Yizkor
The Jewish memorial service held four times a year, in which the dead are remembered by name.
Yizkor is a service rather than a single prayer, held on Yom Kippur and on the last days of the three pilgrimage festivals. Its name means “may he remember”, and it opens with a paragraph in which each person names their own dead.
The custom in many Ashkenazi communities is that those with both parents living leave the room for it. This is a folk practice rather than a legal requirement, and it is one of the more visible examples of a custom that is widely kept and rarely explained.
El Malei Rachamim is normally chanted as part of it.
Why the words are not here
It is a service order rather than one text, so what would be published is a sequence, and each element carries its own edition and rights question.
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 people look for this
The moments this prayer is associated with. Each page carries cited guidance on how different traditions meet that moment.
Where it belongs
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.