Four words said on hearing that someone has died: blessed is the true Judge. The Mishnah lists it among the blessings said on news, the one for news that is bad, and it is what a Jewish family says aloud at the moment they are told. It is also the phrase written at the top of a death announcement, which is how most people meet it.
Every text below comes from the edition named under it and was checked twice, independently, before it appeared. Neither check was a person. That is a claim about wording only: nothing here is selected or endorsed for a particular situation, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed it. Older spelling is kept as the edition prints it.
Baruch Dayan HaEmet
Four words said on hearing that someone has died: blessed is the true Judge. The Mishnah lists it among the blessings said on news, the one for news that is bad, and it is what a Jewish family says aloud at the moment they are told. It is also the phrase written at the top of a death announcement, which is how most people meet it.
Hebrew · Mishnah, Torat Emet edition, 2026
בָּרוּךְ דַּיַּן הָאֱמֶת
Sefaria, 2026. Sefaria labels this version Public Domain. The Mishnah itself is ancient and the pointing follows the standard printed editions. Checked against Hebrew Wikisource's separately keyed vocalized Mishnah. Retrieved and verified 2026-09-20. Source
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No English is set beside the Hebrew. The blessing is four words and the usual English, “blessed is the true Judge”, is not taken here from any edition: the one public-domain prayer book that prints it, Singer’s of 1904, gives it only as the tail of an elided formula, “On hearing Evil Tidings: — the true Judge”, with the opening words printed once further up the page. Setting a translation beside it that came from nowhere would be the failure this site exists to avoid. The full blessing as it is said in the liturgy opens with the standard formula naming God, and saying a blessing has conditions this entry makes no claim about; what is verified here is the wording of the four words the Mishnah records.
When is this prayer said?
The moments this prayer is associated with. Each page carries cited guidance on how different traditions meet that moment.
This page describes a prayer and, where we hold one, prints a named edition of it. It does not tell you whether to say it, or when. That judgment belongs to someone credentialed in the tradition, and nobody has signed anything here.
Content last changed 20 September 2026. Dates come from this page’s own revision history, not from the last time the site was deployed.
