Visiting the Graves

Kever Avot, Hebrew for "the graves of the fathers", is the Jewish practice of visiting the graves of deceased relatives and of the righteous, especially in the period leading up to the High Holy Days and on fast days and anniversaries of death. At the graveside the visitor recites psalms and memorial prayers, asks God's mercy for the departed, and, in a widespread custom, places a small stone on the grave marker as a sign that the visit was made and the dead remembered. The visits before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur express the hope that the merit of the righteous ancestors may intercede on behalf of the living as they face divine judgment, and they draw the generations together at the turning of the year.

Jewish tradition is careful about the theology of these visits. The prayers at the grave are directed to God, not to the dead, and authorities have long warned against praying to the deceased as though they could grant requests, a caution rooted in the biblical prohibition of inquiring of the dead. The visit is understood rather as a stirring of the heart to repentance through the remembrance of mortality and of those who have gone before, and as an act of honour to their memory. The graves of great sages and saints have nonetheless become places of pilgrimage, where many come to pray, a popular devotion that sits in some tension with the stricter view.