| LifeLines |

Opening the Box

By C. Saphir | July 1, 2020

Why sit shivah for such a wayward sister?

A couple of weeks before Pesach this year, we got a call informing us that my husband’s 28-year-old younger sister Simone — formerly Simi — had died in a high-altitude skydiving accident.

Ephraim, my husband, was stone cold when he heard the news.

“So that’s how she went, huh,” was his reaction.

His first call was to our rav to ask if he was required to sit shivah.

“My sister grew up frum and abandoned Yiddishkeit in her early twenties,” he explained. “Not only was her lifestyle completely antithetical to Torah values, but she herself became an avowed feminist who was virulently antireligious and attacked Yiddishkeit at every opportunity, including on social media. For the past seven years, since she went off, I’ve had almost no relationship with her, as every conversation invariably turned into a diatribe on her part against some aspect of Yiddishkeit.”

Considering all this, the rav ruled that Ephraim was not obligated to sit shivah, especially because, with travel already suspended due to the coronavirus, there was no way he could join his family in Canada for the levayah and shivah, so no one in the family would have to know he was the only one not observing shivah.

“Don’t tell your family that you’re not sitting,” the rav instructed Ephraim, “and don’t tell people in your community that your sister died. Just keep this private.”

This was the psak Ephraim wanted to hear, and he hung up the phone looking quite satisfied.

I, on the other hand, felt uneasy. “Shivah is not just for the niftar,” I observed. “It’s for the family, too. It gives you a chance to process the grief.”

“What grief?” he scoffed. “Simone lived like a rasha, and she got what she deserved.”

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Comments (5)

0
S.G.
5 years ago
Reply

I was very appreciative of the narrator in the LifeLines story about a man who didn’t want to sit shivah for his anti-religious sister. When I read about the insensitive questions of shivah visitors while the narrator was mourning her father, I remembered how it was when my mother sat shivah for my grandfather.
Similar to the narrator’s story, there were circumstances surrounding my grandfather’s death; and similarly to the narrator, we experienced some inappropriate questions in the shivah house. My grandfather was murdered in a random act of street violence. But since my grandparents were not frum and lived outside the community, many shivah visitors knew nothing about them or what had happened. Some assumed (probably based on my grandmother’s age) that this wasn’t sudden. People came in to be menachem avel without a clue of the circumstances. When they heard the story, they were in shock and (understandably) upset — leaving the mourners in a position to comfort them.
You would imagine when a family opens up to the community in such a time, they expect the people coming to be menachem avel would be a comfort the mourners, not the other way around! In my family’s case, my father ended up becoming a sort of door guard, preempting visitors with a quick explanation about his father-in-law’s death.
I don’t know how often something similar (lo aleinu) happens to others, but I want to stress the importance of letting the mourners lead their shivah house. Take a cue from the family and see what they need. Be as kind and sensitive as possible, think before you speak, and do some quick research before you stop by a shivah house so you can appreciate the context of this loss for this family.
Hopefully through following the halachos that Chazal outlined for us regarding this mitzvah, we can avoid uncomfortable questions such as the “was he sick long?” faced by my mother mourning her murdered father.
1. 0
  A Lonely Avel
  5 years ago
  Reply
  
  The letter from S.G. about insensitive questions at a shivah house was extremely informative. However, in her experience at least the visitors attempted to do the mitzvah of nichum aveilim to some extent.
  When I sat shivah less than two years ago, a group of women from the neighborhood came to the shivah house. They sat in the back and talked among themselves for about a half hour. They got up and left without a word to me whatsoever. This painful scene repeated itself every day of my shivah, albeit with a fresh group of women.
  I learned from this experience that while the frum community prides itself on doing chesed, in reality they only do chesed for their inner circle of friends. While S.G.’s complaint is valid, at least her family had many friends to come and be menachem avel.
  1. 0
    Mrs. R. Atkins
    5 years ago
    Reply
    
    I was sorry to read the letter titled “Is this Chesed?” in your Inbox page, in which “a lonely avel” described her difficult experience of sitting shivah after the loss of a relative.
    Obviously, a person sitting shivah is in a vulnerable situation, and it sounds like she was hurt by the behavior of some of the visitors, who “sat in the back and talked among themselves.”
    Whilst acknowledging her pain, I would like to reassure her that I am sure there was no ill intent here, and the behavior that understandably upset her was the result merely of thoughtlessness, embarrassment, or lack of awareness of how to behave in such a situation. After all — although not overly endowed in the tact department — these people did take the trouble to come!
    Additionally, the writer may not be aware that halachically, until the avel initiates a conversation, the visitor is not meant to say anything to them. If the visitors “got up and left without saying a word to me,” maybe this conversation was not initiated, and therefore they were not able to respond.
    I feel that to extrapolate from this admittedly challenging experience that people in the frum community “only do chesed for their inner circle of friends” is mistaken. The frum community worldwide is renowned for its exceptional levels of chesed and volunteerism. In my own community in North London we have dozens of chesed organizations and gemachs — and this is typical of such communities all over. Those ladies who lacked the awareness of how to behave at a shivah are likely the very same people cooking for new mothers, visiting the sick, and raising money for charity — often without even knowing the name of the recipients of their chesed!
    May Hashem comfort all the mourners, and may we celebrate only happy occasions together.
2. 0
  Name withheld to protect the guilty
  5 years ago
  Reply
  
  Thank you for the discussion about shivah etiquette. I graciously hosted a shivah in my house for my non-biological relatives. My kids were anxious that the shivah visitors would “go into their rooms and mess up their stuff” and I promised them that this wouldn’t occur… right??
  It did, and more. Many young women who were related to one person sitting shivah came with their kids and hung out for hours on end, prompting me to think that the shivah was their kids’ entertainment for the day. Throughout the week, it happened countless times that I walked into my kitchen and found a woman feeding her baby there. And a toddler found his way into a kid’s room and played with whatever he saw.
  When I complained at work, coworkers told me that “it is considered normal these days for people to bring their children and babies to a shivah house.”
  What drove me to the edge was the parents of these nursing babies who were doing a beautiful parenting job, but in the wrong place at the wrong time. Can Klal Yisrael establish a new minhag — that it is not appropriate to bring children to a shivah house, no matter how cute they are and how much one particular avel wants to see them?! Doing this may bring nechamah to one avel, while being terribly insensitive to everyone else.
3. 0
  Been There
  5 years ago
  Reply
  
  The letter “Is this Chesed” highlighted a very important topic — sensitivity to aveilim in our community.
  Insensitive behavior during a shivah call is not really an issue of chesed. It’s middos. Sensitivity. Thoughtfulness. It requires not only knowing the halachah, but taking that extra step in understanding the person and going out of your way to meet their needs.
  An aveil is in a truly vulnerable place, and in hindsight, he will need to exercise ayin tovah and dan lekaf zechus for the visitors who meant well but didn’t exactly say or do it right. Yet it still behooves the visitors to try their best.
  I would like to offer one piece of advice to “still hurting” and other aveilim who feel negatively about their experience. After my own shivah, I expressed that “the world is divided into two people: those who have sat shivah, and those who haven’t.” Now that you have sat in that chair, and you know at least on a basic level what an aveil wants, use that knowledge to help others.
  My shivah had many disappointments — thoughtless comments and neglect of the needs of the aveilim. Now, when I hear of a shivah house, even if it’s someone I don’t know, I do my best to make sure they have meals, a minyan, and visitors. I have sent meals to homes I never visited and I’ve sat with mourners I never met before. I am no special person or big baalas chesed, but I made it my mission to do my part in contributing to the beis aveil.
  Anyone can do this, and those who have sat shivah and know the pain can probably do it best. That’s one way to turn your hurt into something meaningful.