Mourner’s Kaddish – Therapy or Death Tax?

A Professor of Psychology, Cary Cooper, who is an expert on stress, once wrote that the rabbinical Mourner’s Kaddish is a form of therapy, which helps the mourner come through his loss and pain. Indeed, this is touted by the rabbis as being its purpose.

The subject of death is highly emotive, and those in mourning have a deep sense of pain and loss. However, no such prayer existed in the Torah, and the Kaddish is actually not even in Hebrew, but Aramaic. Furthermore, it is a great burden for someone to go to a synagogue 3 times a day for a whole year whilst in mourning. The Torah does not command this, and the physical and economic damage of being compelled to do this is form of theft.

Next, the full Kaddish, called the Kaddish D’Rabbanan, has a prayer for the Rabbis’ wellbeing. So if one does not support the rabbinate, then there is no reason to say this prayer.

There is a myth, which was formed by R’ Akiva, that saying the prayer (or at least the central line) will elevate the deceased from the “flames of gehinnom”.  Thus, the vulnerability and guilt felt by the mourner, is being manipulated by the rabbis to get them to attend the synagogue. This attendance has financial and political benefits to the rabbis, since there is membership and other fees, eg when being called up to the Torah. This is a form of religious death tax, or extortion.  In the TNK we see nobody saying a regular prayer for the departed, nor trying to change the alleged next world lot of the departed. It is thus a false concept, and a violation of the prohibition to add to the Torah.