Pregnancy and infant loss: prayers in Judaism

Texts from their published editions. Guidance on what this tradition does at this moment is on the occasion page, and background on the tradition is at /traditions/jewish.

Texts from their published editions

Each text below comes from the edition named under it and was checked twice, independently, before it appeared. Neither check was a person. Where the two disagreed by even one character, the text is not shown here. That is a claim about wording only: these are not selected or endorsed for any particular situation, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed them. Older spelling is kept as the edition prints it. The full record, including the texts we held back because the two transcriptions disagreed, is at the verification record.

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

Share this prayer · How this text was verified

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.

Content last changed 17 September 2026. Dates come from this page’s own revision history, not from the last time the site was deployed.

Nothing here has been signed by a reviewer credentialed in this tradition. When that happens, reviewed prayers appear above these, and these stay where they are, as an anthology. How that works.