Bereavement is doubly devastating. One who was part of our life is no longer there and our world threatens to fall apart. And we come face to face with mortality itself, the knowledge that all that lives, dies. At such times, prayer helps us make the transition from aninut, the inarticulate shock of grief, to avelut, the work of mourning and recovering faith in life (R. Joseph Soloveitchik).

Tzidduk HaDin, “The Acceptance of Judgment” (on next page), is the ultimate act of humility in the face of loss. Though we cannot understand why there is suffering and death, we reaffirm our faith, tried and tested though it may be, that there is an ultimate order and justice in the universe.

הַצּוּר The Rock: a symbol, taken from the Song of Moses (Deut. 32) signifying the eternity of God in the face of the transience of life. The long Kaddish, said only by a mourner after the funeral and by one who completes a tractate of the Oral Law, is unique in its reference to the resurrection of the dead. Death is not final: it is a prelude to eternal life and eventual rebirth.

הַמָּקוֹם יְנַחֵם May the Almighty comfort you: By comforting the mourners, we help reintegrate them into the community of the living, and into the larger hope that just as Jerusalem will be rebuilt, so will our fractured lives.