Background
Even if you are among those who do not open their homes to strangers, your friends and acquaintances will want to visit you to be with you, to comfort you over the death of your loved one, or simply to express their feelings and emotions. Open your home and allow them to enter, to come and comfort and tell you about the deceased.
In addition to it being a crucial and valued commandment for them, it is also good for the deceased and for you. Conversations with your loved ones about your loved one who is no longer, will help you process the difficult feelings associated with their loss.
Do not turn off your mobile phone during these days. Many of your friends who can’t reach you will want to exchange comforting words. Allow them this ability, surely you will also hear about good deeds done by the deceased – things you did not know about them.
How to comfort?
Usually, in the mourning notice announcing the funeral time, the family members publish the address where they will sit ‘Shiva’ (seven days of mourning). Sometimes they even specify when to come, at those times the family members are at home, sitting on low chairs and friends come and converse with them on various topics, hear stories about the deceased and strengthen them with stories and good deeds they are doing for the elevation of his soul.
Before you leave, stand by the mourners and say: “May the Omnipresent comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem” or in a shorter version “From heaven may you be comforted”.
- When visitors come to comfort, the first right to speak is the mourner’s. When someone comes to comfort, the mourner should try to initiate the conversation.
“The Omnipresent will comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem”
Why when comforting the mourners, do the comforters say this verse? What is the connection between the family’s private disaster and the disaster of Jerusalem? By doing so we show them that the people of Israel are one soul, and just as we mourn for Jerusalem so we mourn for every disaster that befalls someone from the people of Israel, and just as we believe that the holy city of Jerusalem will be built and established.
