- Q. Someone who will be finishing shiva on Shabbos morning, and is following the customary ways of not performing openly any of the mourning traditions and prohibitions during Shabbos and will join the Seudos of Shabbos with his family.
Is he allowed during the night to eat and enjoy the foods of Shabbos as he usually does? Is the enjoyment of them maybe not correct on that Shabbos?
A. We read in Koheles: There is a time for wailing (bechi), and a time for laughter (sechok)." As mourning is surely the time for wailing, excessive laughter is not permitted.
However, on Shabbos an Ovel comes to shul, although he is not given usually an Aliya, he stays for the reading of the Torah, and can also read the customary Parsha and Targum, although that may give simcha as Torah usually does, since after all they are important mitzvos.
Horav Dovid Pam Shlit’a pointed to a Rashi on Kesubos (6b) that the Tzaar and pain an Ovel feels is not a mitzva.
Rabbi A. Bartfeld as revised by Horav Yaakov Hirschman, Horav Dovid Pam, Horav Aharon Miller, Horav Chanoch Ehrentreu and Horav Kalman Ochs Shlit’a
Important Numbers
