Chapter 196 – Onan (a Person Who is Bound to Observe Mourning)

196.1) Any person who lost a relative for whom his is bound to observe mourning rites is called an onan (a person who is bound to observe mourning) until after the interment.

196.2) An onan is exempt for all the precepts of the Torah.

196.3) If the onan has eaten before the internment and the food was not yet digested after the interment, he should recite Grace.

196.4) If the onan is out of town, he is exempt from observing the rules relating to the onan.

196.5) In a place where you use a burial society, you are exempt from the rules relating to the onan.

196.6) Before the interment, a mourner does not remove his shoes, and may leave the house to plan the funeral.

196.7) The recitation of the Shema and the Shemoneh esreh  (eighteen; silent prayer)should be read by the onan even if the time to do so has passed.

196.8) If you become an onan when the time for reciting the morning, the afternoon, or the evening service has begun you need not make ) amends if you omit prayers.

196.9) If the death occurs on a Sabbath, the mourner is not subject to the laws of an onan.

196.10) Towards evening, the onan reads the Shema.

196.11) If a mourner must walk up to the Sabbath boundary to attend to burial preparations, he becomes an onan as soon as he begins to walk.

196.12) A mourner must pray the Minhah (prayers offered in the afternoon) service for a death that occurs on a Friday.

196.13) If a mourner decides to bury the person on the first day of a festival, he becomes subject to the laws of an onan.

196.14) One, whose dead relative lies before him on the night of the second day of a festival, when in a community where the custom prevails to ) bury the dead by Jews, becomes subject to the laws of an onan.

196.15) If you become an onan at the termination of a festival, you may recite the havdalah on the day after the festival.

196.16) If an onan has a son to be circumcised, he should attend to the burial before the circumcision.

196.17) On the eve of the fourteenth of Nisan (first month of the Jewish year), an onan should employ an agent to look for leaven.

196.18) If you become an onan on a night when the omer is counted should count the omer at night.

196.19) If a man dies in prison and the officer refuses to release the body without pay, the laws of onan and mourners do not apply.

196.20) Where burial is forbidden before the expiration of forty-eight hours, the mourners are subject to the laws of onan.

196.21) If the relatives of a dead person fear that they will be unable to have the body cleansed after the two days of expiration, after having the body cleansed immediately, and put the body in a coffin, the law of the onan ceases.

196.22) A person responsible for the burial of a dead relative should be told immediately.