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על פי ה׳ — מלמד שמת בנשיקה (רש״י על במדבר לג:לח) |
At the word of (by the mouth of) Hashem — We learn that he [Aharon] died with a kiss. (Rashi on Numbers 33:38) |
נשיקה — דמיא כמשחל בניתא מחלבא (ברכות ח׳ א) |
Neshika — the “kiss” is comparable to removing a hair from milk. (Talmud Bavli, Tractate Berakhot 8a) |
Hashem, please do kiss warmly my mother/father hello as we struggle to kiss her/him good-bye. | |
Hashem, please favor me, to inhale smoothly her/him into your heart as we exhale our rough grief from our entangled hearts. | |
Hashem, please with grace, lift quickly and wholly her/him into your embrace as we endure slowly her/him leaving this world’s firm grip. | |
Hashem, please grant me for you to slide quickly her/his body from her/his meritorious soul, a soul providing sustaining milk/support to many for many years in many ways. | |
Hashem, please with compassion place her/his soul among her/his loved ones and friends as we place her/his body among beloved flowers and fertile earth. | |
Hashem please, always show and remind me the many, blessed memories of her/him till the day I too die, | |
Amen |
By Andrew Meit, written upon the death of his mother, Sonie Meit, the 28th of Sivan 5771 — כ״ח בְּסִיוָן תשע״א.
“Kiss of death, a prayer upon the death of a parent by Andrew Meit” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.
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The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-commercial, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture.
ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17
Thank you for sharing this moving prayer. I think that if something like this had been available to me at the time of my own mother’s difficult death more than 21 and 1/2 years ago, the transition may well have been a little easier for all of us. I know that there will be others in the future who will find support and comfort in reading your lines that express what they themselves are unable to articulate. @Andrew – May your mother’s memory be for blessing always, and may you be comforted among all the mourners of Zion, Jerusalem, and all humanity.
P.S. One small technical matter: It seems to me that the fifth word of the third verse was intended to be lift, not left.
Thank you for posting my prayer. @Natalie, thank you for your kind words.
Could you please add, June 30th 2011 as the death date since not everyone knows Jewish calendar conversion, thanks.
Thank you so much for pointing out the typo, Natalie. I have fixed it.
Thank you for sharing this prayer…My father (of blessed memory) died April 24…We are finishing Shiva tomorrow, and I come back to Vancouver tomorrow night. I was looking on the web and saw this beautiful prayer. Thank you
Nadine, Am glad my words were worthy to provide comfort and some beauty. :-)
A revised version suitable for printing and better line breaks. copyright remains the same as the original version:
Prayer for death of a parent.
Andrew s. Meit, for his mother 2011.
G-d, please, to kiss warmly my parent hello as we struggle to kiss them good-bye.
G-d, please favor me, to inhale smoothly my parent into your heart as we exhale our grieve from our entangled hearts.
G-d, please with grace, to lift quickly and wholly my parent into your embrace as we endure slowly their leaving this world’s gripe.
G-d, please grant me, to slide quickly my parent’s body from their merited soul, a soul providing sustaining support to many for many years in many ways.
G-d, please with compassion, to place my parent’s soul among their loved ones and friends as we place their body among beloved flowers and fertile earth.
G-d, please, to show and remind me the many, blessed memories of my parent till the day I too die,
Amen.