USCJ Review - Fall 2000
Maintaining Traditional Mourning Rituals In The Contemporary World
Harold S., an elderly man, died Friday morning. His family held a graveside funeral on Monday afternoon. They sat shiva on Monday and Tuesday for two specified hours, twice each day. These are NOT our grandparents' mourning rituals.
Why have so many Jews chosen not to observe our traditional mourning rituals? Even more, why should we choose to observe them? In my experience as both a bereavement counselor and an observant Jew, I have discovered many important reasons.
First, there is a wonderful structure to our mourning rituals; a structure that leads a family from the immediacy of a loved one's death through the early mourning period and on throughout life. In my work, I have seen first hand how the needs of a grieving family can be frequently ignored as friends, relatives, and associates push them to return to normalcy faster than is emotionally healthy.
I have spoken with non-Jews who were pining for recognition of the dates they were dealing with, e.g., "one week has passed," "a year ago today he died," etc. We, on the other hand, have been given a pattern for counting time -- shiva (7 days), shloshim (30 days), and yahrzeit (one year) -- that helps us accommodate the need to memorialize the death of a family member within our return to the cycles of daily life.
As I have watched family, friends, and clients grieve, I have been saddened to find that we are doing ourselves the deep disservice of not following our own traditions surrounding death. Indeed, it seems to be increasingly common in the Conservative Jewish community for burials to occur later than 24 four hours after death. Even when there is little or no travel involved for out-of-town relatives, burial is now frequently delayed to two days after death, with some families holding burials even later. In addition, the observance of shiva is increasingly becoming abbreviated, shortened in order to minimize disruption to the mourners' routines.
Ironically, by allowing non-traditional considerations to dictate the terms of our public mourning -- even when, on the surface, they seem to defer to the needs of the mourner -- we are unknowingly depriving ourselves of rituals that work to aid in healthy grieving.
A prolonged period in aninut (the first stage of mourning, which extends from death until burial) is counter to Jewish thinking. There are many explanations as to why Jewish tradition insists on burial within 24 hours. In the Torah, we learn that a "body shall not remain for the night -- rather, you shall surely bury him on that day" (Deuteronomy 21:23). This mandate was considered so important that the Rabbis exempted mourners, who traditionally cared for the deceased, from performing all other mitzvot (such as praying or making motzi before eating bread), until burial was completed. The great 18th-century commentator, the Vilna Gaon, further explained this need to proceed quickly to burial by saying that a dead person experiences no greater shame than watching others perform mitzvot that he cannot do anymore.
Modern Conservative sources approach this issue from the context of the mourners' psychological needs. Dr. Ron Wolfson, discussing aninut in his book A Time to Mourn, a Time to Comfort, notes that the insistence on a timely burial is "not a denial of death but a reflection of Judaism's unfailing emphasis on the needs of the living." Aninut is a black hole of raw grief, a period without rules during which our Jewish time (as measured by the performance of daily mitzvot) is stopped. When our world has been shaken by death, the last thing we need is an extended period of shock and chaos.
And what of shiva? Shiva comes from the Hebrew word meaning seven. TheUnited Synagogue's "Guide to Jewish Funeral Practice" encourages mourners (spouses, parents, siblings, and children of the deceased) "to stay away from work or school, and to remain at home" during the entire shiva period, looking at this as a time "to contemplate the meaning of life and the manner in which adjustment will be made to the death of the beloved." My professional experience would suggest that a week of shiva also allows mourners to see the first cycle of time go by without their loved one: While still bereaved, they nevertheless have the comfort of community and family members sharing the grief with them.
Besides enabling people to delve deeply into their grief and memories of the deceased, maintaining shiva for a full week also prepares mourners to come out of this intense stage of grieving. People who have followed shiva in the traditional manner -- remaining inside the house for a week; sitting on low chairs; not shaving; etc.-- frequently say they are sure they would not have wanted to do things like shave or go out if they had been allowed to do so earlier. Nevertheless, the restrictions imposed on them during that week made them much more ready to rejoin the world of the living when shiva was over.
Some people have suggested that it is not appropriate to sit shiva for an entire week if the deceased was very old or if the death was expected. Even in these cases, however, shiva can be a truly healing experience, signaling both the continuity of life and a joyful remembrance of the deceased's impact on this world. If nothing else, it is a sign that the deceased mattered.
In Jewish tradition, one is exempt from sitting shiva for the entire period only if dire economic consequences will result. Rabbi Ira Stone, religious leader of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia and Visiting Lecturer in Jewish Philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary, has spoken of an "Americanization factor" that apparently causes so many to sit shiva for less than a week: "Giving up a whole week of work is almost un-American. The notion of taking the time to mourn is not an American value, and Jews do not like to stand out from the mainstream."
Nevertheless, as Rabbi Jack Reimer points out in A Time to Mourn, A Time to Comfort: "I know a lot of people who don't have time to sit a week who end up spending many times that much time sitting on a couch working out what they didn't have time to work out then, years later."
Some people are also hesitant to take the deep pain of mourning from a personal level and place it within the community at large. Rabbi Stone notes, however, that "Jewish mourning rituals are predicated on a person's involvement in a community. To receive shiva's benefits, one must be part of a community first." In our increasingly fragmented society, this may be more difficult to ensure, particularly as many Jews look outside the Jewish community for their support group. Based on an experience in my own family, however, I can attest that the period of mourning may also provide a valuable opportunity to draw closer to, and become more involved in, the Jewish community.
In reworking our rituals of mourning, we have deprived ourselves of deep emotional and spiritual benefits. When encountering the complex issues of modern-day grieving, let us not overlook the tremendous power inherent in our own tradition.
Suggested Bibliography
- "A Guide to Jewish Funeral Practice," edited by Alan Edelstein. Published by The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism Committee on Congregational Standards, 1999.
- A Time to Mourn, A Time to Comfort by Dr. Ron Wolfson. Jewish Lights Publishing, 1996. An excellent guide to mourning in the Conservative tradition, this book is a project of The Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs.
- Saying Kaddish: How to Comfort the Dying, Bury the Dead & Mourn As a Jew by Anita Diamant. Schocken Books, 1998. Diamant turns her sensitive approach to Jewish life-cycle events to the final aspect of life.
- The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning by Rabbi Maurice Lamm. Jonathan David Publishers, 1969. The classic book of Jewish mourning, written from the Orthodox perspective.
- When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold Kushner. Schocken Books, 1989. A modern classic for correlating faith with tragedy.
Ellen Zagorsky Goldberg, RN, MSN is a former bereavement counselor, specializing in children's issues of grief, and grief after homicide.
