Kaddish

The Kaddish is a hymnic prayer that was initially offered after the public exposition of scripture or the study of rabbinic lore. The prayer takes the form of a call-and-response, praising God and expressing the wish for the speedy coming of God’s kingdom. Early rabbinic sources do not give the full text of the prayer, which is first attested in the Middle Ages, but talmudic literature extols the communal response, “May His great name be blessed,” in both Aramaic and Hebrew forms, crediting it with forgiveness of sin and the continued existence of the world. The rhetorical pattern yitgadal ve-yitkadash (“magnified and sanctified”), the prayer leader’s opening phrase, is not mentioned in talmudic literature in the context of the Kaddish, but it does appear in other contexts, including in a prayer for rain. 

Verbal and rhetorical parallels are sometimes drawn between the Kaddish and a prayer attributed to Jesus in early Christian literature, “sanctified be Your name [ . . . ] Your kingdom come”; the rhetoric no doubt was conventional.