structural:scholar_edition, information:extraction
Death of an apostate Jew

In the past several centuries, the custom developed among Ashkenazic Orthodox Jews (including Hasidic and Haredi Jews), that the family would " sit shiva " if and when one of their relatives would leave the fold of traditional Judaism. The definition of "leaving the fold" varies within communities; some would sit shiva if a family member married a non-Jew; others would only sit shiva if the individual actually converted to another faith, and even then, some would make a distinction between those who chose to do so of their own will, and those who were pressured into conversion. (In Sholom Aleichem 's Tevye, when the title character's daughter converts to Christianity to marry a Christian, Tevye sits shiva for her and generally refers to her as "dead.") At the height of the so called Mitnagdim (a Hasidic term for traditional mainline Ashkenazi practitioners, meaning 'those who are against', meaning against the changes introduced by Chasidim) movement, in the early-to-mid nineteenth century, some families even sat shiva if a family member joined the Hasidim. (It is said that when Leibel Eiger joined Hasidism, his father, Rabbi Shlomo Eiger sat shiva, but his grandfather, the famed Rabbi Akiva Eiger, did not. It is also said that Leibel Eiger came to be menachem avel). By the mid-twentieth century, however, Hasidism was recognized by most traditional Ashkenazim as a valid form of Orthodox Judaism, and thus the (controversial) practice of sitting shiva for those who realign to Hasidism almost completely ceased to exist.