Reclaiming Your Right to Rest in the Earth: Educating for and Creating a Green Jewish Cemetery “…Until you return to the ground - For from it you were taken, For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.” Bere’shit 3:19 Jews traditionally bury their dead. This method of disposing of a dead body is based on the text, Deuteronomy 34:6, in which God is said to bury Moses. (1) A Talmudic text, Sota 14a, makes it clear that we are to follow this example:”. as [God] buried the dead, so must you bury the dead.” (2) A second text cited to support burial as the proper means of disposing of a dead body is Deuteronomy 21:22-23, which states that even the body of a capital criminal, put to death on a stake, must be taken down and buried before nightfall in order not to cause “an affront to God” and not to “defile the land.”(3) Great leader or criminal, a Jew was to be buried after death. The stories of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs teach us that the dead were buried in caves. Abraham acquired “the cave in the field of Machpelah” specifically to serve as the burial place of Sarah.(4) Later texts teach us that this involved leaving a body to decompose in the cave and then collecting the bones together a year later. Sometimes the bones of all family members were mingled together in a pit, a true gathering of the deceased to the ancestors. This practice is known as ossilegium.(5) It is probably the case that there was an understanding that the decomposing of the body served as an atonement for an individual’s sins and left the soul ready to be with God.(6)That this normally happened in a year’s time coincides with the later practice of reciting kaddish for a year, cut short to eleven months out of concern that no parent should be publicly thought to need the full twelve months of time to atone for misdeeds By no means was the fleshy body to be preserved or protected from decomposition. Contemporary American burial practices can be seen as the attempt to promote the idea that the body of the deceased is not decomposing, is not, in fact, really dead at all, but is entering an eternal and peaceful sleep. Bodies are embalmed, made up and dressed in finery to appear “lifelike” for viewing by mourners at open casket funerals and wakes. Elaborate caskets, placed at burial into larger reinforced concrete grave liners or metal vaults, suggest that the body can be kept intact, safe from the elements. Jews have not been immune to this funeral and burial culture. Even if they much less often embalm bodies, Jewish funeral directors sometimes dress bodies in normal clothing, use creams and cosmetics on the face, and sell expensive caskets. Jewish funeral directors and cemeteries, like many non-Jewish cemeteries, have promoted, and in fact more often have required, the use of grave liners or vaults. These are not legally required by state or federal laws, add to the cost of burial, and give the illusion of protecting the casket and the body within it. In Israel today, Jews are most often buried in a shroud. Caskets are used for soldiers who have been maimed in combat. Graves may be lined with bricks, but never with full vaults. There is still the practice of "burying" in the earth, although in the newer cemeteries that can mean that the graves are in layers in a cliff of earth. (7) In green burial, the body is put in a casket made of soft wood or other easily biodegradable material, or perhaps is wrapped only in shrouds. No embalming is performed. No concrete, metal, or fiberglass vault surrounds the casket. Such a burial allows the most rapid return of the body to the earth through the natural process of decay. In this way, green burial is in keeping with traditional Jewish practice. In choosing green burial, we recognize the fundamental fact of the transient nature of the body and of its being part of the natural world. Choosing green burial also protects the natural world. Standard burial practices in the United States create permanent, harmful change to the environment while not ultimately preventing the decay of the body. Standard burial pollutes with embalming fluid, toxic varnishes used on caskets, and often the use of pesticides and herbicides to keep the grass green, as well as the use of gas-powered mowers to keep it groomed. Green burial seeks to reduce the negative impact of burial on the environment and even to create positive environmental changes. This includes changes to promote the health and safety of those employed in manufacturing products used for burial. Many people believe that cremation is the most environmentally sound way to dispose of a body, but cremation harms the environment enough that “greener” methods have been developed. None are as green as simple natural burial. More than sixty green burial options exist throughout the United States, but only three specifically Jewish green cemeteries are known to me. They are: Gan Yarok, opened in 2010, part of Forever Fernwood Cemetery in Mill Valley, California, with Orthodox, Conservative, and community sections (8); Hebrew Memorial Gardens in Roseville, Michigan which in 2012 opened as a certified nature preserve cemetery (9); and an inclusive Jewish green section at Willow Lawn Memorial Park in Vernon Hills, IL, opened in 2013 (10). History of The Project This project, developed for Course 3 of the Gamliel Institute, "Chevra Kadisha - Educating, Organizing, and Training," presents information helpful for educating Jewish communities about green burial and the ways that it reflects the values of traditional Jewish burial. It is presented here as a packet of information with pages that might be individually printed for use as handouts appropriate for different audiences. It also has suggestions for how someone might go about opening a new green cemetery or cemetery section. Finally, there is a list of books and on-line resources for further information. I undertook this project to document my experience working to provide a green burial option for my 230-family Reform community, Congregation Hakafa, in Glencoe, Illinois. The traditional Jewish cemetery in which we had a section was not interested in working with us to do this. Instead, we sought to open a small Jewish green section in a traditional multi-faith cemetery, Willow Lawn Cemetery in Vernon Hills, in the near northwest suburbs of Chicago. This required, after getting the cemetery owners to agree to offer green burial, convincing members of my congregation to commit to buying enough plots for the cemetery owners to be willing to establish a Jewish green section. I started this process in November of 2010, and by the time there were enough people committed to this project, the cemetery owners had decided to open a much larger green area, We were the first to purchase in the area, buying our first twenty-five plots in February 2013. We were joined by Lomdim Minyan, an egalitarian community from the Chicago near north suburbs, who bought eleven plots. By June of 2013, these communities together had purchased a total of fifty-four plots. Our section was consecrated with our first burial in May 2013, and a community celebration of the consecration was done in August 2013. Dr. Liz Feldman of Evanston, Illinois, a member of Lomdim and The Progressive Chevra Kadisha, and I will be working in the next year to reach out to other area congregations to interest them in green burial and in this particular cemetery, in order to establish a larger Jewish presence in an area that can provide up to a thousand grave sites. It is of note that neither Hakafa or Lomdim owns its own building, but rents space in other buildings, preserving human and financial resources for educational and outreach activities. We may not know where we will be meeting for services ten years from now, but some of us know where we will be buried! I am a practicing physical therapist, working mostly with geriatric patients to help them care for their bodies as they strive to maintain functional independence. This work of hands-on caring for the living has led me to hands-on care of the dead. I have been an active member of Hakafa since 1993 and currently serve as coordinator and educator of our Chevra Kadisha, started in 2009, as well as being the leader for the women’s tahara team. Through attendance at the Kavod v’Nichum annual conferences and study with the first cohort of students in the Gamliel Institute, beginning in 2009, I became aware that the work of a chevra goes beyond providing tahara. When our rabbi, Bruce Elder, asked me to look for a cemetery in which all members of our congregation could be buried together, including those who are not formal converts to Judaism, I started on a quest which led to my selfish determination to provide a more natural burial for myself and my husband. I am happy that I was able to bring others to the awareness that green burial was their desire, too. I am gladly available to speak with anyone about this topic and can be reached by phone at 847-421-3985 or by e-mail at [email protected]. Endnotes for the first section (1) Deut 34:5-8 - The Death of Moses “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there, in the land of Moab, at the command of the Lord.