Women’s mitzvot….or not?

rob

so youre waiting for people to post that it is not proper or assur, then you will respond with a list of quotes, maasehs, and mekoros to refute them?

From what I’ve seen in various shuls, there is no issue about a woman saying Kaddish if there is a man saying as well. The question seems to be if there is no man saying Kaddish. It seems to me, and I’ve never looked into this at all, the issue is that Kaddish is a “davar sh’bikdusah” and we do not say devarim sh’bikdusha without a minyan. Since a woman is not mitztareif to a minyan, how can she say Kaddish? The flip side to this is if there is a minyan (i.e. 10 men) present, why can’t a woman say kaddish just the same way she might answer to the kaddish of another, or say kedusha in the chazarat hashatz? Does the recitation of a davar sh’bikdusah require that it be said from within a minyan, or merely in the presence of a minyan? I believe the answer is the former, that Kaddish must be recited by someone from within the minyan. By way of analogy, we’ve all seen men, who arriving late for Ma’ariv, say Barchu at the end and everyone answers. That is allowed since the man saying the Borchu is of the minyan. A women, who ran late for maariv could not do that. Again I haven’t looked into this, and these are my knee jerk reactions. I also must add that I have seen women say Kaddish alone in many MO shuls. There is no question in my mind that the rabbis who sanction this practice have a Halachik basis for it.

My question is as follows. We all know traditionalists will never do any of these neo-feminist pseudo-religious ideas.

So why are we discussing hypothetics that is essentially limited, in practice, to the fringes?

Because Bogen, outside of New York and other areas of great chareidi concentration, what you call the “fringes” is in fact mainstream. Drive three hours in any diretion out of NYC and you will encounter a far different landscape of Orthdox Judaism, where what you consider to be on the fringes is in fact the only form of Orthodoxy available. Those Jews are not radical in their beliefs. They are not looking to be provocative or buck the system. They are highly committed Jews who strive to observe Halacha despite the great many challenges facing them in those places and despite their small numbers. To do that and to create communities of even minimal vitality they allow for what you derisively label “fringe” Judaism. So while you might consider the issue of a woman saying Kaddish to be merely theoretical, for many others, it is of vital importance.

cantoresq, you don’t even have to go 3 hours out of NYC, about 1 hour is enough.

Blue Shirt, I have no problem with a woman saying Kaddish, FWIW. The question is, is this being yotzei? And does the woman get to shul as often as possible, like 3x a day, to say it at every opportunity? So there are two things here – the permissibility of a woman saying kaddish, and the optimal way to have Kaddish said as an aliyah for the neshama, which I assumed entails a son, or a relative or friend who will assume the obligation.

when My mother in law lost her father, since there were no men in the family to say Kaddish, they paid a cousin to say Kaddish for the first year and to daven before the Amed.

Obviously if u daven in an orthodox shul women dont say kaddish.

The Rav (R’ Yoshe Ber, for those who don’t know who “The Rav” was) had no problem with a woman saying Kaddish, even if she was the only one saying it.

Then again, the Rav was a Zionist so what did he know?

noitallmr –

If you make you font size smaller on your screen it will fit in.

re rabbi of Berlin: some, at least the ones I know. And when one couldn’t because of work related frequent travel (he was covering for a FIL who only had daughters and was the closest of the sons in law) another BIL took over.