Wasting Other People’s Time

Aren’t you giving them the opportunity for the mitzvahs of answering “Amen” and “Yehei Shmei Rabbah”?

I do not understand what you mean by wasting other people’s time. ITS CALLED TEFILLA BITZIBUR!!! During the lockdown, I PERSONALLY REGRETTED every moment of davening I missed. What is this an ANTI-TEFILLA GROUP???!!!!

At the risk of wolf taking advantage of this opportunity to play his self deprecation game, the mods had no business approving a thread that labels participating in tefillos, especially kaddish, as a waste.of time. It’s a disgusting implication and shouldn’t be in print.

Do you think the avos hakdoshim davened for no reason????????????????!!!!!!!!

Also,
shachris on a regular day should take 55 minutes MINIMUM
and m and t 1HR and 10 MIN

Wolf, how about not ignoring the strong answers and only refuting the weak answers. This is a trademark of yours.

@always ask, I assume this was done after consultation with a leading posek? or was this done on your own volition?

Perhaps a variation of the OP is whether one who comes to daven to say kaddush on the yahrtzeit of someone for whom saying kaddish iis not a chiyuv gets any priority to be the baal -teffilah or gets an aliyah or kovod over one saying kaddish with a chiyuv or even someone not saying kaddsh at all.

Story from Ksav sofer:

There was a woman who immediately upon her husband’s passing, as she had no sons, she asked the rosh yeshivah to arrange for Torah scholars to say kaddish for her husband for the entire eleven months, and also each successive year on the yahrzeit. She also requested that a second kaddish be said each day, having in mind all those souls who have no one saying kaddish for them. This went on for nearly ten years.

In time the window lost all her money but she continued to pay to say Kaddish, she asked Ksav Sofer if the kaddishes were still being said, and he comforted her that they were.

Suddenly the door opened. A distinguished-looking older man entered, turned to the widow, and asked her why she was crying. He told her that he knew of her desperate situation and that he was prepared to help. He then requested of the rosh yeshivah that they all go into his office, and that two scholars of the yeshivah join them. The rosh yeshivah acceded, and summoned two of his five great disciples present that year: his son, Rabbi Shimon Sofer, and Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld.

When they were all assembled, the mysterious guest said, “I know you have five daughters of marriageable age. Let’s figure. Each one needs a thousand kroner for dowry money, and another thousand kroner each for the expenses of the wedding and for buying furniture and setting up a household. So, that is two thousand for each of the five, or ten thousand altogether. Plus, to put your business back on its feet, you need another ten thousand kroner, so that makes twenty thousand altogether.

“All right, then,” he said, “I’ll write you a check.” Whereupon he took a checkbook out of his pocket, tore off a check, wrote the woman’s name on it, inscribed it for twenty thousand kroner and signed it! Before handing it to her, however, he asked the two young scholars to sign on the back as witnesses to the transaction. He also asked them to take out their personal notebooks so he could sign in each a sample of his signature, in case the signature on the check would be challenged. Turning back to the woman, he told her that she should present the check at the government bank when it opened at nine o’clock, and they would honor it. Then he left as suddenly as he had come.

At nine the next morning, the widow was at the bank. The guard at the door directed her to one of the tellers, to whom she showed the check. He looked up the records and told her there was sufficient funds in the account to cover the check, but for such a huge sum he has to first get permission from the manager. He asked her to wait, and went to the administrative section. There he presented the check to the head of the bank, who took one look at it and fainted!

The doctor that was summoned quickly revived the bank manager. As soon as he gained consciousness, the manager asked that the woman who had brought the check be shown in to him. When told she had been locked up by security, he said that he must go to her; a great mistake had been made, to lock up such a righteous woman. He went quickly and, after apologizing, invited her to accompany her into his office.

“Tell me, please,” he opened, after they were seated, “how did you get this check?”

She told him of her difficulties and the sudden appearance of her unknown benefactor. She explained about her deceased husband and his practice of daily maaser, and of the kaddishes she had arranged through the yeshivah for him and for those souls who had no one to say kaddish for them.

He asked her: if she would see her benefactor again, or his picture, would she recognize him? She said yes. She added that two rabbis from the yeshivah were official witnesses to the whole episode, and that their signatures are on the back of the check, and that the man had also signed in their personal notebooks. The manager was excited to hear this, and after looking at their signatures, contacted the yeshivah to ask that Rabbi Sonnenfeld and Rabbi Shimon Sofer come to his office.

They came and confirmed all that the woman had said. The bank manager then told the three of them that he would personally honor the check, as it was drawn on his own family account, but that his wife had to endorse it too. He then sent for his wife with the message that she should come quickly, because people were waiting for her, but first she should collect all the family photographs in the house and bring them with her.

Although the bank manager was a Jew, his wife was not. When she arrived, he asked the widow and the two rabbis to wait in a different room. He told his wife what was going on, and said, “Let’s see if the woman can identify the man who signed the check from among these photographs.” She declared that if it all turned out to be true, she would convert to be Jewish.

The manager then spread out all of the photos on his desk. He asked each of the three to enter separately and see if the man who gave the check appeared in any of them. Each one confidently picked out the same person.

The bank manager called everyone in. “Do you know who is this man who gave the check?” he asked. “It is my father, the manager of the bank before me. But he has been dead for ten years!

“I must confess,” he told them, “that I never said kaddish for him. Last night he appeared to me in a dream. He said that he had been saved from Gehinnom by the kaddishes that she had arranged for the yeshivah scholars to say for those souls for whom kaddish was not being said, and now that she was in difficulty we must help her. He said that he would give her a check for twenty thousand kroner, and that if I didn’t pay it, he would strangle me in my sleep.

When the check was shown to me at the bank, I fainted.
“I woke up, frightened. In the morning I told my wife the dream, and she was disturbed too. When the check was shown to me at the bank, I fainted. I knew then that the dream was true.

“I will pay the twenty thousand my father promised, for it is certainly a deserving cause. Not only that,” he added, turning to the woman, “I will add another twenty thousand of my own, because you fulfilled my obligation for me, and helped my deceased father’s soul with the kaddish-saying you arranged.”

He addressed the three of them again. “I fully regret my lapse from Judaism. I see now that our G‑d is the one true G‑d, and He gives to all their just reward. I resolve that from now on I will fulfill His commandments as revealed in our Torah. My wife, too, has reaffirmed her promise to convert and to live in accordance with Jewish law. Please guide us to understand what we have to do.”

The above has Rebbi Akiva written with a heh. It is based on a story why his sefer is called Ohr Zaruah. Rabbi Yitzchak of Vienna had a question whether to write Rebbi Akiva with an aleph or a heh?
He dreamt to write it with a heh based on the pasuk אור זרוע לצדיק ולישרי לב שמחה which ends with the letters ר’ עקיבה.

WolfishMusings,

“So, I’ve been wondering if I am guilty of wasting people’s time and, if so, what can I do about it?”

A few of my thoughts:

1. When mispallelim come to shul to daven, the expectation is that kaddishes will be said, hence the brief awkward silences that occur before people realize nobody is saying kaddish and they move on. Since people have already mentally given this time to kaddish, it cannot be a waste, and you are actually preventing awkwardness by saying it.

2. I heard someone recently ask a rav a related shaila at a late maariv – the man noticed that at the shacharis and mincha minyanim, there was a fellow who would say kaddish after aleinu if there were no mourners present. He himself didn’t have a chiyuv to say kaddish but felt drawn to doing so and was wondering if it was appropriate for him to so something like that at maariv. The rav said (in a simplified retelling) that it is considered a good thing to end the davening with a kaddish, and the man was welcome to say kaddish at the end of maariv if he wanted to. And so he has ever since. So adding kaddishes enhances the tefilla b’tzibbur, certainly not a waste of time.

3. As others have pointed out, there is tremendous spiritual benefit to answer amein to a kaddish. So your question is kind of like asking, “at the end of davening I take a bag of gold coins and toss a few of them to each of the mispallelim. Am I wasting their time?”

4. I think you are well aware of #3, so is your OP meant as a subtle criticism of how people trivialize davening (e.g., that sense of relief that ripples through the room when the shaliach tzibbur starts kaddish right after chazaras hashas signaling no long tachanun)? Or is it a setup for another of your “I’m a rasha” threads?

common >> this was done after consultation with a leading posek

First, thanks for the wonderful bank story. As the story clearly says – the lady asked for one kaddish for her husband, and one kaddish for someone else. It is obviously more zechuyot to say more.

I then consulted R Salanter. He let someone else be shaliach tzibur on his mother’s yohrtzeit and explained – my mother deserves that I do this mitzva (hesed to the other person) be done on this day. So, this establishes that hesed is not less a good thing for neshomah than extra davening.

As to permissibility of reducing davening – our minyan already skips upfront, and there are multiple teshuvot what canbe reduced that I can summarize as “you can skip, but make sure it still feels like davening”. This is definitely a case here.

On a simple level, shtika k’mode. Rabbi and gabbi heard me and did not correct. And they are quite capable of!

Learn some extra commentary (Rav,Kehati) for the mishnayos that you would not learn otherwise.

@always ask, I love the story myself, I heard it when I was a child and it stayed with me.
“On a simple level, shtika k’mode. Rabbi and gabbi heard me and did not correct. And they are quite capable of!”
That may mean the they are doing it lman sholam, not that its the way to do things, I always ask a shaila in regards to Yiddishkiet and I don’t always like the answer but I do it anyway

Beginning at my normal medium speed, I was asked after cohen to pick up the pace because otherwise the men would miss their train to work. At that place and time, normal-speed leining was a tircha de-tzibura! If I were saying a “voluntary” kaddish, I’d bear this in mind.

Maybe your leining really is medium, but everyone probably thinks their pace is average, but not everyone’s is.

The comparison is far from great anyhow, because the minyan must anyhow account for Kaddish, but not for a slow (or relatively slow) leining.

>> That may mean the they are doing it lman sholam, not that its the way to do things,

Hey, you don’t know _our_ gabbi 🙂 He can just look … We do have open line of communication

>> I always ask a shaila in regards to Yiddishkiet and I don’t always like the answer but I do it anyway

We seem to differ in our definition of Yiddishkeit. I would rather be careful about not infecting people, rather than missing an extra kaddish.

on a related note of priorites, I saw a quick teshuva from R Willig some time last spring. Someone asked about payments for broken contracts. He answered – now we are doing just dinei nefashot, keep money where it is, we will deal with mamonot later.

>> That’s not a choice you get to make without a rav

I quoted already multiple opinions about being careful. And also opinions about one kaddish being sufficient. Maybe you can verbalize what exactly makes you so uncomfortable.

The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 26, says that Kaddish is not as important as to designate some new custom and follow it for the zechus of the niftar.

@always ask, “a good question – when do we need to ask, and whom? I heard and read enough questions about kaddish that I don’t see my situation as unique or risky. These questions do not seem to depend on the particular person, unless someone is uniquely OCD or disorganized …”
I assume you run your life where there are shades of gray the same way, a quick read and dont consult an expert.

AAQ – i think he means specifically. You have done impressive research on the various scenarios, but with halachos (and more) we bring our specifics to a rav. When we don’t, it means we chose to apply our situation to our research, and that is not foolproof. We do not always know if there are nuances or outside influences that apply, and we are very much nogea bdavar.

I will often look up basic questions in the shabbos, kashrus and muktza books I have, but I can’t do that with shailos.
Additionally, he did say he is maskless per a rav. Although i challenged it including anti mask behavior, there is no shortage of responsible qualified rabbaim AAND doctors telling people they do not have to wear them.