On One Foot
Rabbi Boris Dolin CONGREGATION DORSHEI EMET, MONTREAL
decision has always been made be- fore they come to me. So I just support it from the beginning as long as they can tell me why they’ve made that decision. The service itself is still fairly Jewish. I still do the traditional prayers. We do every- thing that would go along with the traditional funeral service. There is definitely a wide variety of opinions within liberal Judaism. But I think the whole idea of being Reconstructionists is that, while we honour the tradition first, we also have to honour the reality of how
I WOULD NEVER SAY that I recom- mend cremation. As a Reconstruc- tionist rabbi, I honour the tradition first, but I also honour the families and the choices of the person who died. I honour what the tradition says about Kavod Ha’met , honouring the physical body, and having a place for families to go to a gravesite. On the other hand, as a liberal rabbi, I think what matters even more in some cases is someone’s wishes. So if a family wants cremation, I’m not willing to just have an intellec- tual conversation about it. That YOU DON’T SEE in the Torah a direct commandment to bury, or a prohibition against cremation or non- burial. Practically, I don’t think it makes a difference because, by the time you get to Maimonides and the other medieval rabbis, it is clearly codified as a law. Therefore, those who are committed to following halakha are going to take that seri- ously and make sure to bury and not cremate. A lot of halakhot that we accept as given don’t have an actual “Thou shalt … ” or “Thou shalt not … ” in the Torah itself. These are often- times halakhot that evolve as a result of minhag over a long period of time, which eventually gets codified. … Rabbi David Begoun L’CHAIM CENTER, ISRAEL
people live their lives … and the values of the people who are dealing with this situation. I’ve also dealt with families who just don’t have the money to plan a burial service. The end result of this approach is often [that the families] stay con- nected with the Jewish communi- ty. I’ve seen it with cremation, I’ve seen it with weddings, with so many other things. If I can welcome them, and tell them there’s a place for the choice they’ve made, they appreci- ate that there is a place for them in the community. That’s positive.
existence of an afterlife may have that afterlife potentially withheld from them. Centuries ago, if a Jew decided to take the unheard-of measure of having a cremation, it was usually a way to specifically broadcast to the world that they did not believe in the afterlife. But, today, a typical Jew who has a parent or somebody who is cremated is not at all making any kind of theological statement. They’re doing it either out of convenience or affordability, or because they believe it is more environmentally sound or they don’t want to burden family members to have to come visit them. It’s not because they are making a strong theological statement.
I think that cremation presents a huge challenge to congregational rab- bis in our day and age. If I felt there was an opportunity to have a discus- sion with the family members that were in charge and to try to share with them the importance of burial, I would try to have that conversation — but only if I thought there was a possi- bility that it could actually be effective. Theologically, this is how I under- stand the aversion to have anything to do with cremation. We have sources that say that somebody who is cremated will not be resurrected when the Messiah comes. But that’s not really true. What that really means is that somebody who denies the
THERE IS overwhelming evidence for burial as the traditional practice in Judaism. Even those who allow for cremation do not see it as ideal and recognize that, in the wake of the Holocaust, it can be particularly problematic. The main work in the modern era has been to understand what is best to do in a situation where a cremation will happen or has already happened. And yet psychol- ogy, history, and considerations of finance or preference compli- cate that tradition. As I was researching this piece, a colleague of
mine — a rabbi at an egalitarian Conservative congregation — told me about a congregant of his he once assisted in getting his affairs in order, and who insisted on cremation. After the usual pro- testations, the congregant responded: I lost my entire family in the Shoah, and they were burned to ash. Who are you to tell me that when I die, my body can’t be treated as their bodies were? He of- ficiated at the eventual funeral and no longer questions anyone’s motives for cremation, allowing them to choose what they wish.
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