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Reflections on Jewish Death & Mourning Respect, Ritual and Remembrance A COMPILATION OF ORIGINAL ESSAYS EDITED BY SAMUEL J. SALKIN Reflections on Jewish Death & Mourning Respect, Ritual and Remembrance A COMPILATION OF ORIGINAL ESSAYS EDITED BY SAMUEL J. SALKIN Why a Jewish Funeral? Preface 29 The Funeral Is a Gift 3 Why a Jewish Funeral? for the Living SAMUEL J. SALKIN RABBI STEPHEN S. PEARCE Introduction Soulful Simplicity — 33 Ethics of My Father 7 STUART SCHOFFMAN Values-Driven Jewish Death and Mourning 37 Can’t We Talk SAMUEL J. SALKIN About Something Jewish Mourning More Pleasant? 15 ROZ CHAST Practices SAMUEL J. SALKIN 51 Yom Kippur Essays Yizkor Sermon 19 This Thing Called Honor RABBI AUBREY L. GLAZER RABBI JERRY LEVY 57 Spirituality in 25 We Are Responsible for End-of-Life Care Each Other RABBI AMY EILBERG MICHAEL BROOKS 61 Staying Connected 93 A Calling —The Unbreakable THOMAS V. HALLORAN Bonds Between the 97 The Comfort and Living and the Dead Compassion of NORMAN FISCHER Jewish Mourning 67 The Value and Power RABBI JOSEPH S. OZAROWSKI of a Jewish Burial Shiva: Being Present RABBI STUART KELMAN 101 With Loss 71 Being a Shomer—Giving ERIN HYMAN, Z”L a Gift; Receiving a Gift Shloshim: Thirty (Days) HOWARD FEINER 105 SHERYL SANDBERG 75 The Dignified Farewell A Spiritual Journey Based ERICA BROWN 111 on Life and Learning 79 End of Life— SHELLEY S. HÉBERT Experiencing the Fear 115 The Memory Garden at and Feeling the Pain Eternal Home Cemetery RABBI MENACHEM CREDITOR JENNIFER H. KAUFMAN 83 Final Touches Passing on the Richness NANCY KALIKOW MAXWELL 121 of Our Jewish Experience 89 Practicing Tahara: SANDER I. STADTLER Giving a Blessing, 127 Time in Time Receiving a Blessing EVA M. HAGENHOFER MYRTLE “MICHELE” JOSHUA Section Title PREFACE Why a Jewish Funeral? SAMUEL J. SALKIN Samuel J. Salkin serves as executive director of Sinai Memorial Chapel Chevra Kadisha, the only nonprofit Jewish funeral home and Chevra Kadisha serving the entire spectrum of the Jewish community in the United States. For over a century, it has assured the dignified burial of all its community members, irrespective of means. 3 In the year following my Bar Mitzvah, my Nana Ethel, my mother’s mother, of blessed memory, died. Her death was followed in the subsequent 19 months by the passing of the remainder of my grandparents. I had grown up in close proximity to them and they were each very important to me. This period was my highly concentrated introduction and education into the Jewish laws, rituals and customs surrounding death, burial and mourning. One of the insights from that time, when my parents (and thus our entire family) were in mourning for a period of nearly three years, is that while I learned a tremendous amount about what we “Jews do,” I learned it by osmosis. I participated and through that doing, I began to understand. I had never been to a funeral home, attended a funeral, or been to a Jewish cemetery. Now I learned that my father would not come home that night, in order to watch over and honor his mother-in-law as a shomer. The next day I was a pallbearer, accompanying my grandmother to her final rest. Prior to that, my only fragments of insight were a vague idea that my grandmother participated in a “sewing circle,” led by Mrs. Juskowitz, z”l, who sewed “burial shrouds” and that my family left services whenever “yizkor was said,” because my parents’ parents were alive. Four elders in decline; four deaths; four funerals; four eulogies; shoveling earth for four burials; 56 shiva minyanim; gatherings of mourners, great aunts and uncles, aunts and uncles, a multitude of cousins, neighbors and family friends; an 4 Preface opportunity to participate and thus begin to understand the Jewish approach to caring for and honoring the deceased and comforting the survivors. The opportunity was in the context of extended family and in community. Both elements of Jewish life are receding for all but the most traditional. At the beginning to my introduction to the ways of the Jews concerning death and dying there were shared assumptions. Shiva equaled seven. Today, a half-century later, in America we are challenged to ask the non-rhetorical question, “Why a Jewish Funeral?” I hope that this collection of writings will encourage engagement with that question. We have good answers from a multitude of perspectives. I am grateful to my colleagues, friends and fellow thinkers and writers for their engagement and contributions. I am grateful to Sinai Memorial Chapel Chevra Kadisha for the opportunity to serve. The work, which is deeply fulfilling, allows me to grow in unexpected and unimaginable ways every day. 5 Rituals are the formulas by which harmony is restored. TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS Section Title INTRODUCTION Soulful Simplicity – Values-driven Jewish Death and Mourning 7 There is a crisis in American Jewish life. It’s best described as a crisis of meaning and engagement. Indeed, for the first time in centuries, two Jews can marry each other and have Jewish children without any connection to Jewish heritage, wisdom or tradition. Liberal values and Jewish values are virtually indistinguishable to many Jews, with the particularly Jewish content increasingly absent. To put it bluntly, much of contemporary American Judaism has been undersold and watered down. One way to address this crisis is by looking at the detailed specifics and broad essence of the values-driven Jewish end-of-life cycle. Regardless of whether you think that life ends with dirt or the immortality of the soul, the Jewish death, funeral and mourning experience offers the deceased and the bereaved something that’s exceedingly thoughtful, special and substantive. But before you can fully understand the Jewish way of death, you have to spend a little bit of time understanding Judaism itself. And, by that I mean Jewish thought and practice, and how it has evolved, particularly in 21st century America. In the process of doing this, you’ll get a general sense of the diversity of the Jewish community, while you’ll learn about specific approaches within this community that reflect how Judaism has been embraced over time. 8 Introduction Without going any further, let me assert that the Jews are primarily a people, not a religion or a race. To illustrate: you don’t have to believe in God to be a Jew. Much of Jewish practices and beliefs are a long-held way of life. Death, for its part, is seen by Jews as a real and fundamental part of life. It is not distinct or separate from life. That said, Jews believe that there are many ways to live, and many ways to die. There are fundamental guidelines, but no rigid unanimity or demands for conformity. A good example of this diversity of thinking is that some Jews accept a supernatural authority who actively guides our lives through a divinely revealed Torah; others view what was revealed at Mt. Sinai as humanity’s interpretation with an ongoing dialogue between God and humanity. When refined through prayer, this dialogue leads to good deeds and loving kindness, as well as sincere engagement with the world; still others are dismissive of the role of Mt. Sinai and Jewish law in their Jewish lives. The breadth of perspectives on Jewish life and death can be associated with religious thought streams as well as secular points of view. The Orthodox perspective, which accepts divine revelation at Mt. Sinai and the immortality of the soul is one religious book end; the Reform movement, which historically has been dismissive of Jewish law and which prefers to avoid a point of view on the immortality of the soul is the other. While Jews don’t cremate, secular Jews may choose cremation, while others may view it as not ecologically correct or a nightmarish Holocaust echo. Despite these differences, every stream of Judaism agrees that the occasion requires dignity for the deceased and that there is much healing work to be done when death takes place. All Jews would agree that honor and dignity must be extended to the deceased while compassion and support are offered to the bereaved. There are no questions about this, no shades of meaning, and absolutely no equivocation. So, Jews are both flexible and resolute when it comes to end-of-life practices, services and rituals. And what connects and grounds them are deeply established and deeply held values that are authoritative—but not authoritarian. 9 Samuel J. Salkin These anchoring values are so important, because they tell us what to do when someone dies. As a result, Jewish mourners are truly taken care of, receiving the solace and comfort they need. What am I really saying here? If you lose a loved one, and you do what we Jews know how to do, you’ll feel like you’ve treated the deceased with all the beauty and grace imaginable. And, in the process, you’ll be warmly supported, too. You see, it always comes back to the community for Jews. And that community, while always evolving, is constantly, consistently and steadfastly there for those who must face the end-of-life of a loved one. In fact, the more you open yourself up to the Jewish practice, ritual and tradition surrounding death and dying, the larger your support circle will be, and the less alone you will feel. The Jewish approach to end-of-life is not solely one way—or our way. True compassion requires lots of listening. True kindness demands that we meld individual values with communal ones.

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