Judaism and Death

A year ago, I had to put one of my sick animals down due to a lingering and painful illness. My husband accompanied me to the vet’s office but refused to enter the room or to be present when my beloved animal was given the lethal injection. He kept telling me that he wanted to remember our furry friend as he was and that he did not want to see him lifeless. Personally, I did not understand at the time why, but now I do.

My husband is Jewish and he taught me two profound lessons about death. One is that life and death are distinct. When life is over, it is over and one ought to be returned to the earth as quickly as possible. He believes that the body is only the shell of the full human being that once was. People of the Jewish faith believe that it does not do justice to the deceased to parade the “shell” no matter how dressed up or life-like they appear. The second lesson is that neither a pompous funeral nor fancy designer coffin nor lying in state nor any of the accouterments of status we seek in our lifetime is of ultimate value. Unlike the Egyptians, Jews believe that you cannot take it with you and that death restores that relative perspective.

No matter what, each one of us will die, and just as there is a way to live as a Jew, there is a way to die and be buried as a Jew. There is a spare dignity to Jewish death rituals, and earthiness and a healthy realism about death that are coupled with the honor of the dead. However, more than that, the Jewish way of death contains within its strictures an abiding sensitivity to the living, especially to the survivor, the bereaved, the mourner, and the grief-stricken. I feel that there are two things in particular about Judaism that no other religion offers quite so uniquely. One is the traditional Shabbat; the other is Shiva. Shiva’s seven-day period of mourning is when friends and relatives converge on the bereaved to console, comfort, listen, cry, laugh, retell, or simply sit mute and share the silence and the pain.

I think that the display of honor upon the deceased is central to Jewish mourning rituals. Honor is shown by the people who were related to the dead person through ties of love and of family who come in person to escort and to burry the dead and to comfort the mourners. Jews believe that the ultimate honor one can bestow on the dead is acknowledgement that he or she lived a life interrelated with others and these others care enough to pay tribute in person.