Guide
The Blessing for Mourners in Ancient Rabbinic Texts
1st–7th Centuries
Restricted
Early rabbinic tradition prescribes a public blessing for mourners, which is compared here with the public blessing for bridegrooms recited under the wedding canopy, in that both require a quorum of ten men. The blessing for mourners is no longer recited, and its wording is not recorded in the literature beyond what appears in these passages.
Related Primary Sources
Primary Source
The Mishnah on Reciting the Blessing for Mourners
We do not perform [the mourning rite of] standing and sitting [seven times on the way home from accompanying a corpse to the grave], or recite the blessing for mourners, or [perform the rite of]…
Primary Source
The Tosefta on Reciting the Blessing for Mourners
14. We do not observe the custom of “standing up” and “sitting down” in the presence of fewer than ten, and the “standing up” and “sitting down” rites are performed no fewer than seven times. We do…
Primary Source
How to Recite the Blessing for Mourners
23. [In] a locale where it is customary to recite the blessing for mourners as three [separate blessings], they recite three; [where it is customary to recite] two, they recite two; [where it is…
Primary Source
The Talmud on the Blessing for Mourners
What is the mourners’ blessing? The blessing [recited] in the square [next to the cemetery], as R. Isaac said that R. Yoḥanan said: The mourners’ blessing [is…