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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">A talk on this topic given by Rabbi Feldman is at
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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzFUXKk2B4I&feature=youtu.be" class="OWAAutoLink" id="LPlnk280637" previewremoved="true">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzFUXKk2B4I&feature=youtu.be</a></p>
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<a id="LPUrlAnchor_15344257596360.12215223328028868" style="text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzFUXKk2B4I&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Rabbi Friedman - The Soul and the Afterlife: Where Do We ...</a></div>
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Sinai Indaba is an annual Torah convention of the foremost international Jewish leaders and thinkers. See more at: www.Sinai-Indaba.com Dubbed a "superstar" ...</div>
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Beginning at about 9 minutes and 30 seconds into the talk, Rabbi Feldman talks about how the soul needs us to say Yizkor and will not allow people "pull strings" to get people l to say Yizkor.
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<p style="margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0">These statements have raised questions in my mind.</p>
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<div>From <a href="http://booksnthoughts.com/the-relatively-recent-origin-of-yizkor/" id="LPlnk172095" class="OWAAutoLink" previewremoved="true">
http://booksnthoughts.com/the-relatively-recent-origin-of-yizkor/<br>
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</a><b>What is the origin of <i>Yizkor</i>?<br>
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</b>The custom of reciting <i>Yizkor</i> on the solemn holiday of Yom Kippur began in Germany in the eleventh century following the devastation of Rhineland Jewry during the Crusades, a trauma that was exacerbated in the fourteenth century when Jews were butchered
because non-Jews were convinced that they caused the Black Plague. It was originally a personal family prayer recited to remember their dead, but it soon became a prayer recited within a community in synagogues on Yom Kippur.<br>
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The custom of reciting <i>Yizkor</i> spread eastward very quickly and Polish Jews supplemented it with a prayer remembering the Jewish victims of the 1648 Cossack massacre under the leadership of Bogdan Chmielnicki. The Polish Jews also extended the recital
of <i>Yizkor</i> beyond the sole recitation on Yom Kippur to the last days of the three festivals Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.<br>
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The additional recitals were made because of popular feelings, but it raised a problem that has not been satisfactorily answered:
<i>Yizkor </i>can fit into the Yom Kippur services because Yom Kippur is a solemn day, but the three other holidays are happy days, why add a somber prayer to mar these holidays.<br>
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Since Yizkor began in the 11th century, I find Rabbi Feldman's statements about Yizkor and the soul curious, if not misleading. What did the soul do before the 11th century? I do not know, and I doubt that you or Feldman know.<br>
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I wonder if the Sefardim say Yizkor. I do not think that they do. I would be willing to wager that Yemenites don't say Yizkor. If so, what about the souls of Sefardim or Yemenites?</div>
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