27 Sep DOES A YIZKOR DONATION HELP THE DECEASED?

Our time in this world
is limited. We strive to
do all the good we can
and avoid doing wrong.
When we sometimes
misstep, we try to do
teshuvah and atone for
our misdeeds. The time
for doing mitzvos ends with our passing, at
least on a basic level. Is that also the end for
our ability to atone for our sins or can we
also achieve atonement in death?
I. Posthumous Atonement
The Ashkenazic practice is to pledge
money on Yom Kippur in memory of
deceased loved ones. Rav Ya’akov (Mahari)
Weil (15th cen., Germany; Responsa, no.
191) offers two reasons for this. The first is
from the Gemara’s discussion of the eglah
arufah. When performing this rite, the sages
of the city nearest to where a dead body is
found must say, “Our hands have not shed
this blood nor have our eyes seen it. Atone,
Lord, for Your people Israel whom You have
redeemed” (Deut. 21:7-8). Which people
did God redeem? The Gemara (Horayos
6a) says that this refers to the generation of
the Exodus. We see from here that even the
deceased need atonement, even going all the
way back to the time of Moshe. Additionally,

the formal name Yom Ha-Kippurim is in
plural, referring to atonement to both the
living and the deceased.
We see from other passages that the
deceased can achieve atonement. The
Gemara (Kiddushin 31b) says that when a
child repeats a Torah idea in the name of
a parent who died within the past year, he
should add “hareini kaparas mishkavo, may
I be an atonement for his resting.” Rashi (ad
loc.) explains that you are asking to receive
the punishment that would otherwise go
to your parent’s soul, thereby offering an
atonement to your recently deceased parent.
The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 46a-b) discusses
the process of a court’s execution. Following
the execution, the deceased’s relatives do

not mourn him. Rashi (ad loc., 46b, s.v. ve-
lo) explains that the failure to mourn the

executed disgraces him, which in turn serves
as an atonement for his sins. Later in the
discussion, the Gemara (46b) asks whether,
in general, burial is to avoid disgrace or to
provide atonement. If it is to avoid disgrace,
then even if someone asks not to be buried
when he dies, he must be buried because the
family will also be disgraced by the lack of
burial. If it is a matter of atonement, then it
is just for him and he can refuse it.

II. Atonement is For the
Living
From all these sources,
it seems that there can be
atonement even after someone
dies. However, other sources
explicitly state the contrary,
that there is no atonement for
the deceased.
The Gemara (Zevachim 5a)
says that a woman who gives
birth and brings a chatas
offering but dies before it
is sacrificed, her heirs cannot bring that
sacrifice. Rashi (ad loc.) explains that a
chatas is intended to achieve atonement but
there is no atonement after death.
If you bring a chatas sacrifice and slaughter
while having in mind that it should be for
Nachshon, the chatas is kosher (Zevachim
9b). The general rule is that if you have in
mind someone other than the sacrifice’s
owner, and that person is obligated to bring
a chatas, then you have done a sacrificial
rite with the wrong owner in mind which
invalidates a chatas. If the person you have
in mind is not or cannot be obligated to
bring a chatas, then the sacrifice is kosher.
The Gemara explains that since Nachshon,
the leader of the tribe of Yehudah in the
desert, is long deceased, and there is no

atonement for the dead (ein kaparah le-
meisim), the sacrifice slaughtered with

Nachshon in mind is still kosher.
III. Some Atonement For the Dead
Rav Yosef Engel (20th cen., Poland;
Beis Ha-Otzar, vol. 1 section 7:3, section
86) attempts to resolve these conflicting
texts about whether there is atonement
for the deceased. Rav Engel suggests that
there are different types of atonement.
The pain of death, of the separation
of soul from body, achieves the same
limited atonement as a sacrifice. Rav
Engel acknowledges that even though
Rava holds that a person’s death atones
for his sins (Shevu’os 8b, Kerisos 26b),
this cannot mean that death atones
completely because then there would be
no punishment in the afterlife, no need
for the living to give charity on behalf of
the deceased or to say they will serve as
an atonement for the deceased’s resting.
Rather, death achieves the limited
atonement of a sacrifice – which cannot
be achieved after death – but there is
more atonement that is necessary and
possible.
Rav Shalom Mordechai Schwadron
(early 20th cen., Russia; Responsa
Maharsham 3:216) quotes Tosafos
(Pesachim 61a s.v. ve-yeshno) who say
that someone deceased cannot achieve

complete atonement. This implies that he
can achieve partial atonement. The passages
above refer to the atonement of a sacrifice,
which cannot be achieved after death. There
are other types of atonement, albeit limited,
that can be achieved after death.
In a different vein, Rav Engel quotes the
Gemara (Kerisos 6a) which exempts from
punishment someone who applies sacred
oil to a corpse. The punishment does not
apply because someone dead is not legally
considered a person. Similarly, suggests Rav
Engel, a dead person cannot own a sacrifice
because he is not a legal person. Rav Naftali
Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv, 19th cen.,
Poland; Emek Ha-Netziv, Shofetim 67)
seems to explain similarly. The deceased
need atonement and can achieve it through
a sacrifice. However, the passages above
only mean that those who are deceased
cannot bring a sacrifice on their own. If
they are part of another sacrifice, such as
the eglah arufah, then they can achieve
atonement through that sacrifice. In other
words, the deceased can achieve atonement
but for technical reasons they cannot bring
a sacrifice for it.
The children and students we leave behind
affect our eternal lives. Our footprints
continue to grow even after our times in
this world have passed. Even someone’s
misdeeds can be corrected, at least to
some extent, after his death. And that is
what we try to accomplish through Yizkor,
donations and other mitzvos in memory of
the deceased.