Shivah

Papa wanted to continue the prayers, I think, but she asked our neighbors to leave and ended the shivah two days early, which began an argument with my father, who went to the Spanish War shortly after, and has not returned. ❋ Julie Chibbaro (2011)

After the funeral and a week of shivah had passed, I returned to New York. ❋ Jill Bialosky (2011)

It took me years to open the brown envelope my great aunt Harriet slipped into my hand after the seven days of shivah had passed and I was returning home to New York. ❋ Jill Bialosky (2011)

The Jewish traditions around sitting shivah, the seven-day mourning period after a death, make sense to me: ❋ Fresca (2010)

The day after the shivah, I went back and started to work again. ❋ Unknown (2008)

A family friend, Sam Goldberg, works at the bakery and considers it his duty to insinuate the cakemore like a loaf of fudgeon us at every food event, from bris to the shivah. ❋ Leslie F. Miller (2009)

So cake is more than the just dessert at birthdays and graduations, retirements, showers, baby namings, confirmations, bar and bat mitzvahs, and funeralspetits fours, usually, but one time a shivah houseguest brought a Carvel ice cream cake, decorated with black balloons and inscribed with Deepest sympathies on your loss. ❋ Leslie F. Miller (2009)

In case you haven't guessed, everyone shows up in the best of clothes to sit shivah after the funeral - the widow, envious cousins, a bad-ass baal teshuva (born-again returnee to orthodoxy), the lusty granddaughter who's still got eyes for her now-orthodox cousin, creditors, a band of mariachis (although the music is by the Klezmatics), and the Catholic mistress, to name just a few. ❋ Unknown (2007)

She teaches with a ruler because an imprecise measurement can render an entire pan of eight cakes useless, except as petits fours which they do sell, and theyre especially popular in shivah trays. ❋ Leslie F. Miller (2009)

A self-portrait of 1995 entitled Myself Remembered, with its reference to the traditional Jewish practice of covering mirrors during the seven-day period of mourning known as sitting shivah, speaks vividly of a childhood and adolescence deeply marked by loss. ❋ Unknown (2009)

In times of mourning (and these were not rare in Yemen), the women got together (they sat in a separate room during shivah) and more easily provided comfort to one another. ❋ Unknown (2009)