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Jewish Burial Traditions, Part I
For as long as I’ve worked in Catholic cemeteries, I have sought to understand everything about Catholic burial traditions – how they express the Catholic faith, and how burial practices and customs have varied from place to place and century to century, both within the Catholic Church and across cultures. I am interested in what is essential as well as what can vary depending on culture and context. For a starting point and exemplar of Catholic burial, I look to the burial of Jesus on Good Friday. And Jesus, whom Catholics acknowledge to be fully God and fully man, was also fully Jewish. He lived, died, and was buried as a Jew. And so in an important way, Catholic burial traditions find their origin in, and grow out of, Jewish burial practices.
Growth means there are differences, of course. The Christian understanding of the human person builds on observations from nature and the revelation of the Old Testament. But distinctive beliefs – especially the Incarnation and the Resurrection – inform the Christian understanding of human being in a way shared by no other religion. Nevertheless, an understanding of the Jewish view of burial can illuminate parts of the Catholic tradition.
Pope Saint John Paul II called the Jews “our elder brothers in the faith of Abraham.” So after learning of the existence of a Jewish burial society called chevra kadisha, I sought out one of my “elder brothers” who has a particular expertise in the Jewish burial tradition. Rabbi Elchonon Zohn is the Director of Chevra Kadisha, Vaad Harabonim of Queens and Founding President of The National Association of Chevra Kadisha (NASCK).
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity, and will appear in two parts.
Damian Lenshek: For a Catholic audience unfamiliar with the chevra kadisha, can you give a little introduction?
Rabbi Zohn: Sure. The chevra kadisha actually means “holy society” or “sacred society.” It is the name that is given to the group of people who are responsible to arrange for burial of anyone in the community who dies.
Every community has to have a chevra kadisha. A community could really not function as a Jewish community, traditionally, if there was no chevra kadisha. Jewish law requires burial immediately. And so while you can have a Jewish community without a caterer - most events take some time, whether it’s a wedding or even a circumcision - we’ve got eight days until we circumcise. So there’s always time to find the caterer. Same with the musician and the flower arranger. It’s the burial that must be in place. So every community had to have a sacred burial ground, and a group to do this. This was generally staffed by people who were prominent in the community.
Burial was seen as a great act of kindness. Generally, there was no real gain financially or any other way for the people involved. The organization itself very often had people donating to it because they needed to purchase grounds, maintain the grounds, and so on.
But the people involved consider this as a chesed, which means an act of kindness, and the kindness provided by this group is actually given a very specific name: chesed shel emet which is “true kindness” or “the truest of kindness,” because there is no reciprocation. The people who received this act of kindness are never going to give back to the people who take care of them, right?
There is an important concept in Judaism, which is that when a person dies, it is not the obligation of the family specifically to care for them. It is actually a communal responsibility. Everyone in the community needs to get involved and make sure that burial takes place.
However, where a chevra kadisha exists, it removes that responsibility from the community and they take that burden upon themselves. And so that is how the chevra kadisha operates.
Damian Lenshek: And so some donors to the chevra kadisha can participate in that way.
Rabbi Zohn: Right. However, the chevra kadisha in modern American culture is really a little bit different than it was initially. Right now we work with funeral homes as well. Many of the chevra kadisha today really exist for the purpose of preparing the body. That’s all they do.
Some of them will also prepare the home for the family, and provide for the shiva, which is the mourning period. So they will bring the food for the mourning period. They will set up the homes so that the family need not leave. And they will make sure there’s enough seating and things for people who may want to visit.
In some communities the chevra kadisha will also go out to the cemetery, and actually be involved in the burial itself. They will be the ones to carry the coffin, lower the coffin, and bury the body. The cemetery operators, even in today’s world, would just stand aside and let members of the community take care of the person who died, which is seen as a great act of kindness and a great mitzvah, something that is very worthwhile.
Damian Lenshek: That’s wonderful. I understand that from the time of death, the body is never left alone?
Rabbi Zohn: That is correct. And again, based on Jewish belief, every person, every human being is made of two parts. There’s the physical. And there’s a spiritual part, which we call the soul.
That soul is God given, and continues to live eternally. We believe in an afterlife, very much so. And the idea is that when a person dies, our belief is that the soul, which is really our consciousness, is very much aware of everything that is happening with the body. The soul does not immediately move on to a spiritual world.
While it may already be in a spiritual state and even be aware of a spiritual world, it is also very much present in our physical world, though it cannot be seen. Therefore we don’t just leave the body unattended with the understanding that, to the soul, that would be painful. They were partnered with the body for all these years and are very much concerned to see that it receives the respect that is due to every person who died.
So until the burial takes place, our belief is that the soul is very much aware, and is actually in a very sensitive state. So that’s one of the reasons why we believe in immediate burial – to allow the soul to move on.
A passage in Ecclesiastes [12:7] says, “the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” We believe that’s a two-step process. When the body returns to the earth, the spirit can then move on to its final rest.
Damian Lenshek: Chevra kadisha also does a ritual washing of the body?
Rabbi Zohn: Yes. The original washing is basically a washing of the body just as we would wash ourselves before a holiday, before a wedding, an important occasion or today in our world, every morning, because we’re blessed to take showers every day.
Our belief is actually just as we bathe a child as it comes into this world, we bathe the body to prepare it for the next world. And our belief is that there’s really a transition from this world to the next. And so it is bathed and washed very gently, carefully.
After the body has been washed, before it is dressed, there is a ritual pouring of water or actually an immersion in a ritual bath. So that is what we would call the ritual washing, what we call the Taharah. What is important to note is that, in this washing: Men wash men, women wash women. That is absolute - it’s a question of modesty and the body is always kept covered except where it needs to be washed. This is based on our understanding that the person, the soul, is aware.
And then the body is dressed in traditional shrouds, which are modeled after what was worn by the high priest in the temple on the holiest of days, because that was the day that he appeared before God to ask forgiveness for the people. That’s the day of Yom Kippur, which you’re probably familiar with, which is our holiest day. And so a body is dressed in the exact clothing that was worn by the high priest with an understanding that when we die, we appear before God for our final day of judgment. So it’s really appropriate to be dressed in a set of clothing that is modeled after what was worn by the high priest. It’s all white, symbolizing cleanliness from sin and so on.
Damian Lenshek: Are there prayers that go along with the washing and dressing?
Rabbi Zohn: There are actually. We pray for the person, that their sins be forgiven, that they be accepted, and move on to their rest in a world that is eternal. There are also passages of Song of Songs that refer to the body in a very special way. And so as we wash the body, we might recite those passages.
There are passages recited that deal with purification as we do the purification. And passages from the prophets that talk about the dressing of the body, and its atonement. So these are passages that are said during the dressing. The same process is done for everyone, whether they are the most influential, affluent, or pious people in the community, or they are a homeless beggar – the exact same process for everyone. I always say, the eulogy might be different, but the process is the same.
Damian Lenshek: If you’re going to be a member of chevra kadisha, do you have to memorize these passages?
Rabbi Zohn: No. Some members of chevra might. Actually, in my own chevra kadisha, which is a very active chevra – we handle over, right now, about two and a half thousand cases each year. I mean, we are the chevra kadisha for all of Queens and Long Island, it’s a very large area, maybe the largest in the country, as a matter of fact. So I used to encourage memorization because we were always performing this, sometimes multiple times a day.
It’s just easier than having someone recite the prayers from a book. So I did encourage memorization. Many of the people did learn it by heart and this way we would actually all say it in unison together, but it’s not required. It could be said by one person or could be read. It does not have to be memorized.
Damian Lenshek is Director of Cemeteries for the Diocese of Madison and Chairman of the Catholic Cemetery Conference’s Grant Administration Committee. This article first appeared in the December 2022 issue of Catholic Cemetery Magazine.
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About the author
Damian Lenshek is Director of Cemeteries for the Diocese of Madison.
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