Consolation: The Spiritual Journey Beyond Grief

Chapter 5: The Conflicting Agenda of Healing

Chapter 5 The Conflicting Agenda of Healing
Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows. —William Shakespeare
Mourning practices in Judaism enable us to respond in our own way and to heal as we instinctively prefer. That is why Judaism provides the time and the space for contradictory approaches to healing from mourning. For example, it nurtures our profound need both for silence and for storytelling, both for solitude and for shared grieving. All approaches to healing reside comfortably in the habitat for healing and, indeed, not only during shiva but sometimes also extending into the thirty-day sheloshim period. Virtually all of the religious mourning observances and prohibitions flow from the recognition of the complex need for silence and solitude. They describe where the mourner stands at this raw, unprocessed moment after death: wanting to be left alone to commune with his or her own self, undisturbed. But silence and solitude are not only descriptive, not only self-indulgent; they are also prescriptive. They lead to gradual healing. Unaided and undisturbed, they can marvelously unravel the knots of internal agonies and conflicted feelings of grief. 61 62
Consolation Silence emulates the profound stillness experienced by the prophet Ezekiel, who was commanded “he’anek dom” (sigh in silence). From this, Jewish law derives its most notable mourning bans. Sighing in silence implies there should be no greetings, no study of Torah, because of the joy Torah offers. There should not even be any playing with infants, which bespeaks the most rudimentary enjoyment, and no participation in any form of rejoicing, no attendance at parties, festivals, and personal celebrations. Solitude follows the same religious configuration. The mourner’s urge to be separate from society accounts for the temporary abandonment of social niceties such as haircutting, grooming, laundering, and such, and it lasts until friends are annoyed by the mourner’s wild appearance and self-imposed isolation. They say: “We are going on an important trip, come with us,” implying that it is time the mourner returns to the community, breaks out from the shell, and no longer acts “like a leper” or an ex-communicant, living outside society. In both cases, the halakhah institutes a curious religious process, exquisitely attuned to the grieving heart. It acknowledges the correctness of the mourners’ behavior and at the same time it institutes practices that draw mourners out of these shells and move them from here to there, as though it were resuscitating them after their identification with the deceased, then leading them to a new plateau from which they can launch their return to normalcy. The halakhah recognizes the need for silence by urging visitors to wait three days before consoling mourners—because while the memory of death is fresh, in the first raw moments, their solitude must be protected from outside diversions. Later, as the tightness eases, Jewish law strives to relieve the stark solitude by mandating that others to go into the mourners’ home and share their grief. To jump-start the process of self-healing, the halakhah indulges in yet another apparent contradiction. It recognizes the need for silence by instructing the consolers that the first thing they must do in the house of shiva is—nothing. They should be silent and let the mourner be the first to break the silence. And it prompts comforters to draw out of mourners the story they have just lived through, allowing them to unburden themselves of their suffering. There are thus four approaches to healing, and they need to be understood separately. Silence: The Numbness Dissolves Words are the shell; meditation the kernel. —Rabbi Bachya ibn Pakuda The silence of mourners is natural and profound. The silence that Judaism ascribed to them is formally recognized, though it is never specifically mandated. Judaism emulated Ezekiel. It learned from the prophet’s behavior, considered it to be a paradigm of grief, but did not translate it into a positive mitzvah of mourning. Nevertheless, it was so respected by visiting consolers through the ages that I refer to it as “Ritual Silence” since it is not only the lack of chatter that it embraces, but a silence ritually adopted, even in the midst of company. Ritual Silence is a protected state. Mourners often sit quietly in the center of garrulous company, their hearts in another world. Here solitude is not silence. Although “solitude” actually means “privacy”—no questions, no answers, no company, no dialogue...