VISITING OTHER GRAVES

If a person has gone to the cemetery for a funeral, may he at the same time visit another grave? (From Rabbi Sidney Ballon, West Hempstead, New York)

There are a number of popular ideas about visiting graves. Many of them have no validity in the law, and the scholars who discuss them, when a question is asked, usually brush them aside as without justification. For example, there is the popular belief that after the burial the grave must not be visited within a period of twelve months. This is not so. The Tur (#344) speaks of visits made on the seventh and the thirtieth day after burial, et cetera. Another idea is that if one has not visited a grave for twenty years (as could easily happen when a man emigrates to another country), it is wrong for him ever to visit that grave again. Some popular opinions hold that if one has not visited a grave for ten years, he should never visit it again. These popular opinions are brushed aside as invalid (see “Duda’ay Hasodeh,” 38, where other references are found).

Where such ideas come from is hard to say. The one you ask about is not even referred to in any questions that I have seen in the literature. There may be some scholar who has dignified this popular notion with a question, but I doubt it. Therefore it is not even widespread. I have a theory as to how this particular idea arose. First, at a funeral you may not step on another grave (Yore Deah 364, in the Shach, at the end of #3). Hence, it may be that the people were discouraged from wandering away from the grave lest they tread on other graves. Second, there is a law (Orah Hayyim 224 : 12) that he who sees graves must pronounce a blessing, but that blessing must not be pronounced again if he sees other graves within a period of thirty days. This would seem to the people to be a discouragement from seeing too many graves in too short a time. Also, much folklore is involved. People were afraid of “the spirit of uncleanness,” “evil spirits”; therefore they rushed from the cemetery, pulling up grass, throwing it over their shoulders, and washing their hands of uncleanness when they got home. So they hurried out after a funeral.

All these considerations may have contributed to the rise of the belief that it is wrong to visit other graves when you attend a funeral. Nevertheless, I have not found the question asked in any of the books of responsa or in others that specialize in this section of the law.