Mishnayot for mourners: a change in the air?

 During the shivah, the seven-day period of mourning that follows a Jewish burial, there is a widely observed custom of learning a mishnah after prayers so that the mourners can recite an extra kaddish. This custom reflects the fact that the Hebrew word mishnah (משנה) is made up of the same letters as the word neshamah (נשמה), a soul; the mishnah is therefore recited as a mark of respect for the soul of the departed.

The tractate from which mishnayot are recited is most usually Mikvaot, which deals with the process of purification that is achieved by immersion in water. Again, this reflects the notion that, whatever a person may do in his lifetime, his or hear soul remains pure.

While this tradition is laudable, my impression is that it is not always popular. Many of the mishnayot in Mikvaot are quite difficult and do not involve the sort of situations and experiences we encounter daily. When they are recited swiftly and without explanation, the exercise can give the impression of being perfunctory, meaningless and disrespectful. When however someone takes the trouble to explain these mishnayot properly, one sometimes senses the impatience those present at the shivah and who are anxious to get to work or to return home at the end of a long day.

Twice recently, when attending a shivah, I noticed that the mishnah recited for the extra kaddish was selected from Pirkei Avot -- the Ethics of the Fathers. My immediate thought was that the mourners had elected to do this because the content of Avot was easier to understand than that of Mikvaot. This was not however the case.

At the first shivah, the children of the deceased said simply that Avot seemed appropriate because they had lost a parent and the word Avot meant "fathers". In the second, the mourning children went further, saying that they had learned how to behave from their late father and that Avot was about the transmission of the right way to behave across the generations.

When I lost each of my parents (in 1993 and 2009) we recited a mishnah from Avot rather than Mikvaot. Some of those who attended raised their eyebrows, but none objected; most said nothing and expressed no opinion. I don't know if my two recent experiences are part of a trend and wonder what experiences other readers of this blog might have.