And Aaron Was Silent: How We Mourn (copy) and Excessive Mourning

Isaac ben Judah Abravanel (1437–1508)
Vayidom aharon - His heart turned to lifeless stone (domem - mineral), and he did not weep and mourn like a bereaved father, nor did he accept Moses' consolation for his soul had left him and he was speechless.

R. Eliezer Lipman Lichtenstein - Shem Olam
Scripture chose "vayidom" rather than "vayishtok", (synonyms of silence). The latter signifies the abstention from speaking, weeping, moaning or any other outward manifestation as "They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man" (Ps. 107:27), followed by, "then are they glad because "yishtoku" - they are quiet" (ibid., 30). The verb "domem" however, connotes inner peace and calm...Accordingly Scripture describes the saintly Aaron as "vayidom" and not merely as "vayishtok", thus emphasizing that his heart and soul were at peace within, that rather than questioning the standards of God, he justified the Diving verdict.

• What is the difference between the two explanations?

Baruch A. Levine
The accepted interpretation of Lev. 10:3b is that Aaron remained silent, or
was stunned, upon learning of the sudden death of his two sons, Nadab and Abihu...
The verbal root d-m-m, “to be still” (here to be
classified as d-m-m I for reference), is morphologically indicated in Biblical He-
brew, so that initially, there is no problem in reading Lev. 10:3b in the accepted way.
Both the comparative and the inner-biblical evidence to be adduced presently
will, however, suggest an alternative rendering: “—and Aaron mourned.” This
rendering identifies in Lev. 10:3b a homonymous Hebrew root, here to be class-
ified as d-m-m II, “to moan, mourn.” Understood in this way, Lev. 10:3b means
that Aaron reacted in the customary manner; he moaned or wailed and was about
to initiate formal mourning and lamentation for his two lost sons.
Once this line of interpretation is considered, the commentator will read the
remainder of Leviticus 10 differently. Immediately after the bodies of the two
dead sons of Aaron had been taken outside the encampment for burial (vv. 4—5),
Moses issued instructions to Aaron and his two remaining sons not to engage in
formal mourning, by bearing their heads and rending their garments, lest they
meet death and arouse God’s wrath against the Israelite community. Rather, the
entire house of Israel was to act in their stead, and mourn (the verb b-k-y, “to
weep”) the untimely death of the two priests (vv. 6—7). Mourning, even over a son
or brother, would have defiled Aaron and his two remaining priestly sons at a time
when their purification was just taking hold. Read in this way, Leviticus 10 actu-
ally achieves a higher degree of symmetry.

How Long Should It Take to Grieve? Psychiatry Has Come Up With an Answer.
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The latest edition of the DSM-5, sometimes known as “psychiatry’s bible,” includes a controversial new diagnosis: prolonged grief disorder.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/health/prolonged-grief-disorder.html
By Ellen Barry
March 18, 2022
After more than a decade of argument, psychiatry’s most powerful body in the United States added a new disorder this week to its diagnostic manual: prolonged grief. The decision marks an end to a long debate within the field of mental health, steering researchers and clinicians to view intense grief as a target for medical treatment, at a moment when many Americans are overwhelmed by loss.
The new diagnosis, prolonged grief disorder, was designed to apply to a narrow slice of the population who are incapacitated, pining and ruminating a year after a loss, and unable to return to previous activities.
Its inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders means that clinicians can now bill insurance companies for treating people for the condition. It will most likely open a stream of funding for research into treatments — naltrexone, a drug used to help treat addiction, is currently in clinical trials as a form of grief therapy — and set off a competition for approval of medicines by the Food and Drug Administration.
Since the 1990s, a number of researchers have argued that intense forms of grief should be classified as a mental illness, saying that society tends to accept the suffering of bereaved people as natural and that it fails to steer them toward treatment that could help. A diagnosis, they hope, will allow clinicians to aid a part of the population that has, throughout history, withdrawn into isolation after terrible losses. “They were the widows who wore black for the rest of their lives, who withdrew from social contacts and lived the rest of their lives in memory of the husband or wife who they had lost,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, who is chair of the steering committee overseeing revisions to the fifth edition of the D.S.M.
“They were the parents who never got over it, and that was how we talked about them,” he said. “Colloquially, we would say they never got over the loss of that child.”
Throughout that time, critics of the idea have argued vigorously against categorizing grief as a mental disorder, saying that the designation risks pathologizing a fundamental aspect of the human experience.
They warn that there will be false positives — grieving people told by doctors that they have mental illnesses when they are actually emerging, slowly but naturally, from their losses. And they fear grief will be seen as a growth market by drug companies that will try to persuade the public that they need medical treatment to emerge from mourning.
“I completely, utterly disagree that grief is a mental illness,” said Joanne Cacciatore, an associate professor of social work at Arizona State University who has published widely on grief, and who operates the Selah Carefarm, a retreat for bereaved people. “When someone who is a quote-unquote expert tells us we are disordered and we are feeling very vulnerable and feeling overwhelmed, we no longer trust ourselves and our emotions,” Dr. Cacciatore said. “To me, that is an incredibly dangerous move, and short sighted.”
[...]
A loop of grief
Amy Cuzzola-Kern, 54, said Dr. Shear’s treatment helped her break out of a terrible loop.
Three years earlier, her brother had died suddenly in his sleep of a heart attack. Ms. Cuzzola-Kern found herself compulsively replaying the days and hours leading up to his death, wondering whether she should have noticed he was unwell or nudged him to go to the emergency room. She had withdrawn from social life and had trouble sleeping through the night. Though she had begun a course of antidepressants and seen two therapists, nothing seemed to be working.
“I was in such a state of protest — this can’t be, this is a dream,” she said. “I felt like I was living in a suspended reality.”
She entered Dr. Shear’s 16-session program, called prolonged grief disorder therapy. In sessions with a therapist, she would narrate her recollection of the day that she learned her brother had died — a painful process, but one that gradually drained the horror out of the memory. By the end, she said, she had accepted the fact of his death. The diagnosis, she said, mattered only because it was a gateway to the proper treatment. “Am I ashamed or embarrassed? Do I feel pathological? No,” she said. “I needed professional help.” Yet, others interviewed said they were wary of any expectation that grief should lift in a particular period of time. “We would never put a time frame around when someone should or shouldn’t feel that they have moved forward,” said Catrina Clemens, who oversees the victim services department of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which provides services to bereaved relatives and friends. The organization encourages bereaved people to seek mental health care, but has no role in diagnosis, said a spokesperson.
Filipp Brunshteyn, whose 3-year-old daughter died after an automobile accident in 2016, said grieving people could be set back by the message that their response was dysfunctional. “Anything we inject into this journey that says, ‘that’s not normal,’ that could cause more harm than good,” he said. “You are already dealing with someone very vulnerable, and they need validation.” To set a year as a point for diagnosis is “arbitrary and kind of cruel,” said Ann Hood, whose memoir, “Comfort: A Journey Through Grief,” describes the death of her 5-year-old daughter from a strep infection. Her own experience, she said, was “full of peaks and valleys and surprises.” The first time Ms. Hood walked into her daughter Grace’s room after her death, she saw a pair of ballet tights lying in a tangle on the floor where the little girl had dropped them. She screamed. “Not the kind of scream that comes from fright,” she later wrote, “but the kind that comes from the deepest grief imaginable.” She slammed the door, left the room untouched and eventually turned off the heat to that part of the house. At the one-year mark, a well-meaning friend told her it was time to clear out the room — “nothing worse than a shrine,” he told her — but she ignored him.
Then one morning, three years after Grace’s death, Ms. Hood woke up and returned to the room. She sorted her daughter’s clothes and toys into plastic bins, emptied the bureau and closet and lined up her little shoes at the top of the stairs.
To this day, she is not sure how she got from one point to the other. “All of a sudden, you look up,” she said, “and a few years have gone by, and you’re back in the world.”