Ari L Goldman

The most powerful story associated with kaddish is the legend of Rabbi Akiva, which is examined at great length — and from every angle — in Leon Weiseltier’s book, Kaddish. The story has Rabbi Akiva, the great Talmudic sage, walking past a cemetery late at night and seeing an apparition, his complexion black as coal, carrying a load of wood “heavy enough for ten me.” Rabbi Akiva orders the man to stop, “Why do you do such hard work?” Rabbi Akiva asks.

“Do not detain me lest my masters be angry with me,” the spirit responds. “I am a dead man. Every day I am punished anew by being sent to chop wood for a fire in which I am

consumed.”

“What did you do in your life?”

“I was a tax collector,” the spirit responds. “I would be lenient with the rich and suppress the poor.”

“Have you heard if there is any way to save you?”

The spirit responds that his only salvation would be if he had a son who would say kaddish and have the congregation respond: “May His great name grow exalted and sanctified forever and ever.”

As the spirit disappears into the night, Rabbi Akiva resolves to find the man’s family. He journeys to the man’s town and inquires about the much-hated tax collector. The townspeople curse the man’s name but point Rabbi Akiva to an ignorant and illiterate lad, the accursed man’s son. Rabbi Akiva takes the boy under his wing, teaches him to pray, and eventually brings him to the synagogue, where he says the kaddish prayer. The congregation responds: “May His great name grow exalted and sanctified forever and ever:’ That night,

the tortured soul appears to Rabbi Akiva in a dream, blesses him, and tells him that he has been released from his eternal punishment.

Weiseltier concludes: “The theme of the story? That the dead are in need of spiritual rescue.

Beliefnet.com, concluded