[Avodah] Seudas Havraah

[Akiva Miller]

.
Kitzur Shulchan Aruch Yomi is currently in Hilchos Aveilus, and I'm having
trouble understanding some of the halachos of the Seudas Havraah, the meal
which others give to the avel after the kevura.

A basic question is frustrating me, because of the way the Kitzur presents
this in Siman 205, and I did not get clarity from the other seforim that I
looked at. In some places, I see halachos about food in general, and in
other places, I see halachos specifically about a seudah. So here are
several perspectives on what's confusing me:

Must the Seudas Havraah be a full seudah, including more than a kebeitza of
bread?
Can the Seudas Havraah be done with a lesser amount of bread?
Does the Seudas Havraah really have to have any bread at all?
If bread is indeed required, can the avel eat non-bread foods prior to the
Seudas Havraah?

Those questions came to me because of how the Kitzur chose to write halacha
205:6: <<< If the body was buried on Erev Shabbos after Mincha Ketana, at
which point it is assur to have a Seudah Kavua, they do NOT make a Seudas
Havraah for him because of Kavod Shabbos, and so the avel should not eat
anything until the night. >>> ArtScroll explains that if there *would* be a
Seudas Havraah, then the avel would not have an appetite, and that
interferes with Kavod Shabbos.

I am bothered by the very last phrase there: <<< lo yochal KLUM ad halailah
- he should not eat ANYTHING until the night. >>> Why can't he have a small
snack? Is it really assur to eat ANYthing before the Seudas Havraah? The
avel has had a very busy and emotional day, and he certainly didn't eat
anything in the cemetery. Do we really want him to enter Shabbos hungry?

In fact, this seems to contradict what the Kitzur himself wrote in halacha
205:1: <<< assur lo le'echol seudah harishona mi'shelo - it is assur for
his first meal to be of his own food >>>. This implies that a meal is
assur, but he *can* eat a *snack* of his own food. I think it is noteworthy
that 205:1 is the longest halacha in that siman, and the Kitzur lists
several foods that the avel should or might eat during this meal -
including eggs, lentils, meat, and wine - yet he never mentions bread in
the entire siman.

We recently had a thread titled "My Current Futile Life Project". One of my
such projects is to get people to be more careful to distinguish "eating"
from "eating a meal". This is FAR from the first example where confusing
those ideas made the halacha unnecessarily complicated. Please do not tell
me that their meals always included bread, because the concept of a snack
was NOT foreign to them.

Akiva Miller
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