QUESTION: How long should one sit Shiva? How do the holidays affect the mourning process? How often and why do we say Kaddish?
ANSWER: These are three very important and practical questions that you pose. Shiva, which means “seven,” is the deep mourning period that one observes for a shiva relative. A shiva relative is defined as a spouse, a parent, a child or a sibling.
Shiva commences immediately after the funeral. It ends the next week on the day before the funeral. In other words, if one buries a relative on a Wednesday, then shiva ends the next Tuesday morning. Since most of the laws of shiva are from the rabbis and not the Torah, the rabbis were lenient and ended the shiva first thing in the morning of day seven. Shiva really is practically somewhat shorter because there is always a Shabbat and the eve of a Shabbat where many of the shiva laws are not observed.
Any major Jewish holiday (this does not include Chanukah or Purim) terminates shiva! This takes place as long as one was able to observe at least a few minutes of shiva after burial. I have actually had a burial take place just a couple of hours ahead of a major Jewish holiday where the family simply changed their shoes to tennis shoes (one of the laws of shiva is not to wear leather shoes) in the funeral car on the way home and that was the full extent of their shiva. That was the case because there was barely time to get home and do anything else before the holidays started. As long as one observes any of the laws of shiva even out at the cemetery, Shiva is terminated when the holiday commences.
The reason behind this termination of shiva is that we join the rest of the Jewish people in celebrating a major Jewish festival and one cannot do that when one is in deep mourning. A death that occurs in the middle of a holiday falls into a different category of laws and regulations. Only if one has had the opportunity to bury one’s deceased relative prior to a major Jewish holiday is this shiva terminated.
One purpose of Kaddish is to help the soul of the deceased go through a period of trial and tribulation that is supposed to occur after death where one justifies one’s actions in life (good or bad.) In particular, a child of the deceased reciting Kaddish is supposed to make this process easier. It also shows the proper upbringing that that son or daughter had in their saying Kaddish. As any rabbi will tell you, Kaddish does as much with the person left in life as for the deceased as it enables them to work their way through their grief.
Kaddish is supposed to be said morning and evening every day for approximately 11 months.
Since I have been in the Midwest for the past nearly 35 years, I have seen all sorts of unusual things I never saw on the East Coast, at least as a youngster. I once saw several brothers take turns in saying Kaddish, one at each service. I guess to make it easier on them. Many people say Kaddish only once a day. I guess I am glad in this day and age that people say Kaddish at all, but the real obligation is to say Kaddish at every service.
