Transcription:
Shiva concludes on the seventh day in the morning at the conclusion of the morning services. So there’s a very beautiful tradition that we have. The idea is getting a family up from Shiva. Now, here in Toronto, in some communities, a rabbi will often come to, in a sense, get the family up from Shiva. Although it’s not something that’s required, they can do so on their own. But it’s the idea of making that transition from a time when you have been within a house of mourning, when people have come to offer you comfort, but now you’re making that transition going out into life again. At that point, you could go back home at the conclusion of Shiva, shut the door, and say, don’t bother me. I’m still bereft because of the tragic nature of what I’ve been through. Don’t bother me. Just leave me alone. But Judaism says just the opposite. It says, we’re now going to take a walk, symbolic of going out into life, going out into the world again, so that as we do so, we have a chance to speak more about our loved one. We’re going to go back to work. We’re going to be going back out into interactions with other people. It’s a chance, especially for maybe co-workers or people who didn’t know about that loved one, to talk more about them and to continue that memory. So it’s something that just doesn’t end at Shiva. It’s something that continues with the Shloshim, the 30 days, and if it’s for a parent, for that week. But again, to think more about your loved one and to share those precious memories that they just don’t end, but they are something that continue and hopefully will bring us comfort for us in the weeks and months and years ahead. A good funeral is also where family members can share meaningful words about a loved one, so that people have the chance to hear more globally about that person in ways that they may not have even known. To gain comfort in ways that they may not have even fathomed would have been there for their loved one. So there are so many ways in which a funeral, in a sense, can be “good”. But those are so many of the ways in which we as Jews have structured Shiva and a funeral and death is to give that relationship and comfort to people at a time of such deep loss and sorrow.