Many are puzzled by the idea of "reward in the afterlife." How exactly does a person's deeds during their lifetime translate to an effect after their passing?
People are judged for what they did, but they are also judged for what they caused. The person who contributed money, energy, or inspiration to a [worthy] institution is rewarded for his generosity. He has given of his resources and of himself to do the will of God and help others.
That is true, yet it is only part of the story, for the benefits of his concern do not stop with the receipt and handshake. The institution he helped will go on to shape people and help form a generation, perhaps many generations. Does not the investor in a new business continue to draw dividends for as long as the firm thrives? Should not the contributor to a worthy cause continue to earn a reward for as long as his gesture bears fruit?
And what of the further effects of his deed? People were affected for the better by the fact that there existed a school for them to attend. They were molded by the Torah they studied there, the values they absorbed there. Their families, friends, neighbors, children -- everything and everyone they touched were made better to some degree because a school existed to bring its students closer to the will of God. Even the most sophisticated computer cannot determine how much each individual will share in the beneficial results of the countless efforts in which he much each had a hand. But God knows.
There were parents who removed their telephones and skipped lunches during the Great Depression of 1929 so that they could continue paying meager [Jewish day school] tuitions for their children. Who but God can evaluate such deeds? Probably no institution was spared bankruptcy by their sacrifice, but it surely helped. Some of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are now Torah scholars, teachers, and community leaders, because "insignificant" people more than half-century ago refused the enticements of tuition-free public schools.
Even those who may have drifted away from Judaism, might still retain concern for their fellow Jews, and within them are dormant, but still alive, sparks of regard for holy causes and Jewish eternity.
Those parents may now be in a world where the cost of telephones and lunches is of no account. It is a world where a Heavenly Accountant measures the deeds they accomplished in life -- and notes also the existence and contributions of many future generations that live fruitfully and productively as Jews, in part because of little things that no human mind could ever evaluate, or even know.
BOOK OF LIFE
God never closes the books on a life as long as the ripples of that life are still moving and churning. This is the meaning of the [Midrash] Pesikta's statement that the dead can receive atonement through the charity of the living. True, the Heavenly accounts of reward and punishment, mitzvah and sin, are limited to the deeds of the lone individual being judged. But, in far more than a symbolic sense the deeds of the living are those of the departed.
The child who contributes to charity in memory of a parent, the descendant whose heart is warm and hand is open because of the spiritual legacy of ancestors he never knew -- these are truly part of the spiritual treasury of the departed. Such deeds occurred because of Jewish fathers whose determination surmounted hardship and ridicule, because of Jewish mothers whose faith and warmth overcame bare cupboards and enticing futures for their children, because of deeds that seemed to be instinctive and natural and unimportant and quixotic and impractical and forgotten as soon as they were done -- yet could not be buried by the sands of time. God knows and notes them in His ledger. So the dead find atonement in deeds they never contemplated, but that are nevertheless theirs.
So it is, Rabbi Bachya continues, with one who recites Kaddish in the synagogue. Kaddish is a public declaration that God's Name will be sanctified. That Jews long for that time and proclaim their confidence that it will come is in itself an act of sanctification. Rational people have wondered for centuries why Israel does not resign itself to the disappearance decreed for us by all the laws of history. We do not disappear. We do not even 'resign ourselves to our fate,' whatever that means. We confidently predict that God's Name will yet be exalted and sanctified, blessed and praised -- by everyone, even those who presently deny Him most vehemently.
Rabbi Chaim ben Bezalel (author of "Sefer HaChaim") detects a deeper significance in the Kaddish of a mourner. A parent has been taken from him; who could blame a child for complaining, at least inwardly, that the loss came too soon, or was preceded by too much suffering, or that the years on earth could have been happier, easier, more successful? Instead, the survivor stands amid his peers and announces: "Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash... May His great Name be exalted and sanctified..."
God is just and His ways are just. Though we may not understand why death was so quick or life less sweet, we acknowledge that God is just. In effect we say, "I am comforted over the loss of my earthly parent because his fate is a manifestation of the will of my Father in Heaven, His just will, and thereby my parent's end and my acceptance of it are a Sanctification of the Name." So the dead find atonement through their living heirs.
SPARED FROM THE FIRE
As Rabbi Bachya concludes, the basis for this universal custom of reciting Kaddish is the [Talmudic] story of Rebbe Akiva.
Once, Rebbe Akiva saw a bizarre man with a complexion black as coal. On his head, he was carrying a load heavy enough for 10 men, and he was running swiftly as a horse. Rebbe Akiva ordered him to stop.
"Why do you do such hard work?" Rebbe Akiva asked.
The apparition answered, "Do not detain me lest my supervisors be angry with me."
"What is this? What do you do?"
"I am a dead man," he replied. "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 life, my son?" asked Rebbe Akiva.
"I was a tax-collector. I would be lenient with the rich and oppress the poor."
Rebbe Akiva persisted. "Have you heard if there is any way to save you?"
"I heard that if only I had left a child who would stand before the congregation and call out, 'Bless God, Who is to be blessed,' to which the people would respond, 'Blessed is God, Who is to be blessed, forever and ever!' If I had such a son I would be released from my punishment. But I left no child when I died, my wife was pregnant, but even if she had a child, there would be no one to teach him."
That moment Rebbe Akiva resolved to discover if a child had been born and, if so, to teach him until he could lead the congregation in prayer. He went to Ludkia and inquired after the despised tax collector. "May the bones of the wicked one be pulverized!" the people spat out...
Rebbe Akiva took the child, had him circumcised, and personally taught him Torah and the order of prayers. When he was ready, Rebbe Akiva appointed him to lead the congregation in prayer.
"Bless God, Who is to be blessed," to which the people would respond, "Blessed is God, Who is to be blessed, forever and ever!" Instantly the tortured soul was freed from its punishment. That very night, the soul appeared to Rebbe Akiva in a dream and blessed him. "May it be God's will that your mind be at ease in Paradise, for You have rescued me from eternal judgment."
Rebbe Akiva cried out to God, "May you be known as the God of Mercy forever!"
When a child says Kaddish for a parent, the effect transcends worlds.
