Dear Friends, 

A few years back, a friend and colleague Rabbi Daniel Greyber wrote a rabbinic responsa, about the community’s obligations to provide comfort to an individual whose shiva is canceled by the festival.

This is how his teshuvah/responsa began: 

It is established halakhah that if an individual suffers a loss and the burial takes place in the days before a festival, the festival prematurely ends an individual’s seven-day period of shiva, potentially after just a few hours of mourning. Festivals whose onset cancel an individual’s observance of shiva include Pesah, Shavuot, Sukkot, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Rabbi Greyber continues:

However, for many people in our communities, the cancellation of shiva is experienced as something painful. They report feeling let down by Jewish tradition at a time when Jewish mourning rituals are sorely needed to create a space for mourners to express their emotions.

Members of our Beth Tzedec Congregation have been in this situation. A member of our community was buried on Tuesday, hours before the onset of Shavuot. Her husband, children and siblings were faced with a situation where they only had a few hours of shiva. 

It is important to remember that two separate mitzvah frameworks are at play each time a death occurs in our communities.

 1) the individual obligation to observe shiva 

 2) the communal obligation of nichum aveilim, comforting those who mourn.

According to some sources, the obligation of comforting mourners seems to exist only within the framework of shiva. Maimonideswrites that after the burial “the mourner returns to his home. Every day within the seven days of mourning people should come to console [the mourner]” (MT Hilkhot Avel 13:1-2).

The Shulhan Arukh (YD 385:2) has a different option. In that source, we read “One who meets one’s friend within 30 days speaks with him words of comfort (תנחומים) but does not ask about his peace/shalom.” In this case, shiva has ended but the mitzvah of “comforting mourners” is still enacted throughout the first 30 days. Speaking words of comfort—one of the ways in which the mitzvah ofnichum aveilim is fulfilled—takes place outside the framework of the time-bound shiva period.

In addition, various sources indicate that the mitzvah of nichum aveilim was observed on festivals throughout Jewish history.  The earliest is from the Tosefta (late 2nd century) Sukkah 2:10:

Rabbi Lazar son of Rabbi Zadok said: Thus would the people of Jerusalem practice. One would enter the synagogue, lulav in hand, stand to recite the Aramaic translation of the Torah reading or lead the service (literally “pass before the ark”) lulav in hand. When one rose to read from the Torah or to recite the priestly blessing, one would place it on the ground. One would leave the synagogue lulav in hand and enter to visit the sick and to comfort the mourners with lulav in hand. When one entered the beit midrash, he would give it to his son or messenger and return it to his home.

In this example, we are not told whether someone died before the festival, in which case shiva was canceled, or during the festival, in which case shiva is postponed until after the festival,but it is clear that the practice was to visit mourners during the festival itself. Our ancient rabbis practiced nichum aveilim on festivals because it is not an individual mitzvah like the observance of shiva by the mourner, but rather it is a communal mitzvah that is not stopped by the festival.

In his book Jewish Way in Death and Mourning, Maurice Lamm writes that, “A sacred obligation devolves upon every Jew to comfort the mourners, whether he is related to them or not, and whether he was a close friend or a passing acquaintance…The warmth of such human presence is inestimable.”

After reviewing these sources, and using some common sense, I firmly believe that is not only permissible but recommended to offer comfort to bereaved families, even during a holiday. Nichum aveilim is so important and the comfort it provides is so great. 

Rabbi Greyber ends his teshuvah with the following psak, with this halakhic decision: 

Nihum Aveilim is a mitzvah without a defined end point. The community should continue to comfort those in mourning for as long as needed by mourners, especially when grief is intensified by a death occurring before a person reached old age or if death occurred suddenly.

I agree with him wholeheartedly. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Fryer Bodzin