A Brief Summary Of Chapter Three Of Lauren Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath

Lauren Winner’s Mudhouse Sabbath discusses many conflicting views between Christianity and Judaism. Chapter three of Mudhouse Sabbath addresses avelut, which is Hebrew for mourning. This chapter shows the differences between mourning in Judaism versus Christianity. Winner begins the chapter by describing morning in a Christian church. She says that for approximately two weeks fellow members of the church visit and bring food over, but after that they move on. Mourning in the Jewish community is something completely different. There are stages to the mourning process. First, there is the aninut, which is the period of time between death and burial. During aninut, mourners are not required to follow Jewish law and the community does not visit

During shloshim the mourners return to work, but are not allowed to attend celebratory events. Shloshim is divided over four Sabbaths. On the first Sabbath, mourners must leave during songs of celebration. On the second Sabbath, mourners stay for the entire service, but sit in different seats than usual. On the third Sabbath, mourners sit in their normal seats and stay for the whole service, but do not stay to converse afterward. Finally, on the fourth Sabbath the mourners return to their normal routine. After shloshim, mourners recite Kaddish twice a day with other Jews until Yahrtzeit, the anniversary of the death. Every year the mourners recite Kaddish and light a

Unlike Lauren Winner who had said she has been lucky to not have experienced much death in her life, I have had very much experience with death. When I was four years old my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with stage four inoperable lung cancer. My mom and I went with her to every appointment—chemotherapy, radiation, scans, check-ups, etc.—and she was eventually cured. She had always said that the reason she lived through it was because God wanted her to be able to see me grow up, and I have always thought that there was some truth to that. She went ten years without recurrence, and the doctors had said she was officially cured of cancer, but one day it came back. This time the cancer was in her brain. It was still lung cancer, but somehow it hid around her body for ten years and decided to start growing again. This time it was operable and the tumor was successfully removed. Within two days after brain surgery my grandma was moving about like her head had not been sliced open. Two years later, the cancer came back and she passed away about a month after my sixteenth