Rituals provide public solutions to some types of life crises, or change. There are crises which beset the individual in modern society which are not easily addressed by public ritual. The present paper observes such a life crisis and identifies conscious rites performed by individuals. These rites are called, “personal definitional rites”, and take place in situations demanding identity changes. Newly acquired identity is performed ritually in an attempt to elicit recognition of a new social state. Thirty‐six patients clinically defined as obese underwent gastric reduction surgery. Patients were interviewed after having lost excess weight in order to understand the social results of the dramatic change in appearance. Patients described various “rites” they used to complete their conversion from fat to thin. These rites are compared to rites of transition and definition.

This article suggests using social network theory to explain the varieties of mourning behavior in different societies. This context is used to compare the participation in funeral ceremonies of members of different social circles in modern-American society and in the Israeli kibbutz. The two cases demonstrate the validity of concepts deriving from social network analysis in the study of bereavement, mourning behavior, and funerary practice. The approach suggested might serve as a basis for a cross-cultural analysis of the range of participation in mourning rituals.

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The Perception of Time in the Hebrew Bible and in the Rabbinic Sources O ne relates to existential reality through the lenses that one's culture supplies. 1 The culture of each society, in turn, includes the way it relates to time and, as a result, to history. 2 Time as a physical quantity