My neighbor lost her father and I'm wondering if most people bring food when they visit. I have heard somethign that if they can't use it, it has to be throw out. Anyone ?

My understanding is that throwing out food is an issur of bal tashchit.

I haven't heard of bringing food when you visit. The only time I've heard is right after the burial when they sit down to eat bread and eggs and they can't cook it on their own.

I hate to show up empty handed. She's sitting by herself, though; she's got grown kids - do I assume they are helping out ? No one lets their mother starve during shiva, right ?

In my circles, people bring enough food to feed an army, and there's always a list of meals on the fridge of the shiva house with who is taking care of which meal. The shiva people can't leave the house, so it makes sense people bring meals, the post-funeral meal being something else. Maybe people think that food is the antidote to death.

In our community it's usually family who does all that, even flying in to take care of the 'house' for the week of Shiva. If there is a case where there is no family, then others step in.

I can ask when I go to be menchem avel, I guess. Thank you everyone for your help.

Well sure, it's always going to be a case of implicit hierarchy, the same way people "just know" how close to the inner circle they are allowed to dance with the kallah. There are unwritten rules that everyone seems to understand - people seem to know their place and where they stand.


Just bring food. You can never be wrong by bringing food. Jews are Jews.

I think you should find out for certain if any food/meals are needed prior to bringing them...I just remember when I was sitting shiva and people just went overboard with the food. We ended up having to dump a deplorable amount out because there was physically no space for it in our home and alot of it wasn't stored properly. And honestly, after the 12th baked ziti and 20th kugel we were all ready to vomit. Bringing food is nice but make sure that the mourner's home does not end up becoming a food bazaar.

melech, may i use that for my signature ?

My understanding is that you should only bring food for a meal - not cake or snacks. Often, there's one person in charge of meals and you can ask that person what to do.
When my family sat shiva, we got so much food that there was too much left over.
What touched me the most was when people brought food the week after shiva, or called....

And hence the list on the fridge. But a platter of fruit or something isn't going to go to waste. Sure, if you're bringing a main course etc. you gotta check. But a fruit platter or something, I think it's nice to bring if you're not sure it's one of those shivas with a gazillion people where you can't move.

But this business of you have to throw out food from a shiva since you can't take it out of the shiva house - as far as I know, there's no source for that in sha's or rishonim. The real thing is you're not supposed to drink from a cup that an avel drank from, and somehow that got extrapolated to this whole business of throwing food out because there's some notion of the food being tameh or some such.

I think it is also important to remember that the average person sitting shiva doesn't have the largest appetite so while bringing a fruit platter in addition to meals is nice, chances are most of it will be dumped if there aren't other people around to eat it.

True.

I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not with the bolded. Call me dense.

I think it's better to err on the side of bringing food if the person is in a situation (e.g., no family in town) where you think they might not have enough. I once visited a BT friend sitting shiva in her (non(yet)kosher parents' house. I brought enough to last her several days because it wasn't certain she'd have much else.





When my mother was sitting shiva, the BEST thing anyone brought was the fruit basket. Oftentimes, my mom didn't want to eat a meal and really only had a few pieces of fruit the entire day.