Jewish Mourning

 



The Jews believe that the day of death is of much greater importance than the day of birth. This is because the day of death for a person is the culminating moment for their mission in life. The Jews call the time when our soul leaves our body yetziat. They also believe that the soul does not leave this world until the burying. (I guess ghosts are just people who were never buried) Autopsy, embalming, displaying the body, and cremation all violate Jewish respect for the dignity of the human body.

The Burial of the body must occur as soon as possible to preserve the integrity of the human body. In Jewish belief when we rise from the dead our bodies will be made of the earth in which we were buried. The burial of the body is preceded by the Taharah and the Levayah. The Taharah is when the body is cleaned, groomed, and water is poured over it in a ritual. After this is done the body is dressed in special white clothes called tachrichim, which signifies purity and holiness. The Levayah is the procession of the body to its final resting place. Mourning between death and burial should be spent praying for the soul because it is stuck between two worlds.

After burial is the Shivah. The Shivah is a seven daylong mourning period for first-degree relatives of the deceased. The first-degree relatives gather in the home of the deceased and mourn their death. During this time period many of the relatives will wear keriahs. Shivah literally means seven and originated when Joseph mourned the death of his father, Jacob, for seven days. (Genesis 50: 1-14) The day of the funeral is the first day of Shivah. The seudat havra’ah is the first meal after the funeral and is usually supplied by neighbors and friends.

During Shivah the relatives cannot wash their body, shave, look in mirrors, have sexual relations, and study the Torah. The relatives must sit in low stools or on the floor to represent that grief has brought them down. Relatives do not return to work until Shivah has ended. Visitors are allowed and greatly welcomed to come to the house and share in the mourning for the deceased. They are to stay quiet unless conversation is started by one of the relatives, in which they should normally only talk about the deceased. Jewish visitors are supposed to bring food for the family out of respect. The end of Shivah signals the end of the traditional mourning period. I watched a Shivah in a show called Weeds.

A secular funeral consists of an explanation of the ceremony, poetry or prose readings, a tribute to the deceased, reflection, and a few words of farewell. Non-religious people can choose anyway of honoring the body. They can have the body cremated, buried, dropped in the ocean, put in space, cremated then thrown anywhere in the world, they can literally have anything legal done to their body because they have no religion, which means no restrictions, rules, or beliefs on death. Mourning for a person without a religion can take any shape or form because it does not matter, they have no religion. Mourning to those who have no religion can be very diverse. Those who do believe in afterlife might pray or think about the deceased while those who do not believe in the afterlife might do nothing. Most normally try to put a religious spin on the funeral because somewhere in their ancestry, someone was religious.