When a Jew Dies: The Ethnography of a Bereaved Son

By Samuel C. Heilman

Book Overview

Samuel Heilman's eloquent account of the traditional customs that are put into practice when a Jewish person dies provides both an informative anthropological perspective on Jewish rites of mourning and a moving chronicle of the loss of his own father. This unique narrative crosses and recrosses the boundary between the academic and the religious, the personal and the general, reflecting Heilman's changing roles as social scientist, bereaved son, and observant Jew. Not only describing but explaining the cultural meaning behind Jewish practices and traditions, this extraordinary book shows what is particular and what is universal about Jewish experiences of death, bereavement, mourning, and their aftermath.

Heilman describes the many phases of death: the moment between life and death, the transitional period when the dead have not yet been laid to rest, the preparation of the body (tahara), the Jewish funeral, the early seven-day period of mourning (shivah), the nearly twelve months during which the kaddish is recited, and the annual commemorations of bereavement. The richly informative ethnography that surrounds Heilman's personal account deepens our understanding of the customs and traditions that inform the Jewish cultural response to death.

When a Jew Dies concludes by revealing the rhythm that lies beneath the Jewish experience with death. It finds that however much death has thrown life into disequilibrium, the Jewish response is to follow a precisely timed series of steps during which the dead are sent on their way and the living are reintegrated into the group and into life. Filled with absorbing detail and insightful interpretations that draw from social science as well as Jewish sources, this book offers new insight into one of the most profound and often difficult situations that almost everyone must face.

Cover illustration by Max Ferguson

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520219651
• ISBN13: 9780520219656
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 271 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Teaches one how to deal with death and bereavement

This book offers a clear understanding of how Jews deal with death, bereavement and mourning. It provides the reasons behind the customs, the social and cultural meanings that support them and a personal statement by the author. It neatly blends the objective and the subjective yet without blurring the view from each -- a remarkable accomplishment. Best of the Jewish mourning books available.

A Combination of the personal and the analytic

This is a sensitively written book that combines the analytic view of what death, bereavement and mourning mean to Jewish tradition along with the author's personal experience with the encounter with death. For those who want to know not only what tradition demands but what the underlying sociological, psychological and anthropological meaning behind those traditions is as well as how this all affects those who practice the tradition, this book will be a useful guide. It will take you inside -- deep inside -- what happens when a Jew dies.

Comfort & Enlightenment

Prof. Heilman's book was the comfort of a wise friend when I needed it most, just after I lost my sister to cancer. As a Jew, I wanted to seek solace in my faith after this devastating loss - but, having grown up essentially unaffiliated, I did not quite know where to turn, nor what it all meant. The Jewish rituals of mourning, burial, kaddish - all were largely foreign to me. I was very fortunate to be given Prof. Heilman's book as a gift from a dear friend, and it became my guidebook through what was, for me, new and frighteningly uncharted territory. "When a Jew Dies" provides an explication of Jewish law and custom on death that is understandable to a layman, but textured enough to be of great use to an academic as well. But what I found most warming of all was Heilman's moving account of his own struggle to cope with the death of his father, after a long and nightmarish battle with the effects of a debilitating stroke. Anyone who has suffered a similar loss will find this book an invaluable companion.