Talking About Grief, Jewishly

Oct 29

Written By Shomer Collective, Marketing and Comms

September 2025

Gila S. Silverman, PhD

Thank you to The Covenant Foundation for supporting this work.

“Grief is not an affliction. It’s not an ailment. It’s not something you need to get over or rush through. Grief is part of the very real experience of being human. And the process of grieving is integral to our experience of moving through the world.

At its core, grief is about loss. And loss is about change…. It changes our identity. It changes our relationships. It changes the way we see the world. Loss changes the future. And sometimes even the past.

And although this kind of change is sometimes unbearable, the only way to move through it is to lean into it.” - Claire Bidwell Smith

“Grief is the human process of moving with loss.” - Myra Sack and Matt Goldstein

BACKGROUND:

Jewish educators and communal leaders today are carrying multiple and complicated griefs, relating to personal losses and significant collective experiences, both for ourselves, and for those we serve. The weight of these griefs and traumas often makes it hard to do our best work and to continue to hold space for others.

Given that, as so many often observe, “Jews do grief well”, how might Jewish wisdom help us navigate the unrelenting grief all around us?

This was one of the key questions Shomer Collective asked in setting out on a year-long exploration of grief. Recognizing that too many of us know well the crises that occur when we don’t talk about or plan for the inevitable, Shomer Collective seeks to bring Jewish wisdom and tradition about death back into the Jewish communal square. So too, we surmised, could we help to bring old wisdom together with new language in addressing the many griefs our people and society are experiencing today.

Specifically, we wanted to better identify:

Who and what are we grieving right now, collectively and individually?
How do we support others while we are also experiencing grief?
What can Jewish wisdom offer to help us navigate this moment?

To explore these questions, we conducted individual conversations with 20 Jewish communal leaders and grief specialists; reviewed current research about, and programs responding to, grief in spaces in and beyond Jewish communities; brought together a wide range of communal professionals for a national “Grief Lab” online; and curated a collection of existing Jewish grief resources.

Our exploration was modeled on the kind of exploration we undertook two years ago on the topic of shiva, bringing together groups of professionals and stakeholders, dreaming up potential new ideas worth testing. That project led to the creation of Shiva Circle, a new initiative designed to make sure “no one grieves alone,” thanks to the support of trained Shiva Guides, curated educational resources, and a digital platform customized to help organize shiva.

WHAT IS GRIEF?

In this project, we sought an expansive understanding of grief. Grief is most commonly understood as a normal and expected life-cycle transition, an emotional response to a significant loss, typically the death of a loved one.

Grief is not linear. Contrary to what we may hear from American popular culture, grief is not about “moving on” or “letting go”. Bereavement scholars now understand grief to be a process of adjusting to a loss, finding a new way to be in relationship with someone or something that is no longer present, and creating a new, meaningful, life that incorporates a changed reality. They have found that grief is a social and relational process, not only an individual psychological one. Social roles, identities, cultural norms, religious beliefs, and available support systems all have an impact on how we grieve. Studies have also shown that grief has physiological effects, potentially causing issues with the heart, immune system, sleep cycles, anxiety, and more.

Research shows that there are many ways to move through grief. While there is not one single recommendation for grievers, we do know that social support, connecting with others who have been through similar experiences, acknowledging, speaking, and writing about what has been lost, embodied practices, stress management, and practical assistance with a changed daily life, can all be helpful.

Grief is not only felt in relation to individual death. Grief can also emerge in response to personal losses of jobs, homes, relationships, pets, and more, as well as experiences of communal loss, threats to life, or significant personal or collective change.

Experts recognize many additional types of grief - all of which can be experienced both individually and collectively:

Anticipatory grief may occur when we are expecting a loss (e.g., of a person, a pet, a house, a job, a marriage, or a change in health or ability) and anticipate the emotions and life changes that may accompany it.

Complicated grief can emerge when we have a complex relationship with someone who has died, when our environments or circumstances make it difficult to cope, or after a traumatic loss.

Ambiguous grief is characterized by uncertainty around a loss without information or resolution (e.g., divorce, estrangement, dementia, missing persons).

Disenfranchised grief is grief that is not acknowledged or is minimized by those around us (e.g., pregnancy loss, infertility, racism, retirement, pet loss, moving, and empty nesting).

Suffocated grief, a relatively new term coined by Dr. Tashel Bordere, is when a person is punished or penalized for their normal grief reactions. This type of grief is rooted in systems of oppression and discrimination.

JEWISH WISDOM ABOUT GRIEF

Jewish texts and traditions contain a wealth of wisdom about mourning and living with loss. We include here just a few examples.

From our patriarch Jacob’s life, we learn that we have permission to grieve. When his son Joseph goes missing, and his technicolor dreamcoat was found with blood on it, it appeared that Joseph might be dead. The text tells us that Jacob refused to be comforted in his grief (Genesis 37:35). Vowing to mourn his son all the days of his life, Jacob helps us recognize the possibility that we will live with grief forever, and that the ways we live will be impacted by this experience.

Later in Jewish thinking, the 12th-century Rabbi, Moses ben Maimon (known as Maimonides), makes an effort to create boundaries around mourning, suggesting that there can be too much crying for the dead, and that we need to move from grief toward joy. As Jewish mourning traditions became codified into a scheduled set of stages - shiva, shloshim, kaddish, yahrzeit, yizkor, they came to acknowledge that grief is a process and that our experiences change as we move through it; these traditions also remind us that we must continue living, by requiring mourners to gradually return to communal life and transition out of their mourning practices.

A series of rituals and guidelines guide Jewish mourners through a highly structured, time-bound, process following a death. These rituals are guided by two central principles: k’vod hamet (respect for the dead) and nichum aveilim (comforting the mourners). These traditions acknowledge both grieving and mourning as social processes that unfold over time. From the Chevra Kaddisha (sacred burial society) that prepares the body for burial, the community that supports a family through the seven days of shiva (the first week after a death), and the minyan (quorum) needed to say the Mourner’s Kaddish, these rituals, in their traditional form, ensure that no mourner grieves alone, and that all people are treated with dignity and respect.

Jewish tradition also sets aside time to recognize and remember our communal, historic losses. Special days on the calendar call for remembering and mourning tragedies such as the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (Tisha B’Av), the Holocaust (Yom Hashoah), and deaths in war and terrorism (Yom Hazikaron).

JEWISH GRIEF IN THIS MOMENT

Who and what are we grieving?

In the registration form for Grief Lab, we asked, “What griefs are you seeing in your work?” We received over 70 responses.

We heard about the deaths of parents, children, spouses, and friends, deaths that were expected, unexpected, and/or traumatic. Many participants shared their collective pain about the wars in Israel and Ukraine, the hostages still in captivity, the resurgence of antisemitism locally and globally, climate change, threats to democracy, and political polarization. They also told us that, among themselves and those they serve, they are regularly seeing grief about:

Infertility and pregnancy loss
Divorce
Loss of friendships, relationships, homes, and communities
Changes in routines, loss of identities, and declines in physical or cognitive functioning
Loss of ideals, expectations, imagined futures
Shattered senses of safety and belonging
Uncertainty about jobs, financial stability, and professional identities
The evaporation of the social safety net and civil rights protections
Feelings of alienation and division within the Jewish community, and the loss of connections to Jewish community and/or to Israel.

Some mentioned professional grief over program closures, loss of funding, organizational changes, or unmet goals, as well as grief about what future generations will inherit and what kind of world they will have to live in.

Many wondered about a so-called hierarchy of grief, noting that both they and those they serve often feel that they do not have a “right” to grieve what they perceive to be lesser losses while others suffer more. They questioned who is allowed to grieve, and for what, as they considered how to answer our question. (For the full list of griefs mentioned, see Appendix A.)

Grief Lab

Shomer Collective convened Grief Lab, an invitation-only online gathering, on July 23, 2025. We invited Jewish educators, communal professionals, and thought leaders to gather for a half-day of learning, reflecting, and visioning. We asked our initial list of 120 invitees to suggest others in their networks who were also engaged in thinking, and doing, about grief and who could contribute to our conversation. This led to over 170 total invitees. Of these, 75 people (representing 54 organizations) attended part or all of the 4-hour generative workshop. They included educators, clergy, social workers, end-of-life doulas, funders, and grief workers, based in diverse settings, including synagogues, schools, social service agencies, family foundations, federations, and small non-profits. Their roles vary, from executive directors, case managers, chaplains, support group leaders, lay activists, teachers, grantmakers, and chevra kaddisha volunteers. They represented a diversity of genders, geographies, and populations.

Grief Lab opened with a keynote address by Claire Bidwell Smith, nationally-known grief therapist, grief coach and trainer, and author of five books on grief and grieving. She provided an overview of current professional thinking about grief (broadly defined), to expand and root our discussions in shared conceptual language. This framing helped us to look more thoughtfully at the kinds of grief we’re experiencing and feeling these days. We recognized that the many griefs we are experiencing today include all of the above types of grief. Naming them empowers us to start addressing them.

This was followed by “Listening Circles”, in which participants had an opportunity to reflect in small groups on the kinds of grief they are seeing in their work and in themselves, and how the frameworks presented by Bidwell Smith could help them understand what they are experiencing. Feedback from participants indicated that this was a rare opportunity to engage with other Jewish professionals across multiple fields, organizations, and roles, and to hear from individuals who may have different perspectives and experiences.

In the second half of the Lab, Myra Sack and Matt Goldstein were the featured speakers, sharing the personal story of their daughter Havi’s death due to Tay-Sachs disease (which they detail in Myra’s book, 57 Fridays). Their discussion of the ways they did, and did not, benefit from Jewish traditions and communities set the stage for small group explorations to envision how we can better respond to grief, Jewishly. Participants were asked to brainstorm ways to increase support for grief in our Jewish communities, and to commit to one next step they would take in their own communities and roles.

As with all of our work around life and death, coming together to explore grief reminded us that professionals who are called to support others benefit from addressing their own relationships to the topics at hand. One participant reflected that coming together with other professionals to talk about grief Jewishly was “an important moment for me to acknowledge and feel my own grief.” Another remarked, “I felt less alone, seeing all these people that are doing/thinking/working in this area.” And yet another said, “It reinforced my sense that we still have a long way to go before conversations about grief are… normalized and moving our communities to understand that grief is not isolated around funerals and shiva.”

CHALLENGES AND UNMET NEEDS

In recent years, there has been a growing movement in the United States to normalize conversations about death and grief, both within and beyond Jewish spaces. In some ways, grief seems to be everywhere - in print and social media, webinars, creative programs, immersive retreats, new organizations, and opportunities for learning and support (See Appendix B). Yet, our work on this project identified many unmet needs, particularly when it comes to talking about grief, Jewishly.

Making space for grief: From our conversations with stakeholders and the discussions at Grief Lab, it became clear that Jewish educators and communal professionals are holding multiple, and multi-layered, forms of grief. Although we were aware of this at the start of the project, the depth and range of those griefs was stunning. The last few years have brought crisis after crisis, and Jewish professionals have been bombarded by one emotional experience after another. Many professionals are so busy responding to crises and caring for those they serve that there is no time or space to pause and take care of themselves. There is a tremendous need to validate these experiences across all sectors of Jewish communal life. Professionals need spaces where they can acknowledge their own grief, and they need their grief acknowledged by their supervisors, community leaders, and peers.

Silencing and self-silencing: Many people told us that they perceived significant potential personal, professional, and organizational risks in speaking about grief. Some of those who work in clinical settings worried that acknowledging that they themselves were struggling emotionally could be seen as a sign that they could not do their jobs properly. Others noted that, while everyone seems to be grieving, what they are grieving - and/or how they name that grief - varies widely, particularly in relation to politics and current events. In the current climate of polarization and rapidly changing realities, they felt that naming their griefs could be misconstrued and lead to ruptures in relationships, programming, or funding. They often found themselves weighing the benefits vs risks of opening the conversation, and choosing silence as the “safer” option. It is important to note that this seems to be true across political perspectives, experiences, and identities.

Lack of knowledge about grief and about Jewish approaches to grief: While grief is on many people’s minds, it is also clear that there is a need for more grief education. Most people - both lay people and professionals - are not trained in grief or grief support, are not familiar with current research on grief, and seem to be figuring things out as they go, in terms of the best ways to support those who are grieving. At the same time, among many grief specialists, there is a lack of knowledge about Jewish approaches to mourning. Even Jewish communal professionals, who have a basic familiarity with Jewish rituals such as shiva and kaddish, are unfamiliar with broader Jewish wisdom about mourning and are uncertain how these principles can be applied to our current realities.

Need for community and connection: At the core of Jewish wisdom about mourning is the recognition that no one should grieve alone; community support is essential to the mourning process. Yet we heard repeatedly that grieving today is an isolating experience - whether people are experiencing the death of a loved one, or less-recognized, often disenfranchised losses, like those of a pet, job, relationship, or imagined future. Even collective losses that are being experienced by many at the same time are being mourned privately, rather than being acknowledged and ritualized publicly. There is a vast need for grief support programs of all kinds in a diverse range of settings, as well as for opportunities for professionals in this field to connect with one another, share program ideas, information, and mutual support.

OPPORTUNITIES
Jewish wisdom provides a meaningful and powerful framework for moving through grief, both for individuals following the death of a family member and for our collective acknowledgement of our historic losses as a people. What can we learn from Jewish mourning practices that can help us attend to our modern griefs?

How can we normalize talking about grief, Jewishly, not just when it’s scheduled on the calendar, but in our everyday conversations and interactions? The more we talk about grief as a regular part of life, and the more everyone in a community is aware of what grief is, how unpredictable it can be, and how to support each other, the more resilient our communities will be.

Our work on this project led us to the following recommendations for making this happen:

Professional training: As awareness of the multiple griefs in the Jewish community grows, more organizations are expressing interest in offering grief-related programming. There is thus a significant need for additional training in this area for Jewish communal professionals. This should include education about Jewish wisdom and traditions related to grief, as well as the ways that grief support can serve as a form of Jewish engagement. It should also include secular, general education that will enrich professionals’ understanding of grief and of evidence-based approaches to supporting mourners. Grief education should be offered to anyone who may interact with mourners or may find themselves grieving someday. In other words, to everyone - from the highest levels of an organization to the person who answers the phone.

Grief Support: While there are a growing number of organizations and individuals offering grief-related programming, they cannot meet the current need. There is an urgent need for more grief support groups. Given the diversity of losses we heard about, it is clear that there is no one-size-fits-all grief group. This presents an opportunity to provide a wide range of groups in diverse settings, using this approach to reach people where they are and invite them into Jewish life in an accessible and comfortable way. In addition, as we know that social context and identity have a substantial impact on the experience of grief, groups for specific sub-sets of people (e.g., LGBTQ, Jews of Color, people with disabilities, people of different generations) could also be important.

Jewish communal professionals, both those running grief support programs and those working in other areas of Jewish life, also need grief support. Creating safe and supportive spaces for professionals to acknowledge their feelings and experiences, and process their own grief, without judgment or pressure to problem-solve, will also be essential to ensure that they can continue to serve others in their communities.

Talk about Grief, Jewishly: The last decade has witnessed a surge in grief awareness generally - new organizations, self-help books and memoirs, support groups of all kinds, creative explorations and workshops, and immersive retreats. As people come to expect these types of offerings, many are seeking uniquely Jewish programming and settings, and are eager for Jewish wisdom that can guide their grief journeys. This presents several opportunities:

Increase awareness and accessibility of existing Jewish ritual frameworks and resources (see, for example, Shiva Circle, as one model for doing this).
Generate creative rituals and new interpretations, rooted in Jewish tradition, that resonate with the diverse ways in which American Jews are currently living their Jewish lives.
Curate existing Jewish grief resources in a central clearinghouse, to ease coordination and access, and support the development of new resources and programming designed explicitly for Jews.

Professional network/ community of practice: Increasingly, Jewish communal professionals, educators, and service providers are recognizing the need for grief awareness and support. Yet most of those working in this area are doing so in isolation. Convening a Jewish professional network around grief could provide regular opportunities for education, training, peer support, knowledge sharing, program development, and networking, all of which will help grow the Jewish grief field. Given the mentally and emotionally challenging nature of grief work, mutual peer support is vitally important.

CONCLUSION

We have not yet tapped into the potential for applying our ancient ways of attending to mourning to our modern griefs, nor for leveraging the potential for times of grief to be key moments for Jewish engagement. At times when someone’s world has turned upside down, when life as it was before can no longer be the same, people look for guidance, for connection, for meaning. Jewish wisdom, ritual, and community can provide all of those things, to help mourners as they seek new identities and new ways to live meaningful lives in the face of significant personal or collective change. In this current moment, when we are immersed in so much grief, and beginning to speak of it openly, there is much work to be done.

FOOTNOTES

1 The terms grief, mourning, and grieving are often used interchangeably. However, grief is typically understood as an individual emotional and physical reaction, while mourning refers to the social expressions and cultural practices associated with grief. (Handbook of Bereavement Research, Stroebe et al, editors.)
2 Stroebe, Margaret, Henk Schut, and Kathrin Beorner. (2017) Cautioning Health Professionals: Bereaved Persons are Misguided through the Stages of Grief. Omega 74(4): 455-473.
3 Devine, Megan. (2017) It’s Ok that You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand.
4 Klass, Dennis, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven Nickman. (1996). Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. Neimeyer, Robert A., Editor. (2001) Meaning Reconstruction & the Experience of Loss.
5 Silverman, Phyllis R. (2004). Bereavement: A time of transition and changing relationships. In J. Berzoff & P. R. Silverman (Eds.), Living with dying: A handbook for end-of-life healthcare practitioners (pp. 226-241).
6 Silverman, Gila, Baroiller, Aurelien. & Hemer, Susan. (2021) Culture and grief: Ethnographic perspectives on ritual, relationship, and remembering. (Introduction to the Special Issue on Anthropology and Grief.) Death Studies.
7 O'Connor, Mary-Frances. (2025) The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing. Bidwell-Smith, Claire. (2018) Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief.
8 Rubin, Simon Shimshon, Ruth Malkinson, and Eliezer Witztum. (2012) Working with the Bereaved: Multiple Lenses on Loss and Mourning.
9 Bidwell-Smith, Claire. (2024) Conscious Grieving: A Transformative Approach to Healing from Loss. Kessler, David. (2020) Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. See also, Sack, Myra. (2024) 57 Fridays.
10 Adapted from Claire Bidwell-Smith, Grief Lab Presentation, July 23, 2025.
11 Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Aveilut, 13:11
12 Lamm, Maurice. (1969/2000) The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning.
13 Diamant, Anita. (1998). Saying Kaddish: How to Comfort the Dying, Bury the Dead & Mourn as a Jew.

APPENDIX A - WHAT GRIEFS ARE WE SEEING IN OUR WORK?

In the registration form for Grief Lab, we asked, “What griefs are you seeing in your work?” We received over 70 responses. The list below is a summary of all responses, as they were written. Similar responses from multiple people are only listed once.

Deaths of: Parents, children, spouses/partners, friends, colleagues
Long good-byes that come with death at an advanced age or after a long illness
Unexpected and often traumatic deaths due to: suicide, war, illness, accidents, natural disaster
War in Israel
Resurgence of antisemitism locally and globally
Threats to democracy and political polarization
Infertility and pregnancy loss
Divorce
Loss of friendships, relationships, communities
Aging and loneliness
The loss of:

routines, identities, physical or cognitive functioning, “normal life”
relationships/community ruptures due to political polarization- loss of allyship
Ideals/expectations/ imagined futures, fear/grief for an uncertain future
homes and communities
sense of safety, trust, belonging, familiarity, stability
jobs, financial stability, and professional identities
the social safety net
connections to Jewish community and/or to Israel
civil rights and community health protections
faith, purpose, future, and trust in leaders

Climate change
Ongoing wars and loss of human lives
Generational traumas
Alienation from rituals or tradition
Intragroup tension ("Jew vs. Jew")
One’s grief being unrecognized
Professional grief – Grief over program closures, loss of funding, organizational change, or unmet goals.
Vicarious grief of professionals supporting others through crisis

Anticipatory grief about what future generations will inherit and what kind of world they will have to live in
Guilt for grieving “lesser” losses or surviving while others suffer more - am I allowed to grieve?
Overall sense of grief for the world

Many also noted the layered and compounded grief facing Jewish professionals:

Grief upon grief: pandemic + war + political despair + climate change + personal loss
Holding the grief of everyone alongside your own grief
Feeling of "never having time to process" due to continual crises
Unexpressed grief being expressed as frustration, anger, confusion
Collective and intergenerational grief - new grief reactivating old grief (individual or intergenerational)