CHAPTER SEVEN - Death and Mourning: End of Life Questions

A: BACKGROUND

7. Aninut – The Storm Before the Calm

From the perspective of the direct mourners – parents, children, brothers and sisters, spouses – there is a specific definition of the time between the death and the burial. The name for this period is , [aninut] or mourning, and it represents a particular phase of the mourning process.

• The distinctive characteristics of this brief period are as follows:
• The essence of this period is that the individual mourner, the onen, is released from the performance of all positive religious obligations, such as the putting on of tefillin (for a man) and the recital of prayers.
• Together with this, the onen may not: eat meat, drink wine, or otherwise indulge in luxury. The ostensible reason for this is that the mourner is busy with arrangements for the burial and the law is that a person should not be distracted from the performance of this essential duty.
• In addition, it is considered that mourners should give all their attention to the deceased; not to do this is to contravene the precept of kavod hamet.

There are those who feel that, in today’s world of commercial funeral parlours, which cater to every need and make the participation of the family minimal in practical terms, there is no relevance to a distinct period of aninut.

However, it has been suggested that there is a far deeper significance in the aninut period, than the largely practical considerations now deemed irrelevant.

According to this viewpoint, the significance of aninut is that it represents a period of potentially raw desperation when the mourners struggle with their belief system and find it difficult to accept the full justice of G-d’s world.

This grief is sometimes so wild that it needs to exist without a framework against which to batter itself. It needs to be allowed to flow and expand to the fullness of its need, without the iron hoops of religious obligation and theological belief to hold it in place. The time for that will come. For the moment, the need of the mourners is to live in a world with minimal boundaries, a world where they do not have to recite the usual prayers and fulfil the normal obligations. To do so might be to invite hypocrisy or, alternatively, to stretch faith to its full limits.

Aninut is a time of rest from G-d’s obligations at a moment when whole-hearted fulfillment of those obligations is a task that might prove too difficult for the individual. Thus, there is a temporary relaxation of obligation. In this view, aninut is just as relevant today as it has ever been.