Rabbi Akiba was walking through a cemetery when he encountered something terrible — a dead man, naked and blackened, carrying an enormous load of wood on his back. He was running at a frantic pace, as though driven by an invisible taskmaster.
"Stop," Akiba called out. "What is this? Are you a man or a demon?"
"I am a dead man," the figure replied, "condemned to gather wood for the fire that burns me in Gehinnom (the place of spiritual purification after death) every single day. In life, I was a tax collector. I showed favor to the rich and crushed the poor. This is my punishment."
Akiba pressed him: "Is there no way to save you?"
The dead man hesitated. "I heard that if my son — whom I left behind as an infant — were to stand before the congregation and recite the Kaddish, or lead the prayers and say 'Bless the Lord who is blessed,' I would be released from judgment."
"Do you have a son?" Akiba asked.
"I left a pregnant wife. I do not know if the child was born, or if he lived, or if anyone taught him a single word of Torah."
Rabbi Akiba searched until he found the boy — uneducated, uncircumcised, utterly neglected. He circumcised him, sat him down, and began teaching him Torah from the very first letter. When the boy was finally able to stand before the congregation and lead the prayers, the dead man appeared to Akiba in a dream, radiant and at peace. "You have released me from the judgment of Gehinnom," he said. The Kallah Rabbati (chapter 2) preserves this as the origin of the custom of reciting Kaddish for the dead — a son's prayer can reach even into the fires of the afterlife and pull a soul free.