This is an archive of prayers composed for mourning. Some are for personal or private use. Others are for public, communal, and ceremonial functions. Some follow the formula of a Mourner’s Ḳaddish (Qaddish Yatom), others that of El Malé Raḥamim, and still others are adaptations or free-form with or without Hebrew, reflecting upon grief and interconnection and composed in a vernacular tongue. Click here to contribute your own prayers of mourning. Filter resources by Name Filter resources by Tag Filter resources by Category
A prayer of a sister mourning at the grave of her sister. . . . A prayer of a mother grieving over the death of her child. . . . A prayer of a sister mourning at the grave of her brother. . . . “Future Happiness” by Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman was published in her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), p. 35-39. . . . “Heaven” by Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman was published in her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), pp. 72-76. . . . A prayer for a daughter mounrning at the grave of her mother. . . . A prayer for a woman visiting the grave of her brother or sister. . . . A prayer for a woman mounrning at the grave of her child. . . . A prayer of a woman and mother who has lost her husband and is contemplating desperate circumstances. . . . A prayer of an orphan after the death of one or both of her parents. . . . A prayer of a daughter for mourning on the yortseit of one or both of her parents. . . . A prayer for one’s parent or parents during Yizkor. . . . “Gebet Statt Kaddisch” is a memorial prayer replacement (tashlum) for the ḳaddish yatom (orphans’ ḳaddish) when praying alone or where there is no minyan. It is found in Dr. Seligmann Baer and Rabbi Joseph Nobel’s Tozeoth Chajm: Vollständiges Gebet- und Erbauungsbuch zum Gebrauche bei Kranken, Sterbenden… (1900). . . . Tags: 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., English Translation, קדיש יתום Mourner's Ḳaddish, Memorial prayers, Needing Attribution, Needing Source Images, Paraliturgical Mourner's Kaddish, personal, prayers of orphans, Without a Minyan, תשלומים tashlumim, תחינות teḥinot This prayer by Rabbi Sabato Morais after the death of President Ulysses S. Grant (April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) concludes a eulogy published in the The Jewish Record on 14 August 1885, “General Grant: Substance of a Discourse Delivered Last Sabbath by the Rev. S. Morais.” A note in the preface to the article dates the eulogy to the preceding Sabbath, 8 August 1885. The article was preserved in a newspaper clipping found on page 338 of the Sabato Morais Ledger. . . . “The Children’s Song” is a hymn by Felix Adler, first published in The Ethical Record vol. 1, no. 1. (April 1888), sheet music page 5. . . . Tags: 19th century C.E., 57th century A.M., cemetery prayers, child mortality, children's prayers, English vernacular prayer, Ethical Humanism, גלגול נפשות gilgul nefashot, hymns, memento mori, universalist “Prayer for a Dear Relation or Friend Who is Ill” was written by Lilian Helen Montagu and published in Prayers for Jewish Working Girls (1895), pp. 26-27. . . . “On the loss of a beloved one (in the morning)” was written by Annie Josephine Levi and published in her anthology of teḥinot in English, Meditations of the Heart (1900), pp. 148-149. . . . “On the loss of a beloved one (in the evening)” was written by Annie Josephine Levi and published in her anthology of teḥinot in English, Meditations of the Heart (1900), pp. 156-157. . . . Basil L.Q. Henriques’s prayer “For those in sorrow” was first published in The Fratres Book of Prayer for the Oxford and St. George’s Synagogue Jewish Lads Club in 1916, and later reprinted in the Prayer Book of the St. George’s Settlement Synagogue (1929), “Special Prayers” section, page 99. . . . This is Rabbi Dr. Leo Beack’s prayer for his wife Natalie Baeck née Hamburger (1878-1937), dated 7 March 1937. Natalie had died two days prior on 5 March. . . . In a poignant reflection on human limitation and the role of religion, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) consoled two rabbis each grieving the painful loss of their children. The first letter dated 12 February 1950, drafted in German before its translation into English, was written for Rabbi Robert S. Marcus after the death of the rabbi’s eleven-year-old son, Jay, from polio in September 1949. The second letter, dated 4 March 1950, was written for Rabbi Norman Salit after the death of Salit’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Miriam. Einstein’s letter to Rabbi Salit borrowed from and expanded upon the composition of his letter to Rabbi Marcus. In a few short lines, the letter expresses Einstein’s opinion on the prison-like delusion of consciousness — and the work of “true” religion to escape this prison through the intentional expansion of compassion beyond one’s self. . . . This is the prayer offered at the “Memorial Service on Friday, 15th February, 1952 (Eve of Sabbath, 19th Shebat, 5712) at the New West End Synagogue (London, W. 2) for His Late Majesty King George (VI)” as given by the Office of the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth (officiated by Dayan Dr. I. Grunfeld and Rabbi Dr. A. Altmann, M.A. [Joint Deputies for the Chief Rabbi], the Rev. Ephraim Levine, M.A., the Rev. R.H. Levy, M.A.). Many thanks to Jeffrey Maynard for providing the page images of the service containing this prayer at his blog, Jewish Miscellanies. . . . “baShanah haBa’ah” (Next Year) by Ehud Manor written in 1968 in memory of his brother Yehudah. . . . A prayer for a beloved animal first compiled in English by Aharon N. Varady for Nethaniel Puzael, his family’s cat, in 1994. . . . Almost two years ago my best friend passed away and I had the honour of chanting this malé raḥamim for him. In mid-May this year another friend approached me and said he really liked the way I did it at the time and could I record it for him because he was going to do it too for an unrelated unveiling. So, I recorded it on May 18, 2011. I didn’t compose it. It’s a traditional tune, but it’s my voice and I hope someone else can perhaps learn it with this material. The more resource there are out there through means such as Open Siddur the better we can learn and share. . . . A prayer written by a son upon the death of his mother. . . . Jews use the Kaddish to mourn the dead, though it has in it only one word — “nechamata,” consolations – which hints at mourning. And this word itself is used in a puzzling way, once we look at it with care. As we will see below, it may be especially appropriate in time of war. The interpretive English translation below may also be appropriate for prayers of mourning and hope in wartime by other spiritual and religious communities. In this version, changes in the traditional last line of the Hebrew text specifically include not only peace for the people Israel (as in the traditional version) but also for the children of Abraham and Hagar through Ishmael (Arabs and Muslims) and for all the life-forms who dwell upon this planet. . . . My bones whisper that your pages and your inks will return to the trees and the plants from where they once came. They say that someday they will even come back to life with words never yet heard. . . . This prayer in lament for three Jewish youths taken captive and killed by Hamas in 2014, was written by Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum and published by the Masorti Movement in Israel through their Facebook page on 4 July 2014. English translation by Shoshana Michael Zucker. . . . A paraliturgical yizkor prayer. . . . This prayer was written to introduce the service at a shiva minyan. . . . This eulogy by Andrew Meit was read at Temple Beit Ami in Rockville, Maryland at the funeral of Benjamin Meit. Andrew writes, “Ben would have turned 19 next week. He died from complications from depression and mental illness.” Donations in Ben’s memory may be made here. If you or anyone you know is in need of help, please call 911, or 1-800 273 8255, the national suicide prevention hotline. . . . A “secular” kaddish after my mother died so that I could say kaddish under circumstances where I could gather ten people but not ten Jews. . . . A meditation on living through the lens of dying. . . . This text takes the basic idea of the Baladi-rite ‘Brikh Shmeh d’Kudsha Brikh Hu’ and adapts it for the Askenazi nusach of the Kaddish. It can be used when praying alone wherever a minyan would say the entire Kaddish. It could also be recited by a community in unison out loud when it can’t make a minyan, to show that even if we don’t have a full minyan, we still welcome mourners as part of our community. . . . The Mourner’s Ḳaddish, in Hebrew with English translation by Everett Fox after Franz Rosenzweig. . . . A prayer for a Yizkor service on Yom Kippur during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. . . . “Things that are not to be,” a prayer-poem by Rabbi Hanna Yerushalmi (LGPC) in the event of a pregnancy loss was first published in Mishkan R’fuah: Where Healing Resides (CCAR 2013), p. 49-50. . . . |
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