What is the Kaddish?
The Kaddish “prayer” – actually an affirmation of God’s greatness --  is included in the regular service in several places, where its function is to divide one section of the service from another.  It has several different forms, each recited at a particular juncture, e.g., at the conclusion of the Amidah.  It is one of the elements of the service for which a minyan is required.  Unlike the rest of the liturgy, it is not Hebrew but Aramaic, the vernacular of the rabbinic period, meaning that even the least educated Jews would have understood it. 
 
What is the “Mourners’ Kaddish?”
The “Mourners’ Kaddish” is one of the variant forms of the Kaddish, recited specifically by mourners.  According to the halakhah, a person, male or female, is obligated to mourn for any one of the seven immediate relatives:  mother, father, daughter, son, sister, brother, spouse.  Although the Mishnah and the Talmud are quite specific about the extensive laws of mourning, reciting Kaddish as an act of mourning is not mentioned in either place.  That is because reciting Kaddish on behalf of the deceased is a custom that arose in the middle ages, and became more and more important since then, in part because of folklore that stressed the efficacy of the Kaddish in the face of demonic powers, but no doubt also because of its psychological and spiritual benefit as a mode of grieving and healing from grief. 
 
What’s the issue for a woman?
In a traditional context women do not have the obligation to pray three times daily and therefore do not count in the minyan, and therefore cannot lead the service or recite any obligatory section of it on behalf of those who are obligated to recite it.  In a traditional context, therefore, a woman may choose to recite the Kaddish from her seat in the women’s section, but that doesn’t “count” toward the requirement of having the Kaddish recited at that point in the service. 
 
Why a substitute to recite the Kaddish?
The Shulḥan Arukh, the authoritative 16th century law code, references the belief that reciting Kaddish releases the soul of the deceased from Gehinnom.  As long as Jews viewed the Kaddish in that way, having it recited was less important than who recited it.  In the usual course of events the deceased would have living male relatives, so it didn’t matter that a woman could not say it.  But for the occasional deceased without immediate male relatives, the solution was to hire a man to recite it in her place.  Incidentally, this practice was also adopted by men who could not regularly attend synagogue. 
 
Conclusion
Most Jews have come to see the Kaddish – particularly the customary extended period of reciting it for a parent – as an obligatory act of filial piety and a ritual of psychological and spiritual healing, not as a means of getting Mom or Dad’s soul out of hell.  In that context the idea of hiring a substitute makes no sense.  Furthermore, in an egalitarian setting, the obligation of reciting Kaddish rests equally on male and female immediate relatives.  For both of those reasons, a woman should not have someone recite Kaddish in her place. 

 
 

1. Are there any limitations about having sex during marriage?

 

First of all, Jewish tradition regards sexual satisfaction within marriage as the right of both parties.  Indeed, in the ketubah (marriage contract) one of the obligations the husband takes on is his wife’s sexual gratification.  Relations must be consensual, however; unlike some other legal systems, Judaism does not condone marital rape.  Jewish law traditionally was written from a male perspective and assumes that the husband will usually take the lead in initiating sexual relations, but rabbinic maxims also remind men that women may also do so, though in a less direct manner. 

 

Second, there are limitations on when a couple may have sex.  According to the Torah, contact with a dead body or having certain bodily discharges, including semen and menstrual blood, render the person who has them tamei (m.) or t’mei’ah (f.), “unfit” to come into contact with the sacred precinct of the Temple sanctuary, the offerings, or the kohanim (priests) who officiated in the Temple.  Tamei / t’mei’ah is usually translated as “impure” or “unclean,” which has led to the misperception that it is a value judgment on the person or even a moral category.    

 

Since the destruction of the Temple, these laws lost their practical import, though some are still observed in a way that is essentially symbolic.  For example, kohanim (men who have priestly descent) are traditionally barred from entering a Jewish cemetery, where they would be walking on ground in which bodies are buried, for other than the funeral of an immediate relative, even though there is no Temple service from which these men would then be disqualified from performing.

 

However, in addition to including menstrual blood among the bodily discharges that render a person tamei/t’mei’ah (Lev. 15:19-33), the Torah also explicitly forbids a man to have sexual relations with a menstruating woman (Lev. 18:19, 20:18).  According to the latter source, the penalty for violation of this law is karet, “extirpation,” usually translated as “cutting off:”  …both of them shall be cut off from among their people.”  (Karet is punishment at the hand of God for certain deliberately committed transgressions such as idolatry, desecrating Shabbat, eating leaven on Pesach, eating on Yom Kippur, incest, and adultery.  Its exact meaning is unclear, but most authorities have shared the view of the early rabbis that it meant premature death [Sifra, Emor 14:4].)  Because of these two additional verses, the prohibition of sexual relations with a menstruating woman retained its force even after the destruction of the Temple, even though the reason for it – that the man should not become tamei – no longer applied. 

 

Without a doubt the fact that the laws of niddah (“the menstruant”) were the most stringently applied laws of tum’ah (“unfitness”) that were retained in the centuries since the Temple’s destruction, and the fact that they affected every adult Jew, contributed to and strengthened misogynistic strands of thought within Judaism; but it is important to recognize that in their original context they were not uniquely directed at women, but were part of a larger religious legal structure that encompassed relationships between both men and women and God.    

 

According to the Torah, a woman is a niddah, “menstruant,” for seven days from the time she first sees menstrual blood, during which period she is t’mei’ah; on the eighth day, if her bleeding has ceased, she is tehorah (again, misleadingly translated as “clean” or “pure”).  However, over time the rabbinic interpretation of the law became more stringent, with the result that a woman is considered niddah for the presumed five days of her actual menstrual  flow, or longer if necessary, plus an additional seven days, after which she must immerse in the mikveh before she and her husband can resume relations.

 

Although nineteenth century Reformers did not discuss niddah, they explicitly rejected the observance of all laws having to do with the Temple, on the grounds that these could have no spiritual meaning for modern people.  Over the course of the twentieth century, however, and now in the twenty-first, Reform Jews have rediscovered meaning in many practices they once rejected.  While very few couples choose to observe niddah, particularly in the stringent way it evolved in the halakha, some have chosen to observe it in the biblical fashion.

 

What meaning do they find?  It attunes them more closely to their bodies and the rhythms of life, sensitizing them to the wondrousness of life and reverence for its Creator.  Also, they find that a monthly enforced break from sexual relations leads them to deepen the emotional aspects of their relationship, and gives them a renewed sexual appreciation for each other.        

 

Third, there are some disagreements regarding types of sexual activity.  Rabbinic law regards seminal emission by masturbation as a very serious offense, despite the absence of an explicit prohibition in the Torah.  For some authorities, any emission of semen outside the vagina also constituted hash’hatat zera, “wasting seed,” and they therefore prohibited, or at least discouraged, fellatio and anal intercourse.  These tend to be restrictive also with regard to cunnilingus.  Other authorities held that all forms of sexual activity were legitimate between a married couple. 

 

2. Is it ok to use birth control?

 

Here’s an excerpt from Mark Washofsky’s book Jewish Living:  a Guide to Contemporary Reform Practice (NY:  UAHC, 2001), p. 242:

 

“According to Jewish tradition, it is a mitzvah, a religious duty, to have children.  Yet tradition recognizes that there are times when a couple might justifiably not be prepared to have children or to increase the size of their family, and it acknowledges that sexual intercourse within marriage carries a value of its own even when it does not and cannot lead to procreation.  For these reasons, Jewish law permits the use of birth control methods, including artificial contraceptives, under these circumstances.

 

“Reform Judaism respects the right of parents to determine how many children they shall have, although we emphasize that bringing Jewish children into the world remains a special mitzvah and encourage couples to consider the matter of family size carefully and with due regard to the problem of Jewish survival.  We discourage such permanent methods of birth control as sterilization and vasectomy.”

What are the basic differences between Christianity and Judaism (apart from the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ)?

1. The basic differences
a. Covenant: Judaism conceptualizes the relationship between God and the world as a covenantal one, i.e., one based on mutually agreed-upon and binding conditions. The covenant between God and Israel, established first with Abraham and realized fully at Sinai, commits the people of Israel to strive to live as a holy society by following the teachings and commandments of Torah, and commits God to watch over and protect them as they do so.

Christianity holds that God’s incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ constitutes a new covenant with humanity that supersedes and nullifies the covenant with Israel at Sinai. In place of the Sinai covenant, Christianity holds, God has now established a new covenant with all humanity: Jesus, the Son of God, made atonement for all human beings’ sin through his death on the cross. In order to become party to this new covenant one need only accept the premise that Jesus died to atone for one’s sin. Acceptance of this premise is effected ritually by baptism; the evidence that one has truly accepted it that one’s conduct and character from then on are moral, ethical, and virtuous, reflecting the qualities that Jesus manifested in his lifetime.

Judaism also holds that God cares for the whole world, as shown in the covenant with Noah and his children after the Flood, and that all human beings, therefore, are obligated to adhere to basic standards of ethical conduct. It is, therefore, not necessary to be Jewish in order to have a relationship with God. In the classical Christian view, however, a person must accept the “new” covenant made through Jesus in order to be “saved,” i.e., in order to have a relationship with God.

b. Human nature and sin: It is significant that there are no references anywhere else in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) to Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. This story did not play a significant role in biblical theology. Classical Judaism sees death as the evil consequence of eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and while there is a strand of misogynistic midrash on Eve, it does not play a central role in Jewish thought. Human beings, in the Jewish view, are created with the capacity to do either good or evil. This is expressed through the rabbinic concepts of yetzer ha-tov, the “good inclination,” and the yetzer ha-ra, the “evil inclination.” Judaism understands “sin” as evil behavior, not as a theological state of being.

Classical Christian thought considers sex to be the great evil consequence of eating the fruit of the tree, and places the primary responsibility for it on the woman. Sexual intercourse is therefore inherently tainted, since it would not have occurred but for Eve’s disobedience. All human beings, therefore, are born in sin, and this sin can only be atoned for through the atonement provided by Jesus’s death on the cross. Thus Jesus is seen as the “new Adam,” the counterweight to the sinful first man. “Sin” is both behavior but also the state of being of anyone who has not accepted Jesus as their savior and thus had their sinfulness atoned for and forgiven.

c. The messiah: The Hebrew word mashiach means “anointed.” In ancient Israel high priests and kings were anointed with oil when they were inaugurated into their offices. According to the Tanakh, God established a covenant with King David that his descendants would be Israel’s one and only legitimate ruling house. Indeed, the dynasty ruled in Jerusalem for over 400 years (ca. 1000 – 586 BCE), though as the prophetic books attest, not all of them were paragons of virtue. The Davidic dynasty apparently died out just after the return from the Babylonian Exile (536 BCE). At that point Judea was under Persian rule; it passed to Greek control in 332, but won its independence in the struggle that began under the leadership of the Maccabees. The family of Judah Maccabee, known as the Hasmoneans, established an independent kingdom for a short time, but their rule was controversial and many Jews regarded them as illegitimate. There are passages in the prophetic books (e.g., Isaiah 11) criticizing the bad Davidic kings and looking forward to the accession of good ones under whom God’s laws would be followed and the kingdom would be prosperous and at peace. It was probably during the reigns of the Hasmoneans that Jews began reading these passages and interpreting them to refer to the reappearance of the Davidic dynasty in the person of a good king. This longing for a melekh mashiakh, an “anointed (i.e., legitimate Davidic) king” intensified as Hasmonean Judea fell under Roman domination and conditions in Judea worsened. Ultimately there were a variety of Jewish notions about what would happen when the “messiah” arrived, but all have at least these in common: 1) the ingathering of the Jewish people from exile; 2) the reestablishment of a sovereign Jewish nation under a restored Davidic monarchy; and 3) the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by Rome in 70 CE at the conclusion of the first Jewish revolt. Most also envision a time of peace and harmony. Apparently the followers of Jesus believed that he was the promised descendant of David and therefore the “anointed” one (Christos, in Greek). However, he did not accomplish what the majority of Jews expected the mashiach to accomplish. His followers, faced with this cognitive dissonance, resolved the contradiction by reinterpreting the concept of mashiach: It was necessary, they held, for the “messiah” to come not once, but twice – the first time to suffer and die for humanity, and the second time to usher in the “kingdom of God."

d. The commandments: For Jews, the mitzvot (commandments) of the Torah are the means by which a loving and caring God enables them to live a life of holiness, i.e., of intentionality in deed that deepens the individual’s relationship to God and perfects the conduct of individuals and society. The earliest followers of Jesus were Jews who shared this view. However, ultimately the early church became a movement dominated by gentiles who found the rituals of Judaism unappealing, and it adopted the view of Paul, that the ritual commandments of the Torah were superfluous, and that all that mattered was to accept the atoning death of Jesus. This has led over the centuries to an extensive Christian polemic against Jewish ritual.

2. How do these differences show up in what we are told is ethical and correct behavior?

This question requires either a book or a very brief answer; I will opt for the latter. The difference between Judaism and Christianity in the realm of ethical behavior is more largely a matter of emphasis and attitude. The Torah presumes that the long-term continuity of human society is both a given and a desideratum, and therefore is concerned with social ethics, the judicial process, civil and criminal law, and so forth. The Christian Scriptures (the “New Testament”) were written by individuals who expected the imminent return of Jesus, the end to society as they knew it, and the ushering in of a radically new and different era, the “kingdom of God.” They did not care, therefore, about the orderly maintenance of society. A person should give everything away to the poor, abandon his livelihood, leave his family – because in a short while none of these would matter. Of course, Jesus did not return, and the church had to develop a system of rules for conduct in the interim until the Second Coming. But the divergent origins of the two scriptures have bequeathed to each tradition a distinctive ethos in their approaches to ethics. Very simply put (perhaps overly so): Jews have tended to emphasize adjusting social mechanisms to ensure justice; Christians have tended to value the saintly individual who abandons his or her own private life and devotes it to those in need.