SHIVA IN JERUSALEM

QUESTION:

A man expressed his dying wish to be buried in Jerusalem. His son in San Francisco will accompany the body to Jerusalem for burial. The family, however, as did the deceased, lives in New York, and there they will sit shiva, etc. The son who is accompanying the body understands that his own mourning should begin with the burial, but is he required to carry out the shiva and the shloshim in Jerusalem or may he join the family in New York? (Asked by J.T., San Francisco, California.)

ANSWER:

THE QUESTION that you asked me over the telephone is not too easy to answer. If it were simple and clear-cut, you would not have needed to ask it at all. Yet it is strange that it should be difficult. After all, the circumstances upon which the question is based, namely, moving a body from one city or from one country to another, have occurred innumerable times in Jewish experience, and, in fact, the law is quite clear-cut on most of the elements involved. Most of it, of course, is stated in the Tur and in the Shulchan Aruch (Yore Deah 375:2). Yet nearly all the details dealt with concern the question of when the mourning begins. On that question the general consensus, as established in law, is that the people who are in the city of departure begin their mourning when the body leaves them to go on its journey. But those people who accompany the body do not begin their mourning until the body is actually buried.

All this seems clear enough, but what is omitted is exactly the content of your question. What about the mourning duties of those who accompany the body? Are they expected to sit shiva and observe s hloshim in a strange city, as in this case in Jerusalem? What should, for example, this American visitor do who accompanies his parent’s body for burial in Jerusalem? Is he expected to rent living quarters and observe shiva and shloshim in Jerusalem after the burial? This human difficulty is not clear at all in the law and is really the essence of the question.

How, then, can we decide in this humanly difficult situation? It is well enough for the law to tell us that the mourning for this American begins in Jerusalem after the burial, but must he observe the mourning period there or not?

In all cases where the law is not specific, the answer must be derived by analogy, or by the implications of the law. Perhaps it can be found in a closer look at the laws of the two separate mourning dates in such cases.

An early discussion of this question is found in the Tosfos to Moed Katan 22a. There the rule is stated as we know it—that those at home begin when the body leaves, and those with the body begin when it is buried. But then the Tosfos follows with a complication of this clear rule, namely, that it all depends on whether the godol hamishpocha, the head of the household (the one upon whom the household depends), stays at home or goes with the body. If it is he who goes with the body, then all the mourners, wherever they are, count from the time of burial, not from the time when the body leaves. However, the Tosfos then continues to indicate that the Yerushalmi differs in this matter. As a matter of fact, there is some doubt as to the proper version of the text in the Yerushalmi. A detailed attempt to clarify this confusion is to be found in Joseph Caro’s Bes Joseph to the Tur, Yore Deah 375.

All this has some relevance to our question. Akiba Eger, in his comment to the Shulchan Aruch at this point, tries to clarify the above difficulty as to the head of the household’s presence or absence. He says that whether they count from the departure of the body or from the burial does indeed depend on where the head of the household is, but that this must be modified as follows: Everybody follows the time of burial if the head of the household goes along with the body, provided the head of the household is taking the body to be buried in his (i.e., the head of the household’s) hometown. Then, of course, he stays there and observes shiva and shloshim . If, however, the funeral is not in the hometown of the head of the household (i.e., if the head of the household is a stranger there), he returns to where the family is mourning (i.e., to the city of departure) and joins them, and even if he comes on the seventh day of shiva, their observance counts for him and he does not need to observe shiva any further. I have here rather amplified Akiba Eger’s answer, which is rather terse, but this is clearly his meaning. (Akiba Eger’s opinion is not just his own; it was based on the Shach, end of section 12 to Yore Deah 375:8.)

Even though the son who is accompanying the body in the case which you mentioned is not “the head of the household,” Akiba Eger’s rule clearly applies to him. In fact it applies to him all the more. If “the head of the household” need not observe shiva and shloshim at the place of burial, then he who is not head of the household certainly need not do so. Jerusalem is not his hometown. He is not required to rent quarters to stay there during a long mourning period. He can come back and join the family and share in their shiva. This is a practical answer, especially nowadays, since burial takes place almost immediately in Jerusalem and the man can be back in America in two or three days. Even if it took him seven days (scant), it would still be fulfillment of the law of shiva.

Of course, this must be added: The son in Jerusalem stands by at the burial of his father. Is there nothing that he needs to observe at all? There is the possibility of some observance which he may feel the need to follow. In the laws of Likkut Atzomos, i.e., the reburial of a body as described in the ShulchanAruch, Yore Deah 403:12, ason at such a time is required to observe the ritual of keriah and mourn for one day. This, then, would seem to be the proper answer as derivable from the lack of present clarity in the law. The son, not going to his hometown, need not stay for shiva and shloshim, but may rejoin the family. This is quite practical nowadays with air travel, and even if one day of shiva is left, this is a fulfillment of his obligation. In Jerusalem he may observe keriah and mourn for one day before returning home.

This suggestion as to keriah and one-day mourning at the burial has precedence in an analogous case mentioned from earlier sources in Greenwald’s Kol Bo, p. 299, where a family had started its mourning after the body left the city and the body was confiscated or, we might say, kidnapped by the authorities for ransom. Afterwards they got the body and buried it, and the decision was that those present at the burial mourn one day, just as in case of Likkut Atzomos (see also Derisha [Joshua Falk] to Tur, Yore Deah 375:3).