Nichum avelim: what Jews say when someone dies

The Jewish practice of comforting mourners, and the two fixed phrases that carry it: Baruch Dayan HaEmet on hearing of a death, and HaMakom yenachem etchem said to the bereaved.

Judaism gives the visitor a script, which is unusual: most traditions leave the condolence call to instinct. The mourner speaks first, and until they do the visitor says nothing at all. On leaving, the visitor says one fixed sentence, HaMakom yenachem etchem, may the Omnipresent comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. The death itself is met with a different four words, Baruch Dayan HaEmet, blessed is the true Judge, which the Mishnah lists among the blessings said on hearing news. Between them they cover almost everything a visitor is expected to say, and the silence around them is not awkwardness but the form.

Judaism hands the visitor a script, which is rarer than it sounds. Most traditions leave the condolence call to instinct and hope for the best, and the result is the familiar paralysis in the doorway. Here the awkwardness has been anticipated and answered: there is a thing to say, a time to say it, and explicit permission to say nothing else.

The rule that shapes the whole visit is that the mourner speaks first. A visitor enters, sits, and waits. If the mourner says nothing for an hour, the visitor has still done it correctly, and in some communities the visitor stays silent until spoken to as a matter of law rather than tact. The point is that the bereaved sets the terms, including whether there is any conversation at all. The commonest mistake a well-meaning visitor makes is arriving with something prepared.

On hearing of the death itself, the words are Baruch Dayan HaEmet, blessed is the true Judge. The Mishnah lists it among the blessings said on hearing news, the one kept for news that is bad, and the same four words head most Jewish death announcements, which is where a lot of people first meet the phrase. Said in full in the liturgy it opens with the standard blessing formula naming God; said as a reaction in a hospital corridor it is usually just the four words.

On leaving, the visitor says HaMakom yenachem etchem b'toch sh'ar avelei Tzion v'Yerushalayim: may the Omnipresent comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. HaMakom means the Place, a name for God chosen deliberately here, and commentators have long read it as the substance of the sentence rather than decoration: the mourner is being told that God is in the room they are sitting in. The closing clause sets this death beside a much older grief so that the bereaved is placed in company rather than singled out.

What not to say is as fixed as what to say. It is not the moment to look for a reason, to report that the deceased is in a better place, to say you know how they feel, or to ask how the death happened. Judaism has no expectation that a visitor will explain anything, and the tradition's own view is that the attempt is a burden moved from the visitor onto the mourner.

Non-Jewish visitors are welcome at a shiva and are not expected to produce Hebrew. Saying the English, or saying nothing and sitting down, is the practice rather than a lesser version of it. Bringing food, and not expecting to be hosted, does more than any sentence.

When it comes up

• Grief and mourning
• Funerals and burial
• Dying and the end of life
• Pregnancy and infant loss

Other forms of prayer in Judaism

• Shacharit, Mincha and Maariv — The three daily Jewish services, and the fixed liturgy each one follows.
• The Shema — Less a petition than a declaration, and the prayer that bookends a Jewish day and a Jewish life.
• The Amidah — The standing prayer at the centre of every Jewish service.
• Kaddish — An Aramaic praise of God's name that marks the joints of every service, and that mourners recite.
• Berakhot — The short fixed blessings said over food, drink and ordinary acts.
• Jewish prayers of healing and memory — Mi Sheberach for the sick, and El Malei Rachamim for the dead.

Every prayer this site holds

Content last changed 16 September 2026. Dates come from this page’s own revision history, not from the last time the site was deployed.