Jewish Year of Mourning: Rules, Weddings and Holidays

These are customs, and they differ between Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Chabad families and between communities. For a ruling, ask the family’s rabbi.

How long is the year of mourning, and how is it counted?

For a father or a mother, mourning lasts twelve Hebrew months, counted from the day of the burial. For the other relatives one sits shiva for (a brother, sister, son, daughter or spouse), it ends with the shloshim, the thirtieth day. That includes parents who have lost a child: the thirty days limit the formal customs, not how long anyone grieves. Grandparents are not among the seven relatives, and there is no year of mourning for them. The year is quieter than shiva: life resumes, with less celebration and, for sons, Kaddish every day.

In a Hebrew leap year

A leap year has thirteen months, but the Shulchan Aruch still ends mourning after twelve, while the yahrzeit stays on the Hebrew date of death, a month later. If your mother was buried in Kislev of a leap year (one with two months of Adar), mourning ends in Cheshvan and the first yahrzeit falls in Kislev.

What is not allowed in the year of mourning, and what is

The common customs for a parent, from the end of the shloshim:

• Celebrations. No weddings, parties or evenings out purely for fun. Many allow a quiet Shabbat meal with family or friends.
• Music. Many listen to none all year. Some authorities allow quiet music that is not joyful, and there is room to be lenient for someone who needs it to work or to sleep.
• New clothes. Ashkenazim buy and wear none all year; if something is needed after the shloshim, someone else wears it first for a day or two. Plain clothes you need are fine. Sephardim, following Yalkut Yosef, are strict after the shloshim only about new white clothes.
• Haircuts. The Shulchan Aruch says to wait until friends remark on it. Ashkenazim wait about three months, some the whole year unless there is a real need; Sephardi custom sets no fixed three months.
• Outings. Concerts and trips purely for fun are avoided; a break to rest, or a trip with your husband or wife, many allow.

The year of mourning is not a long shiva: work, study and laughter go on.

Can you go to a wedding during the year of mourning?

The Shulchan Aruch keeps someone mourning a parent away from wedding feasts all year, and records a dispute over the ceremony itself. In practice, when the couple would be deeply hurt, many come to the chuppah only, after the shloshim, and leave before the meal and dancing; some are stricter. At the wedding of a very close relative, such as a brother or sister, some authorities let the mourner stay for the meal, sitting apart, helping to serve and leaving the hall for the music and dancing. A bar mitzvah or a brit counts as a mitzvah meal and leaves more room, especially without music; Sephardim are more lenient here.

Your child’s wedding, and your own

A child’s wedding is not postponed for mourning, and the parents take full part, even within the shloshim. On dancing, authorities differ: some say only a little, when the couple asks, and others set no limit. You may marry yourself, too: the Shulchan Aruch allows it after the shloshim, with a feast. Take the details to the rabbi, and decide beforehand how your parent will be present: a visit to the grave that week, a sentence in a speech, a photograph by the door.

Kaddish and leading the prayers

Sons say the Mourner’s Kaddish at every service, with a minyan (ten men, in Orthodox practice). Ashkenazim say it for eleven months; many Sephardi and Mizrahi communities pause for one week at the start of the twelfth month, then continue to the end of twelve months. A mourner who knows how leads the weekday services, though in Ashkenazi custom not on Shabbat or festivals, and on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur only if no one else can. Many also move from their usual seat in synagogue for the year.

The first holidays after a death

A festival during shiva usually ends it, and one during the shloshim can cut it short; the shiva and shloshim calculator works out how, and the rabbi decides in any doubt. The customs of the year continue.

Rosh Hashanah

Many visit their parents’ graves on the day before Rosh Hashanah. In synagogue the mourner prays as usual, without leading if someone else can.

The Seder

The Seder is held as usual: the mourner drinks the four cups and reclines. Some Ashkenazim leave off the kittel in the first year and recline modestly. A Seder with another family or at a hotel is fine; only the hotel’s communal parties are avoided.

Yizkor

Ashkenazim say Yizkor on Yom Kippur, Shemini Atzeret, the last day of Passover and Shavuot (outside Israel, the eighth day of Passover and the second of Shavuot). In the first year some mourners step out, so as not to weep before the congregation; others, following leading authorities, say it from the first festival. Sephardi and Mizrahi communities say the Hashkavah instead. Yizkor with the name filled in

The end of the year and the first yahrzeit

When the twelve months are complete, the customs of mourning end. The first yahrzeit falls on the Hebrew date of death (if the burial was delayed, some keep the first one on the burial date; ask the rabbi), with an azkara, a candle, Kaddish and a visit to the grave. See the yahrzeit and the mourning calendar and how an azkara is held.

Getting through the first holidays, birthdays and the empty seat

Jewish law says what is allowed, not how to sit at a holiday table with someone missing. What helps families:

• Decide ahead, together: where, who hosts, who says kiddush. A holiday that just happens tends to happen the hardest way. Ask the surviving parent what they want; children have their own questions: how to talk with them about death.
• The empty seat. Leave it empty, seat the eldest grandchild there, or rearrange the table: any answer works if everyone knows it beforehand.
• Say their name. Mourners usually fear the silence more than the mention. At one family’s first Seder without Grandpa, his granddaughter read from his own Haggadah (wine stains, pencil notes in the margins) and stopped to read each note aloud.
• Their birthday is marked by no Jewish custom and is often the hardest day of the year. Plan something small: cook what they loved, give to charity, meet your brothers and sisters. On your own first birthday without their morning call, ask someone close to ring you.

Holiday-table stories are among the first things lost. Ask whoever tells one this year to write it down afterwards; on a memorial page those stories stay together with the ones relatives abroad send once the page is open, each approved by the family before it appears. If the grief is no lighter when the year ends, that is not a failure; a grief counsellor or your doctor can help.