MONTREAL — Immediately after officiating at a funeral, it's Rabbi Michael Dolgin's job to announce the visiting time and location of the shiva home - the place where family members of the deceased observe the Jewish ritual of congregating together for seven days and cared for by friends and community members.
Lately, the task has become more complicated.
Like more and more North American Jews, Mr. Dolgin's congregants at Temple Sinai, a 1,600-family Toronto congregation, are choosing to sit for fewer than seven days - a fundamental change in the grieving ritual dating to Biblical times whose name comes from the Hebrew word seven.
Many choose to sit only three or four days, and even restrict visits to a few hours a day, another shift from a tradition designed so friends and family can drop by at various times during the week to offer condolences, bring meals and observe daily prayers together.
Rabbi Michael Dolgin says more than a third of his congregation's shivas are shorter than seven days. (Peter Power/The Globe and Mail)
Mr. Dolgin estimates between a third and a half of the shivas connected to Temple Sinai, a Reform congregation, are abbreviated.
Rabbis blame the trend on a modern sense of urgency that makes people uncomfortable taking a full seven days to begin the grieving process.
Jews at Reform congregations, who often do not embrace traditional practices such as keeping kosher in the home, are less likely to sit full shivas.
Jordan Benjamin, director of Benjamin's Park Memorial Chapel, a long-established Jewish funeral home in Toronto, estimates about 10 per cent of shivas following funerals there are truncated, which translates into one or two a week.
The result is often confusing for those wanting to pay mourners a visit. Shula Reinharz, a sociology professor at Brandeis University, who lives in a suburb outside of Boston, says an elderly friend recently lost her husband and only sat shiva for one evening.
"I wanted to pay her a visit," Dr. Reinharz says. "But I couldn't."
During the shiva, family members in mourning traditionally sit on low chairs and are not supposed to work, cook or clean. Community members bring over meals and pray together in the home instead of at synagogue. To avoid focusing on themselves, mourners cover the mirrors in their homes and make symbolic rips in their clothing.
Visitors enter after discreetly knocking on the door. They are supposed to wait to be addressed by mourners and conversation should focus on reminiscing about the deceased and consoling the mourners.
Dr. Reinharz has had Jewish friends ask her how to behave at a shiva because they are unfamiliar with the customs. Even among those who are knowledgeable, other concerns often take over.
Her husband, Jehuda Reinharz, sat shiva for four days when his mother passed away last fall. Part of the reason, he says, was his uneasiness about being away from his job as president of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
The other reason was that his mother had moved to California 22 years earlier, and, although the family remained close, he had limited interaction with her West Coast community.
"One of the purposes of shiva is to share memories of the deceased," he says. "If you don't really know the people, you get a little of it, but it's not the same."
Ross Paperman, a funeral director at Paperman and Sons, a Montreal Jewish funeral home, says it has also become increasingly common for families to wait for a relative to fly to Montreal from some far-flung location following a death.
Jewish law says the funeral should take place as soon as possible after the death - even the same day.
"It's a big change for our city," he says. "I used to have four generations sitting in my office. I don't have that any more."
Rabbi Avraham Feigelstock, an Orthodox leader at Vancouver's Ohel Ya'akov Community Kollel, says he explains the concepts behind shiva to those considering observing a shortened version.
"Many times we want to run away from tragedy," he says. "The shiva gives us the ability and the time to focus on the tragedy. It's a brilliant process God has put in our tradition to help us deal with loss."
Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan of Or Shalom, a Jewish Renewal congregation in Vancouver, says she tries to show how the ancient rituals overlap with modern psychological research on dealing with trauma.
"If I just say to them, 'Jewish tradition says seven days,' they don't get it."
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