddish. "Yehe shemeh raba" is a statement of its own. So the Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, around 1900) says to pause slightly between the two.
Mishnah Berurah 56:2The mourner. Chassidic custom carries the answer on into the first word here, "yitbarakh."
יִתְבָּרַךְ וְיִשְׁתַּבַּח וְיִתְפָּאַר וְיִתְרוֹמַם וְיִתְנַשֵּׂא וְיִתְהַדָּר וְיִתְעַלֶּה וְיִתְהַלָּל שְׁמֵהּ דְקוּדְשָׁא, בְּרִיךְ הוּא
Blessed and praised, glorified and raised high, lifted up and honored, exalted and acclaimed be the name of the Holy One, blessed is He,
Everyone: "Berikh hu" or "Amen," by custom. Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur: "le'ela ule'ela mikol birkhata."
לְעֵלָּא מִן כָּל בִּרְכָתָא וְשִׁירָתָא, תֻּשְׁבְּחָתָא וְנֶחֱמָתָא, דַּאֲמִירָן בְּעָלְמָא, וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן,
beyond all the blessings and songs, praises and words of comfort that are spoken in the world. And say: Amen.
Everyone: "Amen."
יְהֵא שְׁלָמָא רַבָּא מִן שְׁמַיָּא וְחַיִּים עָלֵינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן.
May there be great peace from heaven, and life for us and for all Israel. And say: Amen.
Everyone: "Amen." The mourner takes three steps back. Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur: "oseh hashalom." Then all: "Amen."
עוֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם בִּמְרוֹמָיו הוּא יַעֲשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם עָלֵינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן.
He who makes peace in His heights, may He make peace for us and for all Israel. And say: Amen.
Stand. The custom is to keep your feet together. Say the g in the first word clearly, so it is not heard as "yitkadal," which sounds like the Aramaic word for the back of the neck. Say "bizman kariv ve'imru amen" in one go.
Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 23:11; Mishnah Berurah 56:2Read the English. It praises God, asks for peace, and says Amen. It never mentions the person who died. A longer version is said after a burial, and the Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) says it includes a line about the world God is going to make new. This one has no such line. The words are the same praise everyone says. What changes is who is saying them.
Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah 376:4Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) lists four versions of Kaddish. This is the one with the added request for peace and good life, called Kaddish Yehei Shelama, or the full Kaddish. Because mourners usually say it, it also got the name Kaddish Yatom, "the orphan's Kaddish." The name comes from who says it, not from what the words say.
Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 23:7Masechet Kallah Rabbati is one of the short books printed alongside the Gemara. In it, Rabbi Akiva (a leading sage of the Mishnah) meets a dead man carrying a heavy load. The man says he did every sin there is, and now guards will not let him rest. He left a wife who was expecting. Rabbi Akiva finds her, circumcises the baby, and when the boy is grown stands him up in the synagogue to lead a blessing in the congregation. The dead man appears again: "May your mind be at rest, because you put mine at rest."
Masechet Kallah Rabbati 2:9Rabbi Ben-Zion Uziel, a 20th-century rabbi in Jerusalem, wrote that he found no explicit source in the Gemara for saying Kaddish for the dead. The only one he found is the Kallah Rabbati story. He also quotes a midrash, Eliyahu Zuta, that tells it with the son saying Barchu, the call to prayer, and not Kaddish. So by his count, the custom rests on this story and its retellings, not on a passage in the Gemara itself.
Mishpetei Uziel, Orach Chaim 2:10The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who added Ashkenazi practice to the Shulchan Aruch) says that on weekdays a mourner who knows how to lead the service should do that. It helps more than Mourner's Kaddish, which he says was set up only for minors. Peninei Halakhah agrees.
Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah 376:4, Rema; Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 4:5It is a fair question. The words praise God, ask for peace, and answer Amen. Nobody is named. Still, the custom is to say it for a parent who has died, and the sources give a reason.
Peninei Halakhah explains it this way. The child is the one the parent left behind in this world. When the child sanctifies God's name in public by saying Kaddish, the parent's merits grow. The book says this helps a parent be saved from the judgment of Gehinnom (in Jewish tradition, the place where souls are judged after death). It says Kaddish is said even for completely righteous parents, because it lifts their souls higher.
Where does the custom come from? The Rema says it is found in the midrashim. The sources printed beside his ruling include Masechet Kallah Rabbati, the story of Rabbi Akiva and the dead man whose son is brought to lead a blessing in the congregation.
Rabbi Uziel, a 20th-century rabbi in Jerusalem, adds an honest note. He found no explicit source in the Gemara. In the versions he quotes, the son leads a blessing in the synagogue, and in one of them it is Barchu, the call to prayer. Neither one uses the word Kaddish. The Rema himself calls it a custom people took on.
These sources are about what the Kaddish does for the person who died. They do not say what it should feel like for the one saying it. What they do say is that the help comes from the child standing up and praising God in public.
Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 4:5,Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah 376:4, Rema,Masechet Kallah Rabbati 2:9,Mishpetei Uziel, Orach Chaim 2:10A year of mourning sounds like it should mean twelve months of Kaddish. The custom is eleven, and the reason goes back to the Mishnah (the first written collection of the Oral Torah).
The Mishnah lists five things that last twelve months. Among them are the judgment of the generation of the Flood, the judgment of the Egyptians, and the judgment of the wicked in Gehinnom.
The Rema writes that people do not say Kaddish and lead the service for more than eleven months. The reason he gives is that they do not want to make their parents look wicked, since the judgment of a wicked person is twelve months. Saying it for the full twelve would hint that the parent needed the whole term.
Not everyone does it this way. Peninei Halakhah reports that the custom of Sephardi Jews (families from Spain, North Africa and the Middle East, which is not the same thing as Nusach Sefard) is to stop for only the first week of the twelfth month, then continue until the yahrzeit, the yearly anniversary of the death.
The same reasoning works the other way. For someone known to have been wicked, Peninei Halakhah, citing Pitchei Teshuvah (a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch), says Kaddish is said the full twelve months.
After the year, Kaddish comes back every year on the yahrzeit. Peninei Halakhah says that day is counted from the day of death, not the day of burial.
Mishnah Eduyot 2:10,Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah 376:4, Rema,Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 4:6Not every person who dies leaves a child to say Kaddish. Some have no family nearby. The sources do not leave it there.
The Rema writes that if no one in the synagogue is mourning a mother or father, a person who has no living mother or father says the Kaddish on behalf of all the dead of Israel.
The Gemara has an older story about a related problem. It is about the seven days of mourning, not about Kaddish. A man died near Rav Yehuda (a sage of the Gemara) and left no mourners for anyone to comfort. Every day Rav Yehuda gathered ten people to sit in the dead man's place. After seven days the man appeared to him in a dream and said, "May your mind be at rest, because you put mine at rest." Those are the same words as in the Rabbi Akiva story. The Tur (a law code from the 1300s) brings it as law.
Who counts as a mourner? The Rema says this Kaddish is only for a mother or father, not for other relatives. But he adds that some places let other relatives say it, and he says to follow the local custom, as long as the custom is fixed.
Peninei Halakhah adds that for all the importance of Kaddish, the most helpful thing of all is for the children to learn more Torah, give more charity and do more mitzvot. Kaddish is one way to give, not the only one.
Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De'ah 376:4, Rema,Shabbat 152a-b,Tur, Yoreh De'ah 376,Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 4:5Short ideas from the Chassidic masters, the Kabbalah and the Mussar teachers.
The Maharal (Rabbi Yehudah Loew of Prague, who died in 1609) has a chapter on peace. There he quotes a midrash: great is peace, for even the dead need peace, since God promised Avraham, "You will go to your ancestors in peace." The Maharal explains: you might think peace is needed only in this world, where people fight and push each other aside. But everything that exists receives peace from God, the dead too. Only God does not need it, because God is peace itself. Now read the last line of Kaddish again.
גדול השלום שאפי' המתים צריכין שלום שנא' ואתה תבא אל אבותיך בשלום
Maharal, Netivot Olam, Netiv HaShalom 1, quoting a midrashBeit Yisrael, a book about Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin (a Chassidic leader who died in 1850), tells this. His father died when he was six, and a tutor took him to synagogue daily to say Kaddish. Once another orphan, the son of a simple man, began Kaddish too, then stopped out of respect for him. The boy said a few words and ran out. Scolded, he said his late father had come to him with a message from the other boy's father: "I am waiting so much for my son's Kaddish." So his father told him to stop and go out. Now read the words again.
ואנכי מצפה מאד על הקדיש של בני לזכות אותי בעלמא דקשוט
Beit Yisrael (Ruzhin), Ohel Avraham 9The practical laws. For a final ruling, ask your rav.
The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who added Ashkenazi custom to the Shulchan Aruch, the main code of Jewish law) writes that this Kaddish belongs to a father or mother, not to other relatives. He adds that some places let other relatives say it for theirs, and that the rule is to follow the local custom, as long as the custom in town is fixed. Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) adds that it is right to say it for adoptive parents.
Rema, Yoreh De'ah 376:4; Peninei Halakhah, Women's Prayer 20:18For a parent, eleven months. The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, 1500s) gives the reason: the wicked are judged for twelve months, and saying Kaddish for a full twelve would look like calling your parent wicked. Sephardi Jews (families from Spain, North Africa and the Middle East) have a different custom: stop for one week at the start of the twelfth month, then continue until the yahrzeit (the anniversary of the death). Every year on the yahrzeit, the Rema writes, Kaddish is said again, with no end date.
Rema, Yoreh De'ah 376:4; Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 4:6The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, 1500s) allows it: if no mourner is there, someone with no living parents says it, and even someone whose parents are alive may, if the parents do not mind. Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law) reports that in practice this was not the custom, out of concern for a bad omen. So when no one present has lost a parent, this Kaddish is usually skipped.
Rema, Orach Chaim 132:2; Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 23:8Peninei Halakhah (Women's Prayer) reports that in some Ashkenazi communities a daughter whose parent left no son said Kaddish with a group of ten gathered at home, and in some places young girls came to synagogue to say it. Most authorities disagreed, mainly out of worry about changing set customs, and that is the common ruling today. Still, it says no one should object to a woman saying Kaddish at home for her parents, if a respected rav who knows the law and the local rav both agree.
Peninei Halakhah, Women's Prayer 20:19Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) says that when there are several mourners in the synagogue, the custom is that they all say Kaddish together. The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, 1500s) records an older system of dividing the Kaddishes by priority. For example, someone marking a parent's yahrzeit gave way to a mourner in the first week of mourning, and then had no Kaddish at all that day.
Peninei Halakhah, Women's Prayer 20:18; Rema, Yoreh De'ah 376:4Yes. The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, 1500s) writes that mourners say Kaddish even on Shabbat and holidays, though the custom was not for them to lead the prayers then, even though nothing forbids it. Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law) gives the reason: mourning is not shown in public on Shabbat or holidays. If the congregation wants him to lead anyway, Ashkenazi custom is that he still does not. The custom of Sephardi Jews (families from Spain, North Africa and the Middle East) is that he does.
Rema, Yoreh De'ah 376:4; Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 4:5Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) reports that a mourner who arrives late, and is still in Pesukei DeZimra (the opening psalms) when the congregation finishes the Psalm of the Day, may stop to say Mourner's Kaddish if he will have no other chance. Citing earlier rulings, it says not to stop for Kaddish DeRabbanan (the Kaddish said after learning words of the Sages). The author adds his own view: if no one else is there to say that Kaddish, he may stop for it too.
Peninei Halakhah, Prayer 4:5, note 4אוקמי׳ בבי כנישתא לברוכי בקהלא... איתחזי ליה א״ל תנוח דעתך שהנחת את דעתי
He stood him up in the synagogue to lead a blessing in the congregation... He appeared to him and said: May your mind be at rest, because you put mine at rest.
לא מצאתי לו מקור מפורש בתלמוד ורק במס' כלה רבתי
I did not find an explicit source for this custom in the Gemara, only in Masechet Kallah Rabbati.
משפט רשעים בגיהנם שנים עשר חדש
The judgment of the wicked in Gehinnom is twelve months.
ואומרים קדיש דהוא עתיד לחדתא עלמא
And they say the Kaddish about the world that He will make new.
ונמצא במדרשות לומר קדיש על אב... ונהגו שאין אומרים קדיש ותפלה רק י"א חדשים כדי שלא יעשו אביהם ואמם רשעים כי משפט רשע י"ב חדש
It is found in the midrashim to say Kaddish for a father... The custom is to say Kaddish and lead the prayers for only eleven months, so that they do not make their father and mother wicked, since the judgment of a wicked person is twelve months.
ויותר מועיל מקדיש יתום שלא נתקן אלא לקטנים
And it helps more than Mourner's Kaddish, which was set up only for minors.
ואם אין בב"ה אבל על אביו ואמו אומר אותו קדיש מי שאין לו אב ואם בעד כל מתי ישראל
If there is no mourner for his father and mother in the synagogue, someone who has no father or mother says that Kaddish for all the dead of Israel.
מת שאין לו מנחמין באין עשרה בני אדם ויושבים במקומו
For a dead person who has no mourners, ten people come and sit in his place.
וכיוון שקדיש זה נאמר בדרך כלל על ידי היתומים, הוא נקרא גם 'קדיש יתום'
Since this Kaddish is usually said by orphans, it is also called Kaddish Yatom.
החשוב והמועיל ביותר לעילוי נשמתו של הנפטר, שבניו ירבו בלימוד תורה, צדקה ושאר מצוות
The most important and helpful thing for lifting the soul of the one who died is that his children increase in Torah study, charity and other mitzvot.
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