Lifecycles

After the burial, mourners return home to sit shiva for seven days. Shiva is literally the Hebrew word for seven. Jewish law specifies that one sits shiva for a parent, a sibling, a child, or a spouse. During shiva, mourners are relieved of regular obligations – work, cooking, business, shopping, etc. – so that they can focus exclusively on mourning. They are expected to remain at home, seated on low stools. They continue to wear their torn garments or torn ribbon from the funeral, they do not bathe, shave, wear leather, do laundry, or engage in sex, and mirrors in a house of shiva are generally covered.

Visiting a shiva home is a very important mitzvah. Visitors to the home of a mourner are instructed to sit by the mourner and wait to speak until spoken to. Since one does not really know what the mourner’s needs at that moment are – to speak of their loss or of the beloved, to be distracted, to sit silently – one waits for direction. It is common to bring food to a shiva so that mourners will not have to engage in preparing their own food. Mourners are not expected to be providing a feast for those who come to comfort them. Jews traditionally do not send or bring flowers although today some people do. It is also common to make a donation to charity in memory of the deceased. Prayer services are usually held at the shiva home three times a day so that the mourners do not have to leave home to pray.

Seven days ends up being a long time – it is not possible nor even necessarily desirable for mourners to focus exclusively on their loss during this time. There will be moments of levity and moments of boredom. At the same time, seven days is long enough so that the process of mourning can take its course. Mourners will usually have the opportunity to share memories of the deceased and often to hear new stories about them. And enough support will create enough space for tears, as they come.

Shiva ends on the morning of the 7th day. The mourner literally “rises” from his or her stool, and walks around the block to signal the official end of shiva. Restrictions for shloshim, the 30 days of mourning which follow, are less intense – the initial, intensive period of mourning has been weathered. It is, however, particularly important for friends to reach out after the shiva since it is often then, when the house is empty and the visitors have gone home, that the mourner feels the loss more intensely.

Although no mourner’s emotional life fits neatly into a calendar of shiva, shloshim and a year, Judaism firmly believes in according mourning its due. If mourners take the time and space to feel their loss, buoyed by the support of community and the rhythm of ritual, they are more likely to find healing. Mourning which is suppressed while the mourner runs off on holidays and other adventures to escape her loss can ultimately sow more damage.

by Rabbi Rona Shapiro