Dealing with death

Communities offer support in time of need

MICHAEL MIKLOFSKY
Staff Writer

Bill Straus says he admires his aunt, Shirley Jacobs, for her ability to deal with family tragedy and keep a positive outlook on life. Photo by Michael Miklofsky

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Shirley Jacobs knows what it means to remember a loved one who has died. She "has seen more death in 80 years than I think most people do," says nephew Bill Straus.

Jacobs has survived the deaths of her two husbands, four children, a brother and a sister, among other family members.

"She is the embodiment of a cliché," Straus says. "The cliché is: 10 percent is what happens to you, 90 percent is what you do with that, how you react to that."

And what she's done with that, her family finds remarkable. Wearing her famed high-heeled shoes, the petite Jacobs seems to tower above her family and if her shoes don't make an impression, her permanent smile surely will.

"I had to go on with my life," Jacobs says, recounting the death of her first-born child, who died shortly after birth. "I also realized that if I am just going to complain to everybody, who's going to want to be with me? Hmm...?"

Jewish tradition teaches that one should care for those in mourning, which includes paying condolence calls, helping the family of the deceased and taking care of matters related to a proper burial.

After a person dies, the immediate focus is on the one who has died and taking care of burial needs.

Following burial, the direct mourners - parent, spouse, sibling or child - gather to sit shiva, or sit in mourning, to remember the person who died.

This period of sitting shiva continues for seven days, while community members, friends and family come to pay their condolences. The shiva period is put on hold on Shabbat and holidays.

During shiva, a memorial candle burns continuously 24 hours a day, and because a mourner is supposed to ignore personal comfort or aesthetics, mirrors are covered and the mourner sits on a low stool or chair to show a sign of loneliness.

The family of the person who has died is also commanded to say kaddish, a mourner's prayer. The length of time the prayer is said depends on the relationship to the deceased.

According to aish.com, the Web site for Aish HaTorah, an international Jewish outreach group, a direct mourner says the prayer for 11 months during daily services. Those services are held three times each day, when a minyan, or group of 10 Jewish men (or men and women, in some congregations), is present. For other mourners, kaddish is said for only 30 days after the person's death.


Community support

To cope with her losses, Jacobs says she kept her friends close and her family even closer, using them to talk to and often giving herself little pep talks.

Jacobs did not have the opportunity to join a support group to make sense of her feelings.

"They didn't exist and your doctor wouldn't send you to a psychiatrist or a psychologist unless he thought you belonged in a padded cell," she says.

Today, Valley residents have the option of joining bereavement groups at their synagogues. Just a few congregants typically attend these groups, where counselors are available to attendees.

Sharona Silverman runs one such group through the Shalom Center at Temple Chai.

"I think there's definitely a sense of loneliness, a sense of being alone in a coupled world, or it feels that way," she says. "It's a wonderful opportunity and to kind of help them through the journey that they go through different phases and to sort of have a place where they can talk and get some advice and get some support."

The Shalom Center also has a Caring Committee that makes phone calls to congregants who have had a death in their family, sends Hebrew scriptures and provides meals.

Over the last 10 years, the group has trained 200 congregants on how to provide the proper support to a Jewish person who is grieving, Silverman says.

"We really do try and reach out throughout the year and not just in the weeks that follow," she says.

Also, the Jewish Family & Children's Service's Maryvale location occasionally hosts eight-week bereavement classes. Other Valley synagogues have groups of people as part of a formal committee or a collection of volunteers that make shiva visits to families, send cards or attend services to help make a minyan.


Caring for the body

Besides mourning rituals, Jewish law dictates the procedure for preparing a body for burial.

When a person dies, a process called taharah, or caring for the deceased, takes place. The body is ritually washed and wrapped in a white shroud to show the purity of the person's soul to God before he or she is to be judged by God, says Rabbi Laibel Blotner of Chabad of Arizona.

Men are traditionally wrapped in a tallit, or prayer shawl, while women are wrapped in a simple cloth.

Caring for someone who has passed away is one of the greatest mitzvot a person can perform, Blotner says.

"The Talmud refers to taking care of the dead as a chesed shel emet, which means true kindness," he says. "Once the person is dead, you know that he's never going to repay you for anything, so this is called true kindness ... that you're doing kindness purely for the sake of the mitzvah.

"In general, taking care of a dead person is very high priority in Judaism ... a dead person that has nobody to take care of him and the person that goes and takes care of it, it's considered a major mitzvah to be able to do that," Blotner adds. "Every self-respecting community has a chevra kadisha, which means a burial society, and these have been around from the beginning of society."

Members of the Jewish community formed The Chevra Kadisha of Northern Arizona, Inc., in July. There is not a formal chevra kadisha in Phoenix.

Father and son Raymond and Jonathan Perlman run the Valley's only Jewish funeral home, Sinai Mortuary, to fulfill the needs of the Jewish deceased, regardless of religious denomination.

"According to Jewish law, a Jewish deceased can only be entrusted to Jewish people," Raymond says. "Once a non-Jewish person has gotten involved or interfered ... everything is lost.

Sinai works with synagogues to arrange chevra kadisha volunteers, who will ritually wash the body, cover the body in a white shroud, and watch the body between the time of death and the burial.

And the Perlmans are glad to do what they do.

"We know Jewish traditions and we believe in them. It's part of our life," Raymond says.

"We understand the complications of making religious decisions when things have to be done a certain way," he adds. "We serve Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and whatever in between."


Visiting the cemetery

Roughly one year after a person's death, a gravestone is erected. A person can visit the gravesite anytime, but there are also certain days for visiting a gravesite: after shiva ends; on the 30th day of mourning; after 12 months of mourning; on the anniversary, or yahrzeit, of death every year; the day before Rosh Hashana; and the day before Yom Kippur.

"We pray to God at these times and ask our loved one to be an advocate on our behalf," according to aish.com.

Shirley Jacobs makes regular visits with her family to the family burial plots.

"When we go to the cemetery, which we've done all too frequently in the last five years, Aunt Shirl makes her round of all six (husbands and children)," says Straus, Jacob's nephew. "The entire family is aware of it. Sometimes we'll go over, we'll join her one day or another, but it's a very personal thing and it's very powerful. I don't exactly know what type of communication is taking place, but you can tell it's something she's gotta do and she does it every time and that's a painful walk from grave to grave to grave, to grave to grave to grave."

Jacobs says, "People come and pay a condolence call to me and they'll say, 'You'll get over it.' You don't get over it, you learn to live with it if you are lucky."

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