The service started with the chanting of psalms, chosen because they began with a letter of the deceased’s name. This was followed by the first of many eulogies. Sons and grandsons rose up to give learned discourses on the week’s Torah portion, doing their best to relate it to some sterling quality of the deceased. The more ambitious calculated the numerical value of the letters in her name and found parallels with other things of the same numerical value.

Unlike a man’s funeral, where one could go on and on about all the public offices and communal activities of the deceased, when a woman died, the relatives had to be content with talks praising her “modesty, hard work, and love of Torah.” Of course they would mention how wonderful her cooking was and how generous her hospitality to strangers and the poor. But central to women’s eulogies was the statement that “she never said a bad word about anyone, and always judged people favorably.” Silence was a virtue for women, as well as not rocking the boat.

Sometimes this irked Fruma Esther. Several very close friends had lived difficult lives with unreasonable husbands who had put them into early graves. To hear their self-imposed silences praised seemed wrong. What will they say about me, Fruma Esther wondered, those faceless crowds huddled beneath their wigs in the women’s section, those men in long beards and black hats on the other side of the mechitza? What will my daughters and sons and in-laws say? My dear grandchildren?

It was usually the grandchildren, or great-grandchildren if you were so blessed, that gave the best eulogies, their young faces naked with raw grief as they wept, recalling the honest pleasures of their bubbee’s Shabbos seven-layer cakes and Yom Tov brisket with prunes and apricots. The children were more removed, restraining their grief, or perhaps more conflicted. A mother was not a grandmother. You had other responsibilities that sometimes necessitated measures that were often severe and unpleasant in order to keep your children from straying off the right path. They would only forgive you when they used the same methods on their own children. Forgive, but not forget, she thought.