ABSTRACT
Attitudes to which the bereaved are especially susceptible-denial, guilt, anger, and a sense of meaninglessness-can be dealt with through the sensitive and skillful use of the eulogy.
The eulogy is a duty no rabbi can escape. Sometimes it is an onerous one; sometimes it is a personally painful one. All too often in the busy pressure of our lives it becomes one of those things that we just must do, and that we take for granted. Yet it is one of the most significant things that we do. All too often we handle eulogies rather mechanically. We have a stock framework and sort of build from it, and wonder whether in those cases we do really help the family as much as we might.
