The Jewish Press published an article expressing a powerful and sympathetic defense of people who request a “private shiva” (“A Private Shiva? Comforting a Subject, Not Handling an Object,” by Rabbi Larry Rothwachs, Jewish Press, October 31).
Permit me to defend the classic public shiva.
The religious response is that 1) sitting shiva is a requirement; not an option; and 2) the Rabbis knew what they were doing in requiring people to sit shiva, as part of the process of mourning, beginning with aninus (status of the mourner between the time of the decedent’s death and his or her burial) and extending to the yahrzeit. Every step of the process has a purpose and a benefit.
The psychiatric response is that withdrawal after the death of a loved one is a natural depressive response, but not a healthy one. Psychiatrists have noted that immediate and total withdrawal can have lasting negative consequences.
One Orthodox psychiatrist has highlighted the therapeutic effect of the shiva mandate, noting that when the natural grief response for many people is to withdraw and feel sorry for themselves – some even angry with the world – the shiva compels them to face almost everyone they know, and many they don’t know, to realize that they are not alone. In his own practice, the psychiatrist noted that he treated many people who stayed in isolation after a painful loss, and then never re-entered the world they had known all their lives. He added that an explanation for why the classic departing wish of “HaMakom yenachem eschem…” (“May G-d console you with the other mourners in Israel and Jerusalem”) is in the plural is to remind mourners that they do not grieve alone.
We must respect the feelings of individual mourners who may have personal or practical or psychological reasons and/or wounds rationalizing their not wanting to discuss their deceased relatives, but the main point of sitting shiva is to set up a mourning process that will help people adjust to the pain of loss. To that end, one key guideline of shiva is already in place: to leave it to the mourner exclusively to decide on the topic to be discussed, or not to be discussed, and the direction the conversation is to take. As for mourners who feel for any of the reasons identified in Rabbi Rothwachs’s article that they would rather not talk about the decedent, they can simply initiate a conversation on another topic, or mourners can simply indicate they would rather just sit in silence and contemplation, in which case the visitors are obligated by the rules of shiva to follow suit.
Moreover, instead of insisting that the shiva should be private, there are additional better options. One of the most popular options is to limit the time of day for visitors to come. One of the least common options is to specifically request visitors to refrain from raising certain topics.
But there are many other solutions to the concerns of people who want the shiva to be private. Depending on the visitors and the topics, each mourner has every right to change the subject, to say I don’t really want talk to right now, or to simply say, “Excuse me, I am tired,” or “I have to leave the room” for any other reason. Every situation is unique, and every approach can be personalized, but blanket disinvitations do not seem to be the way to serve every mourner of every family.
Pertinently, Rabbi Rothwachs’s article referred to requests by families to have private shivas. But do families vote? Must the vote be unanimous? If the head of a household declares he or she wants privacy, is it fair and considerate to all the other members of the family to be deprived of the opportunity to benefit from Jewish laws and customs? Do minorities have no rights? What about minors? Don’t many shivas have different family members sit with their own visitors in different rooms or corners of rooms separately anyway? There is always the option of a family member who seeks privacy to simply stay in a secluded private room for long stretches of time while other members of the family receive visitors.
I happen to have been very close to a certain pulpit rabbi who spent a good part of his life consoling mourners and lifting the spirits of congregants suffering through personal problems of all kinds, yet when his wife died, he seemed to be inconsolable and shocked his family members by confiding in them that he couldn’t bear to face visitors when the family was sitting shiva. So the family agreed that he would keep his space to the extent he wanted to, and stay in his room as much as he wanted, but just come out to see visitors for brief periods of time at his preference. It turns out that when he did emerge, he often found consolation in what was said, and ended up staying with the visitors most of the time. In other words, even though he said he preferred to not talk to anyone during the shiva period, he ended up appreciating the shiva process even more than most people because the pain of his loss was offset by the warm and kind words of various visitors. This wouldn’t have happened had he insisted on a private shiva.
It could also be inconsiderate to deprive friends and relatives of the mitzvah – and catharsis – of making a shiva visit.
Also, in many cases, people making shiva visits have heartwarming comments about other family members, bringing further healing to the immediate and even the extended family.
I recall a shiva visit by Rabbi Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, referring to one of the mourners – not the decedent and not one of my closest relatives – as “a legend in his time.” Years later, this “legend” – whose legendary status had gradually faded – still savored this resuscitated reference.
There are no limits to the benefits that accrue from traditional public shiva visits, and the benefits and opportunities that would be lost by depriving all members of families and many members of communities of full participation in the shiva process.
One final note: A draft of this article that I showed to some colleagues elicited the suggestion that shiva classes should be taught, similarly to “kallah classes,” to describe halachic guidelines and social etiquette for well-meaning shiva visitors to avoid halachic infractions and social faux pax. This inspired me to propose a variation of this concept, the printing of a page of instruction and advice to be circulated for distribution as people enter a house of mourning. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, and so any author or publisher who has already created such a description in a page or less – or who would like to compose such a page specifically for this purpose – and who is willing to grant the rights to reprint this page, with attribution, is hereby requested to get in touch with the writer of this article at Reichelaa@aol.com, and/or please provide contact information of organizations interested in receiving printed copies for distribution in mailings or links for sharing. Obviously, nothing should be circulated unless approved by a widely respected Orthodox rabbi.