On the eve of Yom Kippur it was customary in many Jewish communities in Eastern Europe to go to the cemetery “af keyver oves” – to visit ancestral graves, pour out your heart to the dead and ask them to pray and advocate for the living so that we might be spared God’s judgment on the Day of Atonement. In some places, tables would be placed outside the cemetery with honey cake and whiskey, which was offered to people as they left with the words “gmar khsime toyve”—wishing that they be judged well and be inscribed in the book of life.

In honour of this erev Yom Kippur, I am posting a translation of another prayer from this 1930 edition of the mayne loshn (Ma’aneh Lashon), a modern edition with Yiddish translations of Rabbi Yaakov ben Avraham Shlomo Sinna of Prague’s seventeenth century collection of cemetery prayers. While English-Hebrew editions from the same period do not contain prayers that call on the dead, this Yiddish edition does, demonstrating how long these customs endured in Eastern Europe, where they were particularly associated with women. Indeed, this book was often used by professional women who worked in the cemetery, where they were paid to help people to read these prayers and also to perform carefully tailored, improvised prayers and lamentations on behalf of their clients.

This prayer, which begins with greetings to the deceased, followed by a long lament, then a call on the dead to stand up and pray for the living, and ends with prayers for God’s mercy, is a typical example of the kind of prayer that might be recited at keyver oves (when visiting graves) during the High Holy Days. It starts on p. 35 of the book, and I have added page numbers to help anyone who might want to read it alongside the Hebrew or the Yiddish. This is a rough literal translation of the Yiddish with reference to the Hebrew while I work on some new tradaptations of the mayne loshn prayers with Rabbi Noam Lerman.

If you speak some Yiddish would like to learn more about this book and these customs whilst also improving your Yiddish, I am teaching a course on cemetery prayers this fall at the Workers Circle

How a troubled person should pray at their relative’s grave

Sholem, peace be upon you and in peace may you rest, your nefesh (soul) your neshome (higher-soul) and your ruekh (spirit). And may you experience the pleasures and delights of the Garden of Eden. And may you know that your neshome will be bound in the bundle of life, in the highest chamber of heaven, with your God. May you rest in peace with your ancestors and may you and your descendants be granted peace, honour and joy, and may your name live on in beauty and in praise. And may you not suffer from the suffering of your descendants but rest in eternal peace.

And I, bitter, ashamed and troubled, with my thoughts and my worries which are higher than the highest mountain, I am tormented by all kinds of suffering and pain. My problems are so many, that even as [p36] I try to deal with the first concern, other problems come rushing in. It never stops. And of course God, Blessed be He, doesn’t punish us for nothing without a decree. And so I weep that I have become trapped in the net of evil inclination. I have walked in your footsteps, and yet I lament that my bad fortune has multiplied and I am subjugated, my flesh is to everyone nothing more than dust and my house is emptied of everything. The arrows of Satan appear before my eyes, and it is as if all the chambers of hell have overpowered me. My sighs are many and my heart is full of pain from everything that has encircled me, carrying my sins before me. My heart has turned in my chest and I have become bitter.


Friends and enemies hear of my wickedness and rejoice, they have made the water rise up over my head. I have thought that my days have already been cut short. Advice escapes me and I cannot see any sign of help. I must face great danger just to acquire my bread, and from the walls of my house it is clear that I am as dark as coal. My skin has shrunken on my bones, which are withered like old blocks of wood. My being has become darker than a black coal and people do not recognise me in the street. Even the joy of festivals and the sabbath is ruined. God has punished me with the kinds of pain that nullify Torah and prayer. All the limbs of my body are crushed, and I weep and my eyes run with water. And I raise my eyes to the sky, asking from where will come my help. Because everything has been taken from me, and I sigh constantly with a broken body.

But this is considered [p37] shameful and blasphemous. For I have been foolish and my path has been made crooked. And how can my flesh and my blood vessels be angry with God? My head is full of misleading thoughts such that my portion has not been granted with sweetness. For this reason it is said that whoever sins against God and transgresses his laws will be punished with the same kind of evil as he has done. And so I have been tormented and pushed away and degraded. And I take this to my heart and nothing can comfort me for no one can judge my punishment and decide that I should be healed from it, there is no one stronger who can help me and hold back the holy court from its judgement. For God is good to all with his loving nature, and says that the person who sins must do teshuvah, repentance.

And so I have woken myself up to pray. I have brought myself into this situation and I will get myself out of it. I will get myself a helper, who can pray for me to my redeemer. And I thought to myself I must go to the cemeteries, where they used to [38] weep. Perhaps my God will love me as a rose among thorns. And I will go to someone in whose eyes I know I will find grace, that they may act as an advocate for me before the Lord and should turn away His judgement and his ruling from me. Perhaps this will be pleasing to the King of Kings.


So I have come here to your resting place, to the place where you are buried, to prostrate myself on your grave and to ask you to pray for me to your God, to your creator. For you are my blood and flesh, and you must not turn away from your own kin. Stand up at night and pray to God blessed-be-he, who called forth all lineages at the beginning, when he created the world. Raise your hands to him for sake of your living kin and one who loves you, that God may forgive my sins and turn away his wrath from me. That he should remove his rod from me and not to destroy me with his might.

Witness my lowly state, poor and empty and naked, in hunger and in thirst [39] like a wolf or a bear that devours and tears and writhes in its hunger because it has nothing to eat. My troubles and worries are many, such that sleep fails to come to my eyes. My heart is dulled, I cannot cry. For I am filled with fear and sorrow and sighs. I am worn out and have lost all my strength from all my heavy thoughts.

Therefore I beg you, stand up, wake up and come to my rescue, and may others who love you and who you understand go with you. Please pray before God who is merciful and gracious God, pray for my distressed soul, that he may show me loving kindness and help me escape my troubles, so that I will be able to keep his commandments and follow the Torah, may he take away my worries. With his good virtue may he answer my prayer that I pray before him.

May God shine the light of the Shechinah on me, and rid me of my sins and annul all my foolish and unintentional sins. “Long days” this means may he also [p41] let me live a long life, perhaps this will allow me to make a complete repentance and repair my flaws and imperfections until I can be released from my guilt and my debts and enter into my rest with peace and honour, and when I depart from this world it will be with joy in my body and my spirit and my soul. And may we be blessed with mercy from heaven, and with long life, and with rest until the last shovel of earth falls in the grave and may there be peace from the first to the last, Amen.”