The Year Of Mourning

The Jewish mourning process is a voyage through pain, brokenness, comfort, resilience, acceptance, and even gratitude. The Year of Mourning: A Jewish Journey offers an expansive array of resources—stories, songs, study texts, poetry, and prayers—to lovingly and patiently guide the bereaved through the first year after their loss. Each week the mourner is encouraged to focus on a particular theme to deepen their Kaddish practice. The book also includes new rituals for shivah, sh'loshim, unveiling, and yahrzeit. The Year of Mourning helps support individuals to regain their grounding after loss and, through the richness of Jewish tradition, deepen their connections to memories of loved ones and to others in the community who are walking a similar path. "How do mourners get through that empty eternity of their first year without a loved one, that interminable stretch of darkness—perhaps deepening into despair—after shivah ends? Here at last is a way forward: a week-by-week, yearlong pathway through poetry, ritual, music, and the textual wisdom of Jewish tradition, brilliantly conceived and compassionately framed. I recommend it highly for anyone in mourning." —Rabbi Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman, Barbara and Stephen Friedman Professor Emeritus of Liturgy, Worship, and Ritual, Hebrew Union College--Jewish Institute of Religion "Walking the path of mourning is very much like wandering in the wilderness; familiar landmarks have become obscured, life's structures have crumbled. The Year of Mourning is an invaluable compass for this treacherous path. The editors offer a rich array of spiritual resources—texts, songs and prayers—in a format that will affirm, guide, and comfort readers. I know I will share this book often with those who are touched by grief." —Rabbi Dayle Friedman, MSW, MAJCS, BCC, author of Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older "Grief is a universal human experience; it stimulates spiritual reflection and yearns for a communal response. Rabbi Lisa D. Grant and Cantor Lisa B. Segal have planted important flora on the inevitable path of grief that we all walk. Each page is a place to linger, look, listen, and reflect. Whether this book sits on your lap or you scroll through it on your device, anywhere your eye focuses will bring a moment of nourishment on your journey." —Rabbi Eric Weiss, editor of Mishkan Aveilut: Where Grief Resides "The Year of Mourning is a must-have for every clergyperson. After nearly thirty years of guiding congregants through the grieving process, I finally have an all-in-one resource to offer comfort and support beyond the funeral and shivah. Understanding that everyone grieves differently, the editors have created a collection of individual units that gives mourners the ability to move through at their own pace. This special compilation of music, poetry, and reflective questions is a wonderful resource." —Cantor Claire Franco, Past-President, American Conference of Cantors

From beloved New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist—the definitive guide to Judaism’s end-of-life rituals, revised and updated for Jews of all backgrounds and beliefs. From caring for the dying to honoring the dead, Anita Diamant explains the Jewish practices that make mourning a loved one an opportunity to experience the full range of emotions—grief, anger, fear, guilt, relief—and take comfort in the idea that the memory of the deceased is bound up in our lives and actions. In Saying Kaddish you will find suggestions for conducting a funeral and for observing the shiva week, the shloshim month, the year of Kaddish, the annual yahrzeit, and the Yizkor service. There are also chapters on coping with particular losses—such as the death of a child and suicide—and on children as mourners, mourning non-Jewish loved ones, and the bereavement that accompanies miscarriage. Diamant also offers advice on how to apply traditional views of the sacredness of life to hospice and palliative care. Reflecting the ways that ancient rituals and customs have been adapted in light of contemporary wisdom and needs, she includes updated sections on taharah (preparation of the body for burial) and on using ritual immersion in a mikveh to mark the stages of bereavement. And, celebrating a Judaism that has become inclusive and welcoming. Diamant highlights rituals, prayers, and customs that will be meaningful to Jews-by-choice, Jews of color, and LGBTQ Jews. Concluding chapters discuss Jewish perspectives on writing a will, creating healthcare directives, making final arrangements, and composing an ethical will.

This is a very detailed guide to the traditional aspects of Jewish observances of Death and Mouring. It is a must for every Jew -- Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or un-affiliated!

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later—the night before New Year’s Eve—the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.

In this profoundly honest and revealing memoir, psychologist Dr. Naomi L. Baum invites us to journey with her as she says Kaddish, the traditional Jewish mourner's prayer, in the year following her mother's death. When experiencing loss, we are often without words to describe how we are feeling. Finding a place to rest the pain, this book travels through the seasons of grief and will resonate with anyone who has lost someone dear.Dr. Baum, an international consultant on trauma and resilience, draws on both her personal and professional experience to navigate this uncharted territory, as she takes a new look at tradition and discovers both emotional and spiritual sources of comfort in unexpected places."The mystery of the power of Kaddish is indescribable, yet Dr. Naomi Baum, with her sensitive and precise words, takes us on a journey to the farthest places in the mind, the soul, and the universe. She successfully weaves the wisdom of generations to her personal journey as a daughter, a woman, a psychologist, and a Jew. Perceptive and insightful!"Rachelle Sprecher FraenkelDirector of Matan's Advanced Halakha Program

Remember My Soul provides the comforting voice of wisdom at life's most painful moment. Drawing on decades of experience in Jewish outreach and counseling people who have lost a loved one, Remember My Soul, was written specifically for people with little or no prior knowledge of Judaism and the way Judaism understands and approaches death, loss and mourning. People who have suffered a recent loss-and those for whom a distant loss continues to be a struggle-will find in these pages insight, inspiration and resolution. Remember My Soul includes: *An explanatory journey through shiva and all the aspects of Jewish mourning. *A thirty-day guided path of insight and reflection based on the ancient tradition for benefiting the soul of the departed. *Ten questions people ask about death and the afterlife. *Personal reflections from people who have lost a loved one about how Jewish rwisdom and traditions enable one to cope with a loss and relate to death in the bigger picture of life

A National Jewish Book Award-winning autobiography that's "an astonishing fusion of learning and psychic intensity; its poignance and lucidity should be an authentic benefit to readers, Jewish and gentile" (The New York Times Book Review). Children have obligations to their parents: the Talmud says "one must honor him in life and one must honor him in death." Beside his father’s grave, a diligent but doubting son begins the mourner’s kaddish and realizes he needs to know more about the prayer issuing from his lips. So begins Leon Wieseltier’s National Jewish Book Award–winning autobiography, Kaddish, the spiritual journal of a man commanded by Jewish law to recite a prayer three times daily for a year and driven, by ardor of inquiry, to explore its origins. Here is one man’s urgent exploration of Jewish liturgy and law, from the 10th-century legend of a wayward ghost to the speculations of medieval scholars on the grief of God to the perplexities of a modern rabbi in the Kovno ghetto. Here too is a mourner’s unmannered response to the questions of fate, freedom, and faith stirred in death’s wake. Lyric, learned, and deeply moving, Wieseltier’s Kaddish is a narrative suffused with love: a son’s embracing the tradition bequeathed to him by his father, a scholar’s savoring they beauty he was taught to uncover, and a writer’s revealing it, proudly, unadorned, to the reader.

While it follows the Jewish mourning process and tradition, this book is not just for Jews, but for all people who would gain strength to heal and insight from the Bible and teachings of Jewish tradition. "It is the best book on the subject that I have ever seen".--Rabbi Levi Meier, Ph.D. Over 60 guided meditations.