dltzd meiq Concluding Prayers and Songs
Epi«¥l ¨r .lrM ©d oFc£`©l ©g«¥A ©W §l It is our duty to praise the Ruler of all.
There is no traditional term for the closing part of the service, though certain elements including the Aleinu prayer, the mourner’s Kaddish and a closing song are standard. This part of the service serves a number of purposes. It retraces and reverses the journey represented by our service. At the beginning we moved from the outside world to the special ‘space’of the synagogue, community and service. When the formal prayers began with the Bar’chu , the first blessing also spoke of this outside world to which we belong, speaking of God as Creator of the world and all peoples. Only then, with the second blessing, did we move on to God’s particular relationship with the Jewish people. At the Amidah we stood in the presence of God and, on Shabbat and certain weekdays, received the words of Torah. Now we sum up our responsibility and task as the Jewish people (the first paragraph of the Aleinu ) but then our hopes for the rest of the world (the second paragraph). The Kaddish , though given special significance for mourners, also expresses these messianic hopes. Having set aside the outside world when we entered the synagogue and service, this concluding section also prepares us for our return to that outside world and the many realities that await us.
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