Michael Norton and Francesco Gino’s groundbreaking article (2014) showed that many people today create rituals in the face of grief and loss, whether the loss is the death of a loved one or a breakup, the death of a relationship. It also demonstrated how a simple invented ritual in the face of a lottery loss reduced feelings of grief and increased feelings of agency.
Grief is complex; it is not only one emotion, but a combination of many, often including anger, fear, sadness, and hopelessness, among others. While today’s western society may create individual grief rituals in the absence of recognized and accepted cultural rituals, this has not always been the case. The Hebrew Bible, thought it encompasses multiple time periods, connects grief in the face of death to life-interrupting rituals that last many days. The ritual tearing of one’s clothes and sitting in dust or ashes is evident from Job to Jeremiah. Wailing and sackcloth are often present as well. Some of these ritual elements are evident in situations other than death, pointing to the symbolic and emotional complexity of grief.
This paper will analyze these four elements of grief rituals at death in the Hebrew Bible, demonstrating how they express individual and communal complex grief emotions. Its conclusion will demonstrate how varied enactments of the rituals seem to negotiate the relationship of individuals to their surrounding community.