On One Foot
RABBI MORRIS M. SHAPIRO, “CREMATION IN THE JEWISH TRADITION” (1986)
5 THIS EULOGY WAS DELIVERED at a burial of the ashes of six Holocaust vic- tims whose remains were in the possession of the Imperial War Museum. These remains were transferred to the Jewish community of England for an appropriate burial, the first for Holocaust victims in the UK. This case is similar to one in the 1950s, in which ashes of Holocaust victims were brought to Israel to be buried. The ruling of the chief rabbinate at the time was that not only was this burial permitted — at the time, cremation was not allowed in Israel — but it was a noble and holy act. Mirvis echoes this sentiment here and, in doing that, underscores the fact that cremation itself is not the essence of the prohibition; rather, what is problematic is the deliberate act of cremation as willfully going against tradition. EPHRAIM MIRVIS, CHIEF RABBI OF THE UNITED HEBREW CONGREGATIONS OF THE COMMONWEALTH, FROM A DELIVERED EULOGY (2019) We don’t know who you are. We don’t know your names. We don’t know if you are male or female. We don’t know which coun- tries you came from. We don’t know what you did for a living. We don’t have details of your families. But there is one thing that we do know — you were Jewish. And it was for that single reason that you were brutally murdered. … Six million of our people were so cruelly murdered and the vast majori- ty of the members of their families did not have the opportunity to bring them to their eternal rest.
In the final analysis, there is no convincing rea- son why we should deviate from such a sacred established tradition. Nowhere in the Talmud is there any doubt vis-a-vis the established meth- od of burial: the question merely centers around whether we should listen to a person who says “I don’t want to be buried.”… We may safely conclude, then, even though we have reached the conclusion that cremation is against the Jewish tradition, nevertheless if the body has been cremated, there is still a positive mitzvah to bury the ashes. The contention that those who wish to be cremated are apostates or sinners and, therefore, one may not attend to them is not valid in light of our modern experiences. The religious views of those who wish to be cremated are no different from other non-observant Jews. The wish to be cremated, in our days, is rather psychological, not religious.
6 IN THIS RESPONSUM, adopted by the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards, the author upholds the traditional prohibition against cremation but outlines a different policy than the Orthodox approach, holding that the burial of cremains is still a mitzvah. This has become the approach of many rabbis: they will not officiate a service prior to the cremation (which might be abetting an act they do not condone), but they will officiate at a subsequent burial.
20 SUMMER 2026
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