El Malei Rachamim
Also called God full of mercy.
The Jewish memorial prayer asking rest for the soul of someone who has died.
El Malei Rachamim asks that the soul of a named person find rest under the wings of the divine presence. It is chanted rather than said, and the melody is one many people recognise before they recognise the words.
It is heard at funerals, at gravestone unveilings, and at the Yizkor memorial services held four times a year. In many communities it is also recited at public commemorations, and versions naming the victims of the Shoah are widely used.
The person is named in the prayer, which is the reason it is often the hardest moment of a funeral for a family to hear.
Why the words are not here
No public-domain edition has been found for it. It was looked for in the 1904 seventh edition of Singer's prayer book and is not there under any of its usual English openings: that edition's memorial service prints the Yizkor paragraph and a long prayer for mourners instead. The wording also varies between rites and changes with who is being remembered, so an edition has to be named precisely rather than approximately.
Every text on this site names the edition it came from and was checked against it twice. A prayer nobody can cite an edition for does not get printed here, however well known it is. The verification record lists what was held back and why, and how rights are established explains the test.
What we do hold
When is this prayer said?
The moments this prayer is associated with. Each page carries cited guidance on how different traditions meet that moment.
Which tradition is this prayer from?
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 15 October 2026. Dates come from this page’s own revision history, not from the last time the site was deployed.