We’re all gutted. What’s happened in the last few days has been almost too much to bear.
Not just the deaths, which open up scars and pound in the devastation further than you thought possible, but the absolutely immoral behavior of people on our own side who would use this to further a political agenda.
I won’t go into tedious details, but when I read that demonstrators in Tel Aviv carried mock-ups of the coffins through the streets, I wanted to scream.
This goes against everything in Jewish mourning customs. It’s a violation of the letter and the spirit. It’s flagrant disrespect to the dead. It’s opportunistic. It’s vile.
I’m far from a religious Jew, but Jewish mourning customs are the soul of sanity.
Two stand out:
Only the immediate family is considered a mourner.
“According to Jewish tradition, a mourner is the son, daughter, sister, brother, mother, father, or spouse of the deceased. From the moment of death until the burial, each of these immediate relatives is considered an onen, with responsibilities only to attend to the practical necessities of arranging for the funeral.”
This may sound callous but it isn’t. As the immediate family you are privileged in certain ways over everyone else. No one is allowed to encroach on the sanctity of your unique grief. Not even a grandparent is considered an onen. And that’s just as it should be.
We are not permitted to be mourners. We are obligated to offer sincere condolences to the mourners, but we are not mourners.
Furthermore, Jewish law says: “Do not engage in excessive grief.”
At the time thes laws were being codified, people did all sorts of insane things at funerals: cutting, screeching insensibly, etc. These laws were drafted to combat that, but I think they go further.
Jewish mourning customs provide a shared way of channeling grief in a way that aknowledges the immensity of the loss but doesn’t disable the mourner. They’re supposed to bring people together in an orderly, ordered fashion, not create chaos.
Pretending as if you’re a mourner and engaging in political demonstrations is a flagrant contravention of everything Judaism stands for.
Say their names:
Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino.
Let the families mourn. Let us not encroach on their grief.
And let us continue, clear-eyed, until this thing is seen through.
Thanks so much for this. Succinct, powerful, and to-the-point. And above all, entirely valid.
This past Shabbos, that was in the Torah portion- to not scratch yourself etc, in excessive mourning, just like you say.
I think that concept is so powerful and so missing today. (Parshas Re’eh)