Tag: Mourning

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Books CCAR Press Death

Regaining Grounding after Loss: Rabbi Lisa Grant and Cantor Lisa Segal on ‘The Year of Mourning’

Rabbi Lisa D. Grant and Cantor Lisa B. Segal discuss the motivation behind their new book The Year of Mourning: A Jewish Journey, the complementary digital app, and what they hope readers and users will gain from the project.

What inspired the creation of The Year of Mourning?

Rabbi Grant: During the months following my mother’s death I formed a “Kaddish club” at my synagogue where I invited other mourners to join with me in sharing memories of their loved ones, in studying Jewish sources related to mourning, in singing and praying together, and in being a supportive community to one another as we journeyed through our process of grief. The Year of Mourning grew out of these experiences and includes many of the same components that were part of those in-person gatherings.

The book and app are composed of seven units. Can you describe these sections and how they correspond to various parts of the mourning experience? 

The material is organized around seven themes that are common experiences of mourning (pain, brokenness, sadness, comfort resilience, acceptance, gratitude). Each theme includes seven units, which begin with a song, which can be listened to on the app version. This is followed by a question that sets an intention for exploring the materials to follow. Then there is a brief text to study with guiding questions, followed by a contemporary poem. Each unit concludes with the Mourner’s Kaddish, which also can be heard on the app. Just as mourning does not follow a predictable path, we invite mourners to use the materials in ways they find most meaningful.  

What makes the app different from the book? How can the two be used in tandem?

The book and the app are identical in terms of their content, but the app allows the user to carry it with you in your phone, and to access the materials in a variety of different modalities: reading, journaling, and listening to the music.

One of the major advantages of the app is the beautiful recordings that can be listened to as part of each given unit: one can explore a theme, or a kavanah or sacred source, and listen to the music connected to them. Alternatively, any of the musical selections can be listened to by pressing the Music icon, at any time or in any order. In addition, for those unfamiliar with reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish, we also provide a recording to follow and to gain literacy and grounding in that experience.

To help you move through weeks of mourning, you can set daily reminders in the Settings menu and a notification will appear with a quote. As with the music, you can always just scroll through those quotes. There is also a handy option in the app to write reflections in a journal that can be saved or edited as you go along.

Music is a key part of The Year of Mourning. What role can music play for someone experiencing bereavement?

While our traditions offer so many deep and comforting texts and rituals created to hold us in our losses, for many mourners, music holds a special place. Music can touch our hearts and souls in ways that transcend words. Often, in the journey of mourning, we find ourselves unable to articulate or express a feeling or emotion, and music has the potential to touch those recesses to comfort us or help us express the inexpressible. There is an intentional repetition of a number of the songs as expressions of different emotions and themes, recognizing the fluidity of the way music can speak to us within varied emotional states. We hope that the musical choices we made for the app—in both text and style—connect to and enhance the units’ themes, kavanot, poetry, and sacred sources.

What are your hopes for this project’s impact? 

We hope that rabbis and cantors will recommend these resources to mourners in their communities who are looking for sources of support, wisdom, and comfort during this time of grief. These resources are intended to help individuals regain their grounding after the death of a loved one, by making deeper connections to memories and to the richness of Jewish wisdom and tradition.

The Year of Mourning: A Jewish Journey is available in print and as an Apple and Android app. Rabbi Grant and Cantor Segal can visit communities to teach on the topic; please email bookevents@ccarpress.org for details.

Rabbi Lisa D. Grant, PhD, is Director of the New York Rabbinical School program, Eleanor Sinsheimer Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish Education, and Coordinator of Special Seminary projects at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion.

Cantor Lisa B. Segal serves as cantor and is a founding member of congregation Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Categories
Death News

A First Funeral During the COVID-19 Pandemic: What We Did

To my colleagues and community,

I officiated at the funeral of a wonderful man who, while fighting cancer, was felled by COVID-19. This appears to have been the first COVID-19 death at the cemetery where this funeral was held. Preparing for this funeral was intensely complex as the mortuary/cemetery and I were creating a protocol ex nihilo, as we went along. I fully expect that the cemetery and my personal practices will evolve as we learn more about this disease and as the numbers of dead increase dramatically. I am documenting what we did with colleagues to help you think through how to navigate this challenging situation.

I am a Reform rabbi—married, heterosexual, with children—working in a synagogue. I share this because these realities inform how I engage with tradition/minhag/halachah and how I make my rabbinic decisions. I recognize that the compromises and decisions I made will not speak to some.

What did we do?

  1. We had a burial.
  2. We held a community minyan service over Zoom and the oramiLIVE.com livestream (over 400+ people attended).
  3. Per the family’s wishes, we will hold an in-person memorial service once people can be together. 
  4. I offered to accompany the aveilim to the grave for another ritual, after their tests come back negative.

Who can attend the burial of a deceased who had COVID-19?

We decided that family members who were in his presence, and thus at risk of infection, would not be able to attend until they tested negative. This included his wife, children, parents, and in-laws. (I do not believe I would have officiated if they insisted on attending.) They considered these options:

  1. Holding his body with a shomeir present, testing family members and waiting for results, and then burying later.
  2. Burying with a rabbi with or without other family members.
  3. Cremating, holding cremains until family could gather for burial.
  4. Livestreaming (FaceTime, Google hangouts, etc.) the graveside burial for the family only.
  5. Livestreaming the graveside burial for the community.

Ultimately, the rabbi and a few other family members attended. At the last minute, the wife/children decided to use Facetime to participate.

How We Maintained Safe Distancing

We made it clear to all—mortuary personnel, family attending—that we would maintain a strict policy of six to 10 feet of physical distancing. Sometimes it took repeated reminders to get everyone to stay at a distance; this is expected in a culture of caring through close presence and touch. My agreement with myself, the family, and most importantly, my wife, was that I would be exceedingly machmir (strict) about this.

  1. For this first funeral, my wife attended to be my monitor. While machmir about distancing, there were moments when my desire to comfort had me almost let down my guard. With a gesture and sometimes a loving pull, she reminded me to stay back.
  2. Mortuary personnel were instructed not to approach close to cars or people. A hand up in a “stop” gesture.
  3. Siddurim: I prepared prayer sheets and emailed them to attendees. That way they did not need to accept the siddurim from the personnel. (The cemetery says they wipe them down after each use.)
  4. Family attendees brought their own shovels, borrowed from neighbors, and personally wiped down. (The cemetery says they wipe them down after each use.) Attendees completely covered the casket before leaving.
  5. Family attendees remained at one side of the grave, appropriately spread out, I was at the other.
  6. K’riah: No direct aveilim (mourners) were present. I had the aveilim cut up a black shirt and pin it to their clothes; over FaceTime I led them in the blessing and instructed them to tear.
  7. Washing: I brought a reusable bottle of tap water to wash my hands before leaving.
  8. Kaddish/Minyan: Between the attendees, my wife, myself, Jewish personnel, and the family at home, we had a minyan for Kaddish. In truth, had we not had the Minyan, I would have had them recite Kaddish anyway. 

How Did We Prepare the Body?

The deceased was received from the hospital morgue in a special bag that protects against spread of disease.

  1. I consulted with knowledgeable infectious disease and emergency room doctors about whether a body can transmit disease. They told me that there would not be the spray like from a cough or sneeze, but the body can hold onto disease like an inanimate object. The length of time of infection from a deceased with COVID-19 was as yet unclear. However, they strongly suggested we refrain from touching the body or washing it.
  2. Keeping bag closed: To minimize infection, we decided not to open the body bag (I do not know if the mourners knew this). The brother-in-law of the deceased approved that identification using the hospital tag would be sufficient.
  3. Tahara (preparing/washing the body): With mourners and family members, we decided not to do tahara because, (a) we did not want to endanger those who do the ritual (if medical personnel do not have sufficient personal protection equipment/PPE, surely those doing the ritual would not), (b) we did not want to take PPE away from the lifesaving work of medical personnel, (c) medical advice was that while washing, splatters or droplets might be dangerous.
  4. Tachrichim (dressing the body): The mourners initially wanted him buried with special clothes from home. Deciding that transporting and disinfecting these clothes represented an added risk, we agreed to do a modified tachrichim. The deceased was kept in the sealed bag, and the bagged body was wrapped in linen shrouds. A tallit, provided by the mortuary (purchased by family), was appropriately placed around the shoulder part of the deceased, with tzitzit cut as traditional . The necklace the family wanted him buried in—transferred from the hospital with his other personal items—was laid on the wrapped body in the coffin.

How did we care for the deceased community?

It became very clear that this death affected people in multiple ways and on multiple levels. The needs of the community felt similar to certain tragic deaths in Israel: it involved the whole community in multiple ways (forgive the imperfect comparison). 

  1. Like after most deaths, they lost a dear friend, family member, co-worker;
  2. This was the first deceased they knew of this pandemic. This death made the pandemic more real and personal;
  3. They were horrified though understanding that the aveilim were unable to attend their loved one’s burial (many were worried about this happening to them in the future);
  4. They recognized this is just the first of many, many more deaths to come;
  5. They were struggling with their inability to offer condolences and support in usual ways—with hugs, attending minyanim, sending food, visiting the aveilim, etc.

What we did:

  1. We held a community minyan service over Zoom and the oramiLIVE.com livestream (over 400+ people attended). While called a minyan, we understood this would also be an unofficial community memorial service as well as a moment of group therapy.
  2. Cantor Doug Cotler and I led the minyan.
  3. We invited six people to speak for three minutes only. We interspersed with prayers and songs. We said Kaddish.
  4. I spent time betwixt and between counseling people through the complex emotions. Consulting with congregant-therapists helped me prepare for this.
  5. Also: I took care of myself. Sleeping in, taking time off, prescheduling therapy, and exercise.

Finally, I thank the leadership of the cemetery I worked with and our local clergy colleagues for working diligently to create, revise, and re-revise the protocols for preparation and burial for this evolving pandemic.

 Rabbi Paul J. Kipnes is the spiritual leader of Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, California.

Categories
Death Healing

I Never Knew

I never knew. 

I never knew what this felt like. 
I really never knew. 

27 years as a rabbi, caring for others and yet,
I never knew. 

After all those sermons about death and dying, about loss and living on, 
I never knew. 

Through the innumerable condolence calls, leading countless shiva minyanim, in fact
I never knew. 

Over years of checking in on others, 
In late night calls and texts 
Just so they would know 
They were not alone, 
That we hadn’t forgotten, Still
I never knew. 

Even after officiating at funeral after funeral after funeral, 
Until the losses piled up so high that 
They became part of the cycle of life 
Yet each one representing a precious moment of memory, a unique life, 
For some reason
I never knew. 

Yes
He was old
And yes 
He was ill
And yes 
He was ready
And yet, still

While my loss is no greater, and 
My pain is no sharper, while
My sadness is no deeper
Than those of countless others. 
Still

This sadness, this sorrow
Is like no other
Because although I have counseled many others
Through the valley of the shadow of death, 
Nonetheless 

Nonetheless
Today this death is mine

And I am starting to realize:
The emptiness of loss
The sadness of what isn’t anymore
The foreverness of it all. 

You see
My dad is dead. 
And what is that like? 

I think 
I wish 
I never knew.

—
Rabbi Paul Kipnes serves Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, CA.

Categories
Death Healing

Mourning My (Unknown) Child

It was one of the happiest moments of my life. Holding my wife’s hand in the ultrasound room, we heard that rapid thump thump thump of newly created life. My wife was about 8 weeks pregnant with our next child. We left the room smiling and filled with a glow. I watched as my wife rested her hands gently on her abdomen. I smiled at her, and for the briefest of moments, felt a twinge of envy, knowing that I would never know our child as she would. It turned out, however, that life had other plans.

Within the following two weeks, my wife kept repeating to me that she felt something. She knew that there was something wrong with our child. Back to the ultrasound room we went, and, instead of that familiar and comforting sound of that thump thump thump, we heard silence, deafening silence. The life growing inside of her stopped growing; her cradle of life, my wife’s womb, now held lifelessness. The following week, after nurturing life for almost three months, my wife underwent a procedure, known as a “D&C”, to remove the silence.

There is so little in our literature, in our tradition, to guide the women who go through such tragedy, and less to offer wisdom to their partners on how to support in these moments of terrible loss. Over the ensuing weeks, I watched my wife mourn for the child we would never come to know. I sat silently as she would break out crying for no apparent reason, then run to hug our one and a half year-old son so tightly, and tell him how much she loved him. So often I wanted to say “something,” but I never knew the right words to say to her. What was I, a partner who could not carry life inside himself, who could never know life on that intimate of a level, what could I say besides that I grieved with her, and mourned with her.

But I’m a rabbi, aren’t I supposed to know what to do? I’ve been through chaplaincy rotations, studied the halakhot of mourning, pastored to people, shouldn’t I have been able to find something to comfort her? I soon realized that I was at a loss. There is almost nothing for a mourning of “the could have been.”

The Rav taught that the mourning of the intimate lives we know, this is aveilut hadashah – new mourning. This label has a double meaning for a situation such as this – it is new not simply because it is not the aveilut yeshanah of the Temple and ancient tragedies, but also because until very recently, Judaism has failed to recognize the need of the parents to mourn for what could have been.

My wife and I were experiencing a form of this aveilut hadashah, and even with the small collection of new material and liturgy, it felt so foreign. We didn’t discuss it in seminary, and it’s a small section of the rabbi’s manual. However, we are now living in a world where the marvels of medicine allow us to look at the fetus earlier than ever before, to hear the heartbeat of life sooner than ever before, and, we are having children later than any previous generation. Taken together, this is changing our understanding and attitudes of mourning for the loss of a life that could have been.

Standing nearly a year removed from this terrible moment, I cannot believe how completely unprepared I felt as a husband and a rabbi. It is time, I believe, that we begin to change our understanding of mourning beyond years 0 – 120. Unlike our ancestors, we live in a world where the hidden is not so hidden. Talking about and preparing our spiritual leaders, from rabbis-to-be to those already ordained, this too I believe is a part of our obligation as rabbis when we pastor. Our Mishnah, Niddah 5:3, goes so far as to say that a child one day old can be counted for mourning; perhaps it is time to take this halakhah one step further.

—

Rabbi Jeremy Weisblatt serves Temple Ohav Shalom in Allison Park, PA.

Categories
Death Healing Mishkan haNefesh

You Turn my Mourning Into Dancing

Yizkor on Yom Kippur is … not about human frailty or the futility of human endeavors. Yizkor on Yom Kippur is about the power of others to affect us, about our power to affect others, about the power of the dead and the living to continue to affect each other. Yizkor on Yom Kippur is … not simply about remembering the dead, by about attempting to effect change in our relationships with the dead and thus to effect change in ourselves and in our relationships with those who are still among the living.

(Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig, in the CCAR Draft machzor, forthcoming 2015, Mishkan haNefesh, Yizkor service)

I’ve missed a number of days of Elul to blog because my father-in-law died last Wednesday. After his funeral in Florida on Friday morning, my wife and her sister returned to sit shiva at our home in Massachusetts. What happened over those days was a reflection of how love, healing, and change are truly what the rituals of remembrance are about and enable us to do. For those who joined us for multiple nights of shiva, the change that occurred over those days as memories and reflections were shared was quite evident and powerful for many.

Without sharing the specifics here, the journey we took was one that first confronted the past, and acknowledged the challenge of engaging with memory in the face of difficult relationships. Yet, with the honesty of needing to acknowledge the challenges, the blessings that emerged from those life experiences were also evident.  On the following night, more family members gathered and a broader range of perspectives and memories were shared. There were many moments of laughter. There was a release – the laughter not only lifted the weight of some of the challenging memories but also opened up the banks of memories that were positive and powerful. And so, by the third night, new stories had been laid bare and had risen to the surface. There were words of forgiveness, acceptance, and love.  By the fourth night, in a beautiful, spontaneous sharing and connecting of memories and reflections connected to the words of specific prayers as we davenned (prayed) the ma’ariv (evening) service, there was a sense of completeness. We were speaking of a life lived, and memories that we carry with us, but embedded into the heart of the tefilot that were so much a part of Mordecai’s being that, when advanced dementia had taken almost all else from him, davenning was the only activity that he could still do, in short bouts.

In the forthcoming CCAR machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh, we find a version of precisely how we did our remembrances on the last night of shiva.  We are offered 7 paths, where readings, psalms and reflective texts are woven around the 7 thematic blessings of the Tefilah, or Amidah prayer, the central prayer of our Shabbat and Festival liturgy.  There is an abundance of material – many, many years worth of exploration and contemplation. There is a clear recognition that everyone remembers differently. There are ways to remember children who died too young. There is a prayer in memory of a parent who was hurtful. There are words to remember one who died violently. There are words to remember dearly beloved ones. And so many more.

As we return to Yizkor, year after year, we do not necessarily have to engage in the memories in the same way. With the passage of time and the ways we remember, may we, as invited by Rabbi Wenig in the reflection above, find the possibility to change our relationships with the dead and thus effect change in ourselves and in our relationships with those who are still among the living.

Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz serves Congregation Congregation B’nai Shalom in Westborough, MA. She dedicates this blog post to the memory of Mordecai Lavow, her father-in-law.