A Spiritual Perspective
A Yizkor prayer for
stillborn and infant deaths
A contemporary
rabbi offers a prayer to be recited throughout the year by parents who have
suffered neonatal loss.
By Rabbi Ira F. Stone
The Yizkor service in
which Jews take note of close relatives who have died is recited on four days
throughout the Jewish year: Passover, Shavuot, Yom Kippur, and Shemini Atzeret.
Mourning a stillbirth or the loss of a child shortly after birth--which has
been de-emphasized in Jewish tradition--has received more attention and concern
in recent years. This new prayer (resonant with traditional language and
themes) enables parents to remember their child in the months and years after
his or her death. Reprinted with permission
from Jewish Insights on Death and
Mourning, edited by Jack Riemer (Schocken Books).
May God remember my daughter/son [name] bat/ben [parents' names] who has gone to eternal rest.
Her/his life was but the
briefest flicker of a flame, extinguished before it had time to shed its light
on the world but not before sharing its warmth with me.
Through the months of her/his
gestation, I prepared to nurture and to love her/him. For the time that he/she
lived, I gave to her/him everything a parent could have given and received
everything I could have expected.
May the memory of the joy she/he brought to me in the short time that we were together strengthen
me, and may God count that joy as the weight of a life filled with such
blessing, binding through that love and joy [name] bat/ben[parents' names] in
the bonds of eternal life.
For the gift of her/his life without transgression, I pledge to do acts
of righteousness and tzedakah[charity]
that she/he may merit eternal life and that I may find comfort in this world.
Ira F. Stone is Rabbi of Temple Beth
Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia and has taught theology at The Jewish
Theological Seminary of America. He is the author of Seeking the Path to Life: Theological Meditations
on God and the Nature of People, Love, Life and Death.
