Across history and cultures, women have played a central role in communal lament and rituals of grieving. The great ethnographer and historian of the Cairo Place for storing books or ritual objects which have become unusable.Genizah, Shelomo Dov Goitein, inspired by his observations of the traditional Yemenite community, identified a class of professional women in the ancient world—“women mourners” or female “dirge-singers” or “keeners” (Goitein 1957, 1988). A few texts testify to this collective body of women in the  Hebrew Bible, mostly among the late prophets. The association between mourning and women is further reinforced in the Book of Lamentations, with the feminine personification of Jerusalem as “Daughter” or “Fair Zion” [Bat Tzion], mourning her destruction (Adelman 2024), and the voice granted women in chapter 3 (Lamentation 3:48-66, Greenstein 2023). Following the destruction of the Temple, many Jewish communities around the world were still served by mourning women, with the public expression of grief and emotion regarded by many communities as sacred women’s work. As late as the twentieth century, professional mourning women and wailers continued to work in Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, Morocco, Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, India, Iraq, Iran, and Israel. 

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It is clear from passages in the The legal corpus of Jewish laws and observances as prescribed in the Torah and interpreted by rabbinic authorities, beginning with those of the Mishnah and Talmud.halakhic and Statements that are not Scripturally dependent and that pertain to ethics, traditions and actions of the Rabbis; the non-legal (non-halakhic) material of the Talmud.aggadic literature that the role of women mourners continued during the classic rabbinic period (1^st through the 6^th c. CE). For example, the Codification of basic Jewish Oral Law; edited and arranged by R. Judah ha-Nasi c. 200 C.E.Mishnah mentions a ruling in the name of Rabbi Yehuda: “Even the poorest man of the Jewish people may not be provided with fewer than two flutes and a lamenting woman (meqonenet) (for a funeral)” (M. Ketubot 4:4).

In the aggadic tradition, among the 36 proems (homiletical prologues) of Lamentations Rabbah, one particularly draws on the gendered trope of lament. Commenting on the opening lines “How lonely sits the city” (Lamentations 1:1), the proem presents a parable (Lamentations Rabbah 2b) of a king who became enraged with his two sons. Having thrashed the first son to death, the king then mourns his death. But when he similarly kills the second son, he cannot find the will to mourn: “No longer have I the strength to lament over them, so call for the mourning women [la-meqonenot] to lament over them, that they may come,” quoting from Jeremiah 9:16. The two sons of the king (God) represent, respectively, the Northern Kingdom (destroyed at the hands of the Assyrians in 722 BCE) and the Southern Kingdom, or Judea (destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE). As Galit Hasan-Rokem points out, “The father (God) lacks the energy to lament the deaths of his sons—by his own hand—consumed as he is by his own violent acts. This is where the transformative power of the female gender steps in: the transformable and transforming body of the woman, once life-giving, is also able to carry the weight of the cultural production of mourning, lamenting with her voice and her body” (Hasan-Rokem 2014: 15).

This same power of the female voice is embodied in Rachel, the matriarch (Lamentations Rabbah Proem 24). When the three patriarchs and Moses are unable to move the angry father God to compassion, the matriarch leaps from her grave and recounts the trials of her life. If she—a mortal of flesh and blood—was not only compelled to share her husband with her sister as a rival wife but also suppressed her jealousy and spared her sister shame on the wedding night, then surely God could forgive Israel for worshipping idols of mere wood and stone. God responds, in the words of Jeremiah, with a promise of return: “’Thus said the LORD: Restrain your voice from weeping, your eyes from shedding tears; for there is a reward for your labor’—declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:15). And it is written: “’They shall return from the enemy’s land. And there is hope for your future’—declares the LORD: ‘Your children shall return to their country’” (v. 16).

While Rachel’s role as a mother who dies in childbirth does not feature in her plea in the Aggadah, it is implied. Because of her untimely death, she is buried on the border between exile and homeland, transformed into the mother of all the tribes (Shemesh 2015: 268-71). It is precisely her awareness of the fine line between life and death that compels her to call out from the afterlife in lamentation and bitter weeping, refusing to be comforted for her children “who are no more” or “gone” (Jeremiah 31:15). She knows what it is to be in the throes of death while bodying forth life to the son, Benjamin, whom she calls “son of my sorrow/mourning” (ben ‘oni, Genesis 35:18). Rachel demonstrates the “transformative relationship between Eros and Thanatos with regard to laments… (She) emerges almost a as a weeping goddess, and certainly as a partner to God in the act of Redemption” (Hasan-Rokem 2014: 57).

The words of actual women’s laments were largely lost in the rabbinic period, though fragments are recorded in the Talmud. The fourth century Amora Rava, for example, quotes seven snippets of lament sung by the women of the Babylonian town Shokhenziv (b. Moed Katan 28b, Adler 2014: 79-82). The Aramaic is rather colloquial and the words are enigmatic, so the one-line epithets read almost like riddles. The second snippet, for example, states: “Take the soup bone out of the pot/and fill the vessel with water” (Soncino translation). The fourth reads: “He rushes and tumbles aboard the ferry/and has to borrow his fare” (perhaps alluding to how this man was tossed around by poverty all his life and had to borrow money, in the end, for his final ride to the grave). Another Talmudic passage, recounting the story of Rabbi Ishmael’s death, alludes to David’s eulogy for Saul: “Daughters of Israel, weep over Rabbi Ishmael, who clothed you in crimson and finery” (2 Samuel 1:24). The story suggests that biblical laments were part of the repertoire of mourning women, since it is the dirge-singer not the Rabbis who cite the passage. 

Despite the testimony of this tradition of female dirge-singers, the Lit. "the prepared table." A code of Jewish Law compiled by Joseph Caro (1488 Shulhan Arukh recommends that women not go to cemeteries (Yoreh Deah Hilkhot Avelut 3359; b. Berakhot 51a), and the Zohar teaches that Satan is among the women at funerals and has permission to kill (Zohar Vayaqhel 19ba-b). Perhaps this misogynist strain is an attempt to control the female voice and confine women to the private sphere. An entire oral tradition once sung by women mourners/keeners (meqonenot) has been lost from the ancient period. We only have these few remnants to account for their performance and hint at their content. As Rachel Adler notes, “we cannot go on until we can break the silence”—the silence that emerges from both trauma and the attempt to suppress women’s voices—“until we can speak authentically to God out of our wounds” (Adler 2014: 91).

We learn about mourning women again in the writings of the twelfth-century rabbi and philosopher Moses Ben Maimon (Moses ben Maimon (Rambam), b. Spain, 1138Maimonides), who, like the authors of the Mishnah (Moed Katan 3:9b), tried to impose restrictions on what Jill Hammer notes “was probably one of the few rituals women were permitted to perform in public” (Hammer, 2015): 

During [Chol Ha]Mo'ed women lament, but they may not pound their hands on each other in grief or mourn. Once the corpse is buried, they may not lament. On The new moon; the first day of the month; considered a minor holiday, especially for women.Rosh Hodesh, Lit. "dedication." The 8-day "Festival of Lights" celebrated beginning on the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev to commemorate the victory of the Jews over the Seleucid army in 164 B.C.E., the re-purification of the Temple and the miraculous eight days the Temple candelabrum remained lit from one cruse of undefiled oil which would have been enough to keep it burning for only one day.Hanukkah and Holiday held on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar (on the 15th day in Jerusalem) to commemorate the deliverance of the Jewish people in the Persian empire from a plot to eradicate them.Purim, they may lament and pound their hands on each other in grief before the corpse is buried, but they may not mourn.

What is meant by lamenting? That they all lament in unison. What is meant by mourning? That one recites [a dirge] and the others respond in unison (Laws of Rest on the Festivals, 6:24).

As Hammer highlights, the similarities between the customs described by Maimonides and those recorded in the Mishnah nine centuries earlier point to a remarkable continuity of practice. Moreover, similar descriptions of mourning women lamenting in a call-and-response chant with one woman leading and others responding in unison, pounding their hands on their bodies, are also found in modern sources. 

An anonymously authored Yiddish manuscript produced in sixteenth-century Italy demonstrates that mourning women traditions travelled with Jewish communities: 

If, heaven forbid, there is sewing to be done for a corpse, then no one needs to beg them… Here they come, in their mourners’ headdresses; and even if their hearts were stones, one would still make the other weep. So they bawl, and cry for [the deceased] so sorrowfully, and stir up pity beyond telling (Fox and Lewis, 2011).

Describing how these “pious women” performed their laments while sewing burial shrouds, the manuscript also notes other examples of women’s religious sewing—another sacred tradition with ancient roots. Meanwhile, the spontaneity of their practice, and the claim that they could move even a “heart of stone,” are echoed in modern Yiddish texts describing a later generation of Ashkenazi mourning women. 

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In moments of great need, Jewish women in Eastern Europe went to the cemetery to wail over the graves of deceased relatives, begging them to interecede with God and help the living, a custom known as raysn kvorim. In a similar custom—known as raysn di shul or raysn dem arn koydesh—women interrupted the synagogue service to wail into the Torah Ark. Skilled klogerins and zogerins often led these rituals, performing them on behalf of their clients or helping their clients to say the correct words and muster the necessary emotions. Performative wailing was therefore not only a way of releasing emotion, it was also used to get the attention of both deceased ancestors and God. 

Sephardi and Mizrahi Wailing Women 

As Tovah Gamliel notes in her seminal study of Yemenite wailers, “Wailing traditions have been encountered among the Descendants of the Jews who lived in Spain and Portugal before the explusion of 1492; primarily Jews of N. Africa, Italy, the Middle East and the Balkans.Sephardim in Jerusalem and the Jews of Morocco, Kurdistan, Calcutta, the Caucasus, Iran and Iraq,” as well as in Yemen and Ethiopia. Like Ashkenazi klogmuters, Sephardi and Lit. "Eastern." Jew from Arab or Muslim country.Mizrahi wailers tended to perform in groups, showing up at a house of mourning spontaneously. They also combined their lamentations with physical gestures such has hand-clapping and face- and knee-tapping, (Bukhara), breast- and head-beating (the Caucasus), hair-tearing and skin-pinching (Iran), mussing their hair (Iraq), and striking and scratching their faces and smearing mortar on their faces and shoulders (Kurdistan). They were often paid for their work, either in money or in gifts of food and clothing, sometimes the clothing of the deceased. Some Yemenite wailers refused payment, seeing their work as a A biblical or rabbinic commandment; also, a good deed.mitzvah.  

In both Bukhara and Yemen, wailing traditionally took place in a “wailing circle” formed by the women in the house of mourning. In a Yemenite wailing circle, wailing was initiated by a professional or expert wailer, by the female mourner with the closest relationship to the deceased, or by another woman who was in her first year of mourning. One by one, the women in the circle wailed in a “chain of tears,” supporting and urging each other on. Another form of wailing performance in Yemen was the “solo–and–chorus form,” in which one woman lamented and the others responded in unison. (Gamliel, 2014). 

Like Eastern European klogerins, Yemenite wailers were usually post-menopausal women who, having lived through their own losses, were known for their “talent to express emotions.” Like Yiddish klogenishn, their dirges, performed in Yemenite Arabic, were full of local “folk motives” and natural imagery yet remained in content and style “part and parcel of a canon Jewish religion.” Gamliel described the lamentations she collected in Israel as characterized by ten categories of discourse: 

• “A narrative about the deceased,” describing how they died and praising their good qualities 
• “A narrative on behalf of the deceased,” describing their suffering in death
• “A narrative on behalf of the living,” enunciating to the deceased the sorrow of the loss felt by the mourners
•  “A personal appeal to the deceased,” in which the wailer took on the role of mourner 
• “Greeting the consolers” visiting the house of mourning
• “Addressing the mourners,” acknowledging the immensity of their loss
• A “personal story” of loss
• “Addressing other wailers,” inviting them to continue wailing in a chain
• “Addressing death,” asking, for example, that only the elderly be taken in future 
• Addressing God, usually with words of praise and acceptance, alongside “unanswerable questions” (Gamliel, 2014). 

Yemenite communities placed strict restrictions on wailing, which had to take place within the seven days of Lit. "seven." The seven-day mourning period held following the death of an immediate family member: spouse, parent, child or sibling.shivah following a death, or often only within the first three days, defined by rabbinic teaching as “days of tears” (Gamliel, 2014). Unlike in Eastern Europe, in Yemen women were generally excluded from the cemetery, with wailing restricted to the home. 

Like Ashkenazi klogerins, Yemenite wailing women were described by those who remembered them as skilled manipulators of emotions. Their ability to affect men as well as women was also frequently cited as evidence of their skill. Remembering Johara, the “mother of the wailers,” one of Gamliel’s interviewees stated “No one could hear [Johara] and not weep … [T]ears came up for you from under the ground…. Johara’s voice overcame the toughest of men and melted the coldest of hearts.” Like many Ashkenazi cemetery women, Johara was also was admired for her “uncommon talents as a medium,” using the cemetery and her ability to engage in “dialogue with the dead” in her practice as a healer (Gamliel 2014). Women wailers in the Caucasus also “appealed to the dead” in their lamentations, as did Yemenite wailers (Moshavi, 1974). In Mizrahi and Sefardi as well as Ashkenazi traditions, Wailing women might thus be seen as part of a broader system of customs and beliefs in which the dead continued to interact with the living, and the cemetery was more than just a site of memorial. 

According to Gamliel, Yemenite wailing culture was one of several Mizrahi and Sephardi mourning women traditions that were brought to Israel in the immigration waves that followed the founding of the Jewish state (Gamliel, 2014). Noting that the practice was in decline, Gamliel also documented changes in the Yemenite wailing tradition following this immigration, notably a shift from group to solo wailing, which was now performed at funerals as well as in the home. Interestingly, a similar change was documented in early twentieth century Eastern Europe. In many communities, traditional klogerins who performed their lamentations in groups had been replaced in with cemetery women known as zogerkes or beterkes who worked alone.

Writing in 2014, Gamliel lamented that “Jewish wailing in ethnic groups in Israel and elsewhere … is dying out”, adding that it was already “so far into its home stretch” that her research probably would not have been possible had she conducted it a decade later (Gamliel, 2014). Some memoirs and interviews suggest that localized communal traditions were not able to keep up with the destruction of the modern world. As one Yemenite woman commented decades later, “In Israel there’s so much pain, so many problems, that this wailing is redundant. Besides, there’s so much killing, so much murder, that people don’t cry anymore. The tears have dried up” (Gamliel, 2014). The customs of Ashkenazi mourning women, meanwhile, do not seem to have survived the Holocaust, in which thousands of cemeteries were destroyed along with their communities. Indeed, some of Gamliel’s interviewees compared their dwindling wailing practice to the absence of such traditions among the Ashkenazim, the dominant culture in Israel into which Yemenite Jews were pressured to assimilate.

In recent years, Jewish wailing traditions have begun to be revived and reimagined. At the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, founded in 2005 by Rabbi Jill Hammer and Taya Shere and closed in 2023, the meqonenet was taught as one of thirteen netivot or priestess pathways. Many ordained Kohanot and others trained by the institute have incorporated wailing and other meqonenet practices into their work, leading grief circles, supporting mourners and the dying, and adding communal lamentations to their prayer services. The dirges and laments of Jewish mourning women also continue to inspire songs, artwork, and performance. A tradition with a 2000-year history, the meqonenet has not disappeared entirely.