In this past Wednesday night’s shiur (on issues of tefillah), we came across Rema’s ruling that a person who is still blessed with two living parents may nonetheless recite the kaddish after Aleinu, if there are no mourners present. Rema does add the caveat that the person can only do so if his parents are not makpid, do not object to his practice. The ruling reminded me of a friend who, several years ago, lost a brother (while both his parents were still living). His rabbi ruled that he could not say kaddish for that brother.

Why (or why not) should we say kaddish if our parents are still alive, and why do they have the right to bar us from so doing?

There is a case that intuitively seems clearer, and yet on which the poskim were split. Suppose a person’s mother passes away, and the father, out of superstition, decides that he does not want his children to recite kaddish. Are the children required to listen to him? While other factors also come into play, a central question is when we can disobey our parents in order to fulfill a Jewish obligation. The poskim were clear that a child must disobey a parent who orders him or her to disobey a mitsvah de-rabanan, a Rabbinic commandment (assuming it is a clear order to disobey that rule). As Rashi in Humash reminds us, the Torah juxtaposes the commandment to fear one’s parents to a mention of observing Shabbat to stress that we only listen to our parents when their commands are not counter to the Torah’s laws.

In terms of kaddish, however, that fact does not yet provide clarity. Some authorities, including the author of the Shulhan Arukh in his commentary on the Tur, the Beit Yosef, saw kaddish (a clearly post-Talmudic practice) as a simple custom, in which case the parent’s command must be obeyed. Others, including Rema in Shulhan Arukh, saw kaddish, since it was so widespread, as having attained a force on the level of Rabbinic commandments, and therefore ruled that the child could ignore the father’s wishes. While Ashkenazim would follow Rema, Sefardim might be required to obey the father, which indeed is the ruling of R. Ovadia Yosef in Yabia Omer (3: Yoreh Deah, 26). Hakham Ovadia appends a response from R. Uziel ztllh"h, who limits the requirement to listen to one's father to where the father is bothered by the idea that the son saying kaddish in his lifetime is a bad omen. If he is doing it out of anger towards the deceased, or out of rejection of kaddish, R. Uziel at least would allow the child to say kaddish.

In the course of discussing what kind of obligation it is to say kaddish-- since the kind of obligation affects the extent to which the child must obey a parent-- Hakham Ovadia quotes a responsum of Ridbaz that I think is very much on target. Ridbaz says that one should make sure to learn Torah on every day that one says kaddish (he actually says a daf of gemara, but I assume any Torah would be acceptable), because the merit that is created for the deceased by the recitation of kaddish only really accrues if that recitation is coupled with Torah study. Ridbaz is so serious about this that he says that if a person will not be able to learn Torah that day, for whatever reason, it is better to forego saying kaddish on that day as well. I was struck by the teshuvah because it makes the point, that I have long felt, that it is not the kaddish that is a magical incantation to help the deceased; it is the existence of relatives who use the passing of a loved one to alter their lives in more Torah-oriented fashion.

Getting back to our issue, when it comes to kaddish for other relatives while one's parents (or even one parent) are alive, it is the question of the parents' reaction that is central. To the extent that parents do not mind, Rema allows even a non-orphan to recite the kaddish after Aleinu, if there are no mourners present. That would certainly mean that one could say such a kaddish for a relative, again as long as the parents do not mind.

Some poskim apply the parents' privilege of objecting to their child's saying kaddish even to other recitations of kaddish. For example, the kaddish that the sheliah tsibbur says after Yishtabah, and before Barkhu is part of prayer and has nothing to do with mourning. Nevertheless, some rabbis thought parents had the right to object even to that. There was more consensus, interestingly, that one could recite the de-rabanan kaddish, the kaddish said after the public study of the words of Hazal, regardless of parents' objections, because that is so clearly different from the kaddish said in mourning.

As a final point, I would note that while R. Uziel conceded the parent's right to object, he also thought the child could bring social pressure-- friends-- to bear to convince the parent that there was no danger in the child reciting kaddish. It may be the child's obligation to humor the parent's superstitions, but at least R. Uziel was clear that there is no valid reason for a child to have to refrain from reciting kaddish should the occasion to do so arise. Shabbat Shalom.