Cemetery minhogim

I was at a funeral and was told that the minhag of the Yekkes is that the women do not enter the cemetery. Is that an across the board rule or did different communities have different customs? Which communities had which custom?

SRainus

Is this applicable to all women or just women who are pregnant?

Steven

Is there anything wrong with a public pilgrimage to a tzaddik's grave? May a family visit together or should they only visit individually? May Kaddish be recited if there is a minyan? May Tehillim be recited? What should be recited?

SRainus

I have heard that it is not a good thing to blow the shofar near or in a cemetery. Is there any substance to this idea?

SRainus

Is the minhog for one to go to kevorim of parents during Ellul? My father says that his parents were very makpid to go to the kevorim of their parents every Elul. We are not sure if this is a Yekkish Minhag or from elsewhere.

Daniel

SRainus wrote: I was at a funeral and was told that the minhag of the Yekkes is that the women do not enter the cemetery. Is that an across the board rule or did different communities have different customs? Which communities had which custom?

SBS wrote: Is this applicable to all women or just women who are pregnant?

Steven

I have been hearing about this for a while and have never found any sources - until now. In the Minhagim of Worms, vol. 2, p. 93, it says as follows: The entire community does not go to the cemetery - only some of them... When they go toward their homes, the men turn their faces away from the women". Note 41: Yosef Ometz (p.327) writes, "How exceedingly careful we must be to separate from the women when walking to and from the cemetery...I have heard that in Worms the men are accustomed to turning their heads toward the wall when the women come." An even later source from Rav Mendel Rothschild, the av beis din of Worms, states that, "women do not go to the kever at all."

We see several things from here, one being that the custom of women not going into a cemetery was not widespread and that it was a late custom. I wonder what other sources say about this from other communities. I have heard that in some places this was only for non married women.