El Malei Rachamim (God full of mercy) is the Ashkenazi memorial prayer, chanted for the soul of the dead at funerals, at the setting of a headstone, at the memorial (Yizkor) services of the festivals, and on the anniversary of a death. It petitions God, described as full of mercy and dwelling on high, to grant the departed perfect rest under the shelter of the divine presence, among the holy and the pure, and to bind their soul in the bond of eternal life. Solemn and personal, with the name of the deceased inserted at its heart, it is chanted to a plaintive melody and is one of the central texts by which Ashkenazi Jews commend their dead to God. Its counterpart in the Sephardi tradition is the Hashkavah. In the modern period the prayer has also been adapted for collective commemoration, notably of the victims of the Holocaust and of fallen soldiers, extending its intercession from the individual dead to whole communities.
The prayer's imagery of the soul finding rest beneath the wings of the divine presence draws on older biblical and rabbinic language for shelter and protection, and cantors traditionally chant it in a distinctive, deliberately mournful mode reserved for funerals and memorial services, setting it apart musically from the rest of the liturgy. Its adaptation for collective commemoration required composers and prayer book editors to rework its originally singular, individual language, written for one named soul, into forms that could name a group or a whole community without losing the prayer's personal, intimate address to God.