CHAPTER SEVEN - Death and Mourning: End of Life Questions

A: BACKGROUND

13. Summing up the Shiva

The shiva actually divides into two slightly different parts.

• The first three days are the days of the most intense grief. There is a tradition in some communities that these days are only for the closest friends and relatives.
• From day four, however, the intensity of the shiva is seen to lighten a little and this is the time for acquaintances who are less close to make an appearance at the shiva house. There is a ruling that in the early days of the shiva, if the mourner may not respond when he or she is greeted, from this point on, greetings can be returned.

What is the significance of the number seven?

There are rabbinic explanations which explain the connection as a parallel with the festivals of Pesach and Succot.

There are those, too, who point to the seven days of isolation, mandatory for lepers in the Biblical community.

Others use the biblical proof-text (in Bereishit 50:10), where Joseph observes a seven day period of mourning for his father Jacob, although this does not of course explain the number seven.

A beautiful explanation is suggested by Rabbi Jack Riemer who has written extensively on the subject of death and mourning in Judaism. He suggests that the number seven comes to parallel the seven days of Creation in which the world was formed. He points out that there is a familiar Jewish idea that each person is a world in him or herself, and suggests that just as we mark the Creation of the world in seven days so we mark the death of the world that was the individual in the same number of days.

It could be suggested, however, that all attempts to explain the number seven in rational terms are merely midrashic. In Judaism, the numbers seven, ten, and forty appear repeatedly. As previously mentioned, all ancient peoples and cultures had their “special” numbers thought to be vested with extraordinary powers, which consequently crop up repeatedly within the texts and the traditions of that culture. It could be that the number of seven days for the shiva is in fact just another example of this trend.

The first day, or first there days, are the most important. There are many instances where a person may not be able to observe the entire shiva strictly (doctors, statesmen, invalids, expectant mothers, single parents); moreover, most of its observances are customary, rather than obligatory, varying in different communities.

In recent times, it should be noted, there are many instances of people, especially in Reform Judaism, who have cut the number of shiva days to three, as a more focal experience than the full quota of seven days.

The framework of the shiva is extremely significant:
Even if the original primary reason for the shiva is theological, in order to allow the individual who has encountered death to recover from the desacralised state, its structure makes full emotional and psychological sense.

• The shiva creates a healthy place for the individual to start dealing with and then recovering from the shock of the death.
• It moves the individual mourner from the lowest place of shock and other stark emotions, such as anger, grief or guilt and allows him or her to start recovering, surrounded by the support and understanding of community. The task of the latter is to permit the mourners to gain perspective and to prepare themselves for a renewed continuation of the life of the collective.

It is significant that the Halachah mandates the shiva as compulsory: everybody has to pass through this tunnel of healing; everybody has to have the chance to feel restored.

How should the shiva be closed?
What should the family of mourners do when they get up from shiva on the morning of the seventh day?
There is no ritual for this and some have felt the need to end this stark, difficult and intensive week with some form of acknowledgement.

• There are those who go up and visit the grave on the last day (in Israel, the stone may even be set then, or at the end of the shloshim, the first month), thus closing a period that effectively began with the first visit to the graveside at the time of burial.
• There are others who get up from the shiva and go for a short walk in the vicinity of the shiva house, as if to represent symbolically the fact that their collective experience has finished and now they prepare themselves to enter the wider world.

Another idea for a closure ceremony was created by Alisa Rubin Kurshan after the death of her father, based on a point mentioned in the Halachah, but not in ritual terms.
The Halachah permits the sewing up of the garment torn at the time of keriah, before the shiva. Presumably, the reason it is discussed in the Halachah was that at a time when many people had no spare clothes, it was important for some to be able to reuse the garment. It engages in a discussion of the way in which a garment can be sewed up after a shiva, briefly: it must be sewn up in a crooked fashion for a parent, but it can be stitched straight for all other cases.

Kurshan decided to ritualise the sewing as a final collective activity by the mourners at her father’s shiva. Following the end of the shiva, they sat and sewed up the tear in the garment, each in his or her own way and at their own pace. For her, this symbolised the beginning of the acknowledgment that the terrible wound was beginning its process of being mended, a sentiment totally in accord with the rabbinic idea of the shiva process. The mourners in this case added the famous Psalm 23,

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for You are with me.”

For these mourners, the closure chosen by them was a meaningful ritual addition that aided the process of transition.

The ultimate significance of the shiva, perhaps, is that it brings together the two deepest dimensions of Jewish relationship, to G-d and to community.

• During the shiva, mourners reach up to G-d in prayer, for example at the Kaddish, and develop an intense personal and vertical connection with the transcendental.
• At exactly the same time, they are surrounded by other Jews, empathetic and supportive, in what might be seen as a horizontal connection with the community, representatives of the Jewish people.