Jewish Memorial Service Program

The order of service, panel by panel

Here is a full interior spread for a chapel funeral, written to be changed. Names, the congregation, the chapel and the cemetery are invented. The Hebrew date is left as a placeholder because the funeral home or synagogue office will give you the exact conversion.

A few notes on what is in there, and why.

Kriah is the tearing of a garment or of a black ribbon worn by the immediate mourners. It usually happens in a side room before the service starts rather than in front of the room, so it is often listed first and then not seen by most guests. Some families leave it off the printed order for that reason.

Hesped is the eulogy. One rabbi and two family members is a common load. Three family speakers is a long service. If you are drafting one, the structure in our eulogy examples transfers over without any changes.

The service is short. Twenty-five to forty minutes is normal, and nobody in the room is expecting more. The general shape of a printed order of service works the same way here as anywhere else, but the content is fixed by the liturgy, and the rabbi decides it. Send your draft to the synagogue office before you print. They will correct it in five minutes.

A memorial service held later

When burial happened out of state, or quickly, or a long time ago, the service that most people attend is a separate memorial gathering. It is less fixed and there is room for more voices.

An unveiling

The unveiling, the dedication of the marker, usually happens within the first year. It is brief, held outdoors, and most guests have never been to one. A single card is genuinely helpful here.

That last paragraph does more work than anything else on the card. Guests want to do the right thing and have no way to know what it is.

Funeral, memorial service, shiva or unveiling

Four different gatherings get called a memorial service, and only two of them usually get a printed program. Find the row you are in.

You are allowed to do less than you think

Jewish funeral practice is deliberately fast and deliberately plain. The tradition is built to carry a family that has had no time to prepare, and it does not ask you to produce anything. If the funeral is tomorrow morning and you have not slept, print nothing. Ask the synagogue for Kaddish cards, which most congregations keep on hand, and spend the evening on the phone instead. You can print something careful for the memorial service or the unveiling later, when there is room to breathe.

Cover and back panel wording

Jewish program covers are restrained. Name, dates, place, and one line. Resist the urge to fill the space.

The back panel is where the practical information goes. Guests read it in the parking lot, which is exactly when they need it.

That last line is the traditional thing to say to a mourner. Printing it, with the English underneath, quietly hands the sentence to every guest who has been standing in line rehearsing what to say. If you want the layout side of this handled for you, the same panels are built into our funeral program template, and you can replace the headings with these.

The Mourner’s Kaddish, transliterated

The Kaddish is the reason to print anything. It is in Aramaic, most of the room cannot read it, and it is meant to be said aloud together. A clean transliteration on a facing page turns a prayer that four people recite into one the whole room joins.

This is the Ashkenazi Mourner’s Kaddish. Sephardic and Mizrahi communities use a slightly different text, and some congregations add a phrase. Check yours before printing.

If you want the English on the facing page, take it from the siddur your congregation uses, so the page and the book in people’s hands say the same thing. Every English Kaddish in a current prayer book is that book’s own translation, and they differ, so we do not print one here. The synagogue office can email you theirs, and many congregations keep printed Kaddish cards that already carry it.

Two things families are surprised by, and both are worth a line of italics under the text. The Kaddish does not mention death at all; it is a prayer of praise, and grief is carried by the act of saying it rather than by the words. And in traditional practice it is recited with a minyan present, ten adults, which is why the shiva minyan matters and why the family sometimes waits.

If your congregation transliterates differently, use theirs. Ask the office to email you the version from the siddur the room will be holding, so the printed page and the book agree.

El Malei Rachamim and the psalms

El Malei Rachamim is the memorial prayer, chanted by the cantor with the deceased’s Hebrew name in the middle of it. Families rarely print the Hebrew, because the cantor is chanting it and no one is following along. What is worth printing is the English, so guests understand what they just heard.

We do not print that English here. The prayer asks God to grant perfect rest to the soul of the person who died, named in it by their Hebrew name, and every translation in use belongs to the prayer book or the congregation it comes from. Ask the cantor or the rabbi for the English they use, with the Hebrew name already in place, and print it under the line that names the cantor.

The opening words, if you want them transliterated on the page: El malei rachamim, shochen bam’romim, ham’tzei m’nucha n’chona tachat kanfei haSh’china.

Psalms and readings used at Jewish services

These are the passages you will hear most often. The translations below are from the 1917 Jewish Publication Society edition, which is old enough to be freely reprinted; your congregation may use a newer one, and if so, use theirs.

• “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.”

  Psalm 23:1-2 (JPS 1917)

  Read at nearly every service, often by the whole room together.

• “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.”

  Psalm 23:4 (JPS 1917)

  The verse most families want on the cover or the marker.

• “I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: from whence shall my help come? My help cometh from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”

  Psalm 121:1-2 (JPS 1917)

  Common at the graveside and at unveilings.

• “So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.”

  Psalm 90:12 (JPS 1917)

  Psalm 90 is often read in full at a memorial service.

• “A woman of valour who can find? For her price is far above rubies.”

  Proverbs 31:10 (JPS 1917)

  Eshet Chayil, traditionally read for a woman.

• “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die.”

  Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 (JPS 1917)

  Used more at memorial services than at funerals.

Families sometimes want a poem as well, particularly at a memorial service. That is a decision for the rabbi and the family together, and the safest place for it is among the reflections rather than inside the liturgy. Our list of funeral poems is arranged by relationship if you want somewhere to start. If you want the psalm itself in full, we set it out with several translations on our page about the 23rd Psalm at a funeral.

Hebrew names, dates and God’s name in print

The Hebrew name

The Hebrew name follows the pattern [given name] ben [father] v’[mother] for a man and [given name] bat [father] v’[mother] for a woman. Some families use only the father’s name; Reform and Reconstructionist practice usually names both parents. The cantor needs this name for El Malei Rachamim, and the synagogue needs it for the yahrzeit records, so you will be asked for it whether or not it goes on the program.

If nobody knows the Hebrew name, say so. The rabbi will help you construct one. This happens constantly and is not a failure.

The Hebrew date

The yahrzeit is observed on the Hebrew date of death, which can fall weeks away from the civil anniversary. The funeral home or synagogue office converts it for you. Ask for it in writing and use the same conversion on the program, the marker and the synagogue’s list. One detail catches families out: the Hebrew day begins at sunset, so a death after dark belongs to the following Hebrew date. Do not work it out yourself.

Printing God’s name

Traditional practice holds that a page bearing the divine name in Hebrew should not be thrown away; it is buried or placed in a genizah. Programs get left on chairs. Congregations handle this in different ways, and three are common: print the transliteration and English rather than the Hebrew, write the English as G-d, or place a basket at the door and ask that programs be returned rather than discarded. Ask your rabbi which one your community expects, before the print run rather than after.

Setting Hebrew type

Hebrew reads right to left, and design software mishandles it more often than anyone expects. Ask the synagogue office to send the text as a file and paste it in rather than retyping it. Then have one person who reads Hebrew look at the printed proof, not the screen. Vowel points dropping out, lines reversing, and a final letter turning into its ordinary form are the three errors that survive to the print shop.

What guests will want to know

Half the people at a Jewish funeral have never been to one. A few lines on the back panel, or a short paragraph read aloud by the rabbi, will save a great many people from standing still and worrying.

1. 1

   At the chapel

   Men cover their heads; kippot are in a basket at the door and guests of any faith may wear one. Dress is what you would wear to any funeral. The casket is present and closed, and it is not opened.

2. 2

   Going to the cemetery

   Accompanying the family to the burial is considered an act of kindness, not an intrusion. If cars are lining up, join them. Some who are of priestly descent, kohanim, will remain outside the cemetery, and that is expected.

3. 3

   At the grave

   The community fills the grave rather than a crew doing it afterward. Guests are invited to add earth, often turning the shovel over for the first pass and returning it to the pile rather than passing it hand to hand. Taking part is a kindness; declining is completely acceptable.

4. 4

   Leaving

   Mourners often pass between two lines of friends, who say HaMakom yenachem etchem b’toch sh’ar aveilei Tziyon viYrushalayim means may God comfort you among all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. There is usually water at the gate for washing your hands.

5. 5

   At the shiva house

   Walk in; do not ring the bell. Do not send flowers. Food is welcome and traditional, and the first meal after the burial is prepared by the community rather than by the family. Wait for the mourner to speak first, and sitting quietly is enough.

Once the week is over, the family usually sends notes to the people who came, cooked, drove and sat. There is standard wording for those on our page about funeral acknowledgement wording, and it adapts easily.

Before you send it to print

On size: a single sheet folded once is standard and looks right for this kind of service. If you are choosing between formats, our note on funeral program size covers what fits on each. And if the whole week is more than you can hold in your head, the funeral planning checklist is the plain list of what has to happen and roughly when.

Reposa can lay the program out for you: you answer questions about the service, the readings and the family, and it produces a print-ready program with the order of service, the obituary and matching cards. If the family is Jewish by culture rather than by practice and the service will have no liturgy in it at all, the non-religious funeral program is the better starting point.