A month without Silvio Santos: today is Sheloshim, the day of the special visit to the tomb

“I feel inside me, rightly or wrongly, that I have had other lives and that I will have other lives,” Silvio Santos told SBT in February 1988. Today marks a month since the death, at the age of 93, of Brazil’s most popular television presenter, from bronchopneumonia following an influenza infection (H1N1).

“According to Jewish thought, death is not the end, but the beginning. Judaism considers this world as a corridor, a preparation for the world to come,” reads a text from the Chevra Kadisha society, responsible for preparing the bodies and burial of Jews in Sao Paulo.

“This future world cannot be fully understood as long as man’s mind remains limited to its physical concepts. Yet man can suppose that noble souls will flourish in this existence.”

Silvio was a descendant of Dom Isaac Abravanel, one of the most influential Portuguese Sephardic Jews of all time. His farewell followed all the rites of the Abrahamic religion, including the non-exposition of the body after the purification carried out after death.

Limited to relatives and close friends, the burial took place in the Israeli cemetery of Butantã, in the western part of the capital São Paulo. Today, 30 days after the death, is the end of Sheloshim, the second period of mourning (the first lasted until the 7th day).

According to Jewish tradition, on this date relatives visit the grave, read psalms, say prayers and may speak in honor of the deceased.

Source: Terra