My grandfather famously never missed a bris.
I don’t know much about my grandfather, Meir – he died when I was 9. Though we spent every summer in Israel, my memories of him are those of a child – him giving me a shekel to buy glida (ice cream) on the corner, butterscotches in his pockets always ready to hand me. I do not have any personal memories about him as a man, as a person. My mother and her 10 siblings certainly revere him – each has a Rebbe-style photo of him displayed in their home, in one case a giant oil painting of him staring sternly, long white beard to his waist, a tallit wrapped around his shoulders – but when I ask about who he was, I only get platitudes. “He was wonderful, he was kind, he was giving.”
The best nugget I’ve managed to parse is his specific preference for the mitzvah of brit milah, Jewish ritual circumcision. In her thick Israeli accent my mother tells me, “Your grandfather, he never missed a bris. He would travel anywhere in the country, he would stop anything he was doing, he would not miss it.” When pressed, she cannot tell me why this, of all mitzvot, was his favorite. I wonder about it. Was it symbolic – the promise and hope of new life? Was it practical – a much shorter time commitment than a wedding? Was it communal – to make sure at least one person was present and accounted for? Whenever I hear about a bris, I think of my grandfather and I wonder.
Now my mother, his daughter – she lives in America and favors the shiva, the seven day period after someone dies where people visit the mourners to offer their condolences. My mother will call and tell me offhand that she is going to a shiva of a far-distant person, often one that neither she nor I have ever met. “Oh you know, Aliza’s brother, he has a cousin, his cousin’s wife, she died.” Later that week, I will find out she went back to the shiva again, this time early in the morning, to bring the late family’s children a tricycle someone left on the curb, and maybe will go back one more time for a total of three times in seven days. This well exceeds any expectation of simple polite behavior, the more routine 45-minutes-in-and-out shiva call.
My guess is that shiva meets some core aspect of my mother’s personal ethos. She loves a communal hubbub, a deep one-on-one conversation, a collective prayer… all things inherent to a shiva experience. Attending a shiva is also such an easy “win” – I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t feel accomplished and like they had a day well spent if it included a stop at a shiva. It is a simple way to hold space and mark time for someone you care about; just your presence automatically achieves the mitzvah. If the concept of shiva would be extended to think of mass mourning and communal grief, it would also explain why my mother attends every single vigil, rally and prayer circle for the October 7th hostages.
My mother’s favorite shiva tradition is bringing olive oil to the grieving family members. She says that it is a Moroccan Jewish tradition, passed down from her ancestors. Sometimes she presents the olive oil like it is a fine wine, wrapped beautifully or in a sleek bottle gift bag; other times, she brings one of those 101 oz. jugs from Costco that she already has in the basement. Regardless, she presents it as a holy offering, explaining in detail the deep mysticism of this tradition – that the oil symbolizes holiness because it was used for anointing and abundance because of the olive trees in the land of Israel. People go crazy for this, I have witnessed it. I imagine it is the most colorful thing to happen in most shiva homes – for a loud, brassy Moroccan-Israeli woman to burst through the door and bequest a magnificent bounty with blessings and fanfare. The oil is the gift, but her presence is the offering.
Here is what is interesting: I have Googled this and have asked around, and I have never been able to find anyone else who knows about this tradition or has it in their family. It may be my mother’s invention, or it may be unique to my family. Regardless, it is a tradition now, because neither my sister nor I would ever be caught dead going to a shiva without a bottle of olive oil.
So my grandfather loved brises, my mother loves shivas. The mitzvah that I bizarrely favor? It’s the funeral. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never received a funeral invitation and looked at my calendar and said, “Aha! that will be easy to attend!” They always seem to be midday, always seem to be an hour away, always seem to be on the busiest week of the year. But I always go anyway.
Years ago I read an article by Deirdre Sullivan called “Always Go To The Funeral.” It was framed as both a directive and philosophy. Always go to the funeral because it is important to honor the dead and give our respects to the living; and always go to the funeral because we should strive to do the right thing, which unfortunately in real life is almost always the inconvenient thing. This is actually something the life cycle events of shivas, brises and funerals have in common – none can be planned more than a few days in advance so they are, by design, a nuisance and an effort. The display of effort is what matters.
So now, I go to the funeral – begrudgingly, resentfully, resignedly. I sit in the pews and hear tales of a life well lived, or the uncomfortable truth of the deceased not having been that great, or listen to the sobs when someone was taken too soon. I count the minutes until it is over. But like my grandfather and mother before me, I am present. I am there.
