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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>From: "Rich, Joel" <A
href="mailto:JRich@sibson.com">JRich@sibson.com</A><BR><BR>>>There seems
to be a not infrequent practice to allow for funerals held<BR>on days when there
are not supposed to be hespedim , "recollections"<BR>and/or "life lessons"
(substitute appropriate Yiddish depending on your<BR>venue ) . Given that
according to many (while bechi is a goal) the<BR>main element of hespedim
is to remember who the individual was and the<BR>impact of his absence, what is
the halachik basis for these talks? Is<BR>anyone aware of whether this has
been minhag Yisrael for a long time for<BR>the
masses?<<<BR><BR>>>>>><BR>I don't know sources and I don't
know how long this has been "minhag Yisrael" (if it can even be called a
minhag), but my grandmother A'H passed away on chol
hamoed Pesach. And I remember that my father said at the
levaya that you don't make hespedim on chol hamoed, and then
he addressed his mother directly in Yiddish, just a few sentences, of
which I remember only: "Mama, you used to come to school every day
to bring me a hot lunch." </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>Parenthetically I think he may actually have been embarrassed, as a young
boy, by the fact that his mother showed up at school every day with a hot lunch
-- no one else's mother did that -- but (something I learned only years
later) his mother had another son, a brother my father never met, who died of
hunger in World War I. I don't remember what else my father said, only that he
said goodbye to his mother and did not directly address the people at the
levaya. Of course, addressing the niftar is not unusual, one often sees it
at levayos even not on yom tov. But I guess that technically that's not a
hesped. My father certainly would have spoken at greater length, and in
English, if it had not been chol hamoed.
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
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