Yesterday I wrote about going to an Irish wake. Jack Ross offered his own experience:
"Four years ago when my grandmother died I had a friend visiting from San Francisco. When I tried to explain shiva to him (notably without using the word) he asked if we were having a wake. I took great umbrage to the suggestion at first, but quickly realized that a wake is exactly what shiva has become to the non-Orthodox.
"It's the damnedest thing - we've become more German than the Germans, if only the Brooklyn Jews of the middle of the last century who so detested the assimilationists in Manhattan could see what's become of their children and grandchildren in Park Slope. 62%? Intermarriage was as frowned upon by Classical Reform in its heyday as anyone. And don't even get started on lifestyles. My mother, whose family was mostly Pittsburgh assimilationist, tells the story of when her parents married, her mother's father asked her father 'Now wouldn't you have more respect for her if you had waited until you were married to kiss her?'"
Weiss: I'd add that in my experience, Jews reinterpret the laws of shiva to meet the necessities of modern life, just two days of shiva, say, instead of seven. Though I bet not in Israel.
Having been to numerous Irish wakes and Jewish funeral scenarios, I am amazed anyone would find some key difference.
They are all sad in the same way. The rest is nothing.
The difference is at a wake "you drink like whales, then go home and screw like minks. You have to create the next generation you know."
What, your wife's parents when they found out who she was marrying?
Oh gee, I heard the difference was that at the other one everybody spent their time cramming down crappy food and calculating how to get the bulk of the estate.
One of my aunt's just died. Here is a video of the wake. Despite what SOG says, nobody got drunk: link to ca.youtube.com