Always Sacred, Never Secret: Honoring Jewish Death Rituals With Sarit Wishnevski

[00:00:00]To them, friends, if you've seen Jewish law reactions, you may have noticed that the character I play most often is death. There's a reason for that. And it isn't just that personifications of death are fascinating. In my life, I have been a mourner and I have also served on the Kadisha Kadisha is a sacred community that comes together at the end of life to care for the deceased and comfort the living. These experiences have given me a profound appreciation for the beauty and power of Jewish end of life rituals and traditions that I don't think are talked about enough. So let's talk about them.

[00:00:30]Today I'm joined by Sit Vishnvki, executive director of Kavikum, an organization that empowers, educates, and trains. Kavikum is Hebrew for honor and comfort. Honoring the body that held a soul and comforting the mourers and the community after a death. Shalom.

[00:00:47]Thank you so much for being here with me today and for being our guide through death.

[00:00:51]>> Thank you so much, Miriam. I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Will you tell us a little bit about how you came to do this very holy work?

[00:00:59]>> So I come to this work through I think a connection that we all have through very intimate relationship with life and death. My personal story involves my grandparents as I think many of our first experiences with death are often elder relatives and I was by both of my grandparents sides when they died. I lived with my grandmother at the end of her life and was by her was by her bedside and was there I remember when my grandfather died as well and being so in there in the moment in that present really shaped how I felt about those moments and these questions of I think aging and family and what we carry from one generation to the next were so deeply woven and personal to me. Um, and one of the things that it also did was it made me realize that as much as I felt comfortable, we didn't talk about it as a family. Like it wasn't part of of the conversation. When I gave birth to my daughter at the height of CO in May of 2020 and I named her for my grandfather, I immediately began asking myself how I was going to talk about it with her. And I don't know if that's normal, right? To be holding a a newborn potato, this sweet bundle of life, right? And looking at it and saying, "Oh, how am I going to teach you about death?" But that's kind of what was coming to me. I think I was I was holding my grandfather in that moment. I was holding my grandmother in that moment. It was an inhale and an exhale in a way, two different sides of the same coin. And I became really curious about Jewish tradition and how we how we navigate those moments. How are we doing things like death? And so I really stepped into this work from that place.

[00:02:29]Um from a curiosity initially about Judaism and dying. I trained to be an end of life doula because of that curiosity. I was always curious about um about that space. I felt really called into that space, but I wasn't ready to step into it fully because I loved the work I was doing professionally. And I took all that professional work, which is at the intersection of innovation and Jewish tradition, and I took this interest in end of life and I combined it into this practice of Kadisha. This is how we show up at the end of life.

[00:02:58]This sacred community of volunteers who come together to build a continuum, right? to be able to guide people when there is no road map. This is a blend of everything I really care about in this moment and everything I really care about so deeply. And so that was what drove me into into this work and into Kabod.

[00:03:15]>> And that's really beautiful because I think what you've touched upon here is there's so many incredible life cycle moments in Judaism that have special rituals around them. One of the things we may not talk about as much are the ones surrounding death. Even though those rituals are sometimes the most powerful and most important and something I think of so very very highly in Judaism, there's something really powerful about these death rituals both for what we offer for the person who has passed away and also for the people who remain, the people who loved that individual, the community that surrounded that individual. And for me it's a little bit different. I like you have experience both as a mourner and like you I cared for my grandmother in her last years and this was during co and prior to that I lost my father when I was 20 but the the interesting thing is for me I knew about kvadisha and actually served on the kvadisha before I had actually become a mourner. I was 17 when I first did this and it shaped my appreciation when I actually did become one myself later on. So I want to actually start at the moment that somebody passes away. The mate and their loved ones, they begin separate but intertwined paths. And I don't mean like the path through the afterlife. That is something that I can talk about in a zillion other videos. I mean what actually happens to the physical human body that held the soul. And I'd like to talk about this path first for the mourers who may have been pregrieving especially if somebody is older or unwell and you know the end is coming and the people may have been pregrieving for a longer or shorter time but now they enter what I think of as these concentric circles of mourning of grief that radiate like ripples from that precise moment of time when the person passes away. And as we know, as anybody who has lost somebody they love knows, those ripples do carry on throughout the rest of our own lives. And the passage of time can make those ripples seem fainter, but they are still there. And we are still moved by them like currents beneath the surface of the water because that initial impact of that moment of death is so deep, is so enormous that it goes across time and space for the rest of us until it is our own time to pass away. So could you tell us a little bit about the deep sorrow concept in Judaism? Anoot deep sorrow.

[00:05:33]>> Beautiful. I love that that image where the kind of life is this the water surface and those ripples. Any is such an incredible time this liinal space that Judaism has marked. So essentially after someone has died, the people who will become the mourers but are not technically in mourning yet, they enter into this period of time that we call anoot. An is can be essentially any time from the time of death until burial or final disposition. So it is this time in which the people who are grieving the deepest have no obligation. Nothing is asked of them. Their only obligation is to move towards and make the arrangements for the funeral and the burial or final disposition. What Judaism essentially does is it recognizes that you were about to move into another stage, right?

[00:06:21]And this is this is the in between time.

[00:06:24]And that in between time is also mirrored for the mate, for the deceased person where you are no longer in your body, but you were not yet in the ground, right? There's this there's this kind of like before stage. And so you have these two essentially groups of people, right, who are navigating a complete unknown. There's been a complete shattering and there is nothing that should be done in that time other than to move into the next part. So from unin we move then into the funeral and funeral and burial we talk about they are two separate ritual moments often they happen together graveside but they don't have to and sometimes funerals are happening in funeral homes or in synagogues or in other places funeral is the service and then you have burial which has its own attached service to it and for many people who are making other choices these days other than grand burial that will look different too what we call final disposition the funeral opens with ka and I think ka is one of the most stunning rituals that we have because it takes again this liinal space this what's something that's happening inside of us that's not visible and it makes it visible right it makes it deeply visible it used to be and many people still do this that the clothes that they are wearing it at the funeral are the clothes ore at the time when they hear that somebody has died it's a tearing of cloth right it is the tearing of the garments that we are wearing it's like almost like a like guttural like the it's in our bodies it's just it's feeling, right? That is so in us that we we a world has been torn open.

[00:07:56]And one one beautiful teaching is that you could sew it up, right? You could fix these clothes, but they'll never look the same. And nowadays, often you might see at a Jewish funeral the mourers wearing small black ribbons, right? Some we've many of us have moved from tearing of our physical clothing, the the clothes that we wear all the time to wearing something more symbolically. that that whether it's the clothing or the black ribbon that will often stay on for the length of the morning period. It is a sign of our brokenness of our world being torn open.

[00:08:28]It is the first things you will notice because we don't walk around with our clothes torn. Um so we have this moment of something is different. We are different and this is how we're going to show it from the funeral right which also has the tradition of hes which is giving eulogies. we move into burial.

[00:08:44]And another term for burial, if you choose burial, is levya, which is one of my absolute favorite words that we use in Jewish tradition. Leva, or you might hear someone say the leva. Leva means to accompany. And when we think about the moment of accompanyment, this moment of burial, this moment of being with both the mourers and the deceased that we are accompanying them into this next phase, right? The mourers are beginning to move into mourning, right? Grief and mourning are also separate. I want to name that.

[00:09:18]The grief journey and and our our our rabbis and all the wise people who have educated us and we hold both really they're separate. at grief and mourning and we're moving the mourers or the soon to be mourers into their mourning process and we are accompanying them in that journey just as we are accompanying the deceased from the world of the living to the world of the dead. Some of the traditions within a Jewish funeral are also um there's just there's so much symbolism. We carry the Aron the casket and there's a tradition of stopping seven times on the way to the grave and that tradition signifies we don't want to do this like we are hesitating carrying out this task. This is not something that we step into lightly.

[00:09:56]This is not something we are rushing to go through. We are we are really intentional in that this is this is a transformational moment. We don't want to be doing this. There's liturgy that is recited and then there is a common tradition of filling the grave. It's one of the it's one of the gifts that we get to do for for the deceased and also for the living. Often it'll be the mourers uh who are going to shovel first. The traditional also is to um begin shoveling using the back of the shovel.

[00:10:25]Again, a hesitation. I I don't want to do this. This shovel was not created to bury the dead. This is I this is different, right? we're in a different time and then the shovel gets put often back into the earth for someone else to pick up. We don't hand it to one another. This isn't that kind of a task.

[00:10:42]This is a now I step up and I take the shovel if I am going to be part of it and I begin to fill that in. There's also, you know, the moment that we hear the dirt on the coffin. Yeah. On the Aron, um that there again these these physical sounds um these that you know, it's in our bodies, we hear it, they it's it's mimemetic, right? Like all of this it's it's sensory how we approach it. It grounds us in this earth at a time when we feel so separated from it.

[00:11:08]>> Just as you're saying this, I'm having such a visceral flashback to >> 20 years ago when my father passed away and being there and shoveling. I shoveled well the whole family obviously everyone participated but I kept shoveling and shoveling and shoveling and shoveling and I it's just so visceral to remember that because I this was like the last thing I felt I could do for him is do it myself and sometimes there are you know there are times when people do a a more symbolic >> they do one shovel full and then professionals come in and fill it in.

[00:11:44]>> Yeah. But I do remember just as you were saying it, this this memory of thinking how important it was for me, 20-year-old me, to do as much of the actual burial as possible. And I remember the pain that I felt in my body doing that cuz it's a lot of dirt to move. But how somehow that felt like an outward manifestation just like crea, just like tearing, an outward manifestation, the physical pain that I felt in my body from shoveling of the inner pain of the loss of of a parent. So sorry to interrupt, but how you described that so beautifully and how that snapped me right back to 20 years ago standing there with a shovel.

[00:12:20]>> Yeah. Yeah. It's Thank you for sharing that. I I can I can feel that that kind of that urgency too, right? Like it's my job. It's my gift. I get to this is the last thing I get to do. Uh you you reminded me of my own father who's the least religious person that I know who stood there and shoveled for a cousin and a very good friend knowing that likely no one else was going to do that and had that urgency like I have to do this right that's >> it's it's a gift I think a lot of our rituals in a way are done as >> to to to not only for for healing and for life and and structurally and how we you know how we are Jewish but in like this is this is an opportunity, right?

[00:13:03]>> Yeah.

[00:13:04]>> It's not just an obligation for some, right?

[00:13:06]>> This is but it's also for all of us an opportunity to help move us from one place into another. It's the power of ritual. And we we close at the cemetery and then there's this tradition of making two lines.

[00:13:20]>> Yeah.

[00:13:20]>> So the the grave is filled and now anyone who is there who is not a mourner um makes two lines away from the grave towards you know wherever you're headed.

[00:13:30]the cars, the exit, and the mourers walk through those two lines. And we there's a traditional saying that we we say at the time um may be comforted among all of the mourers of Zion and Jerusalem. This idea that we are you are not alone, right?

[00:13:48]That we are we are part of this collective, but may you be comforted like we are here. And we say that as they walk through. And it is I'm I'm getting goosebumps even just thinking about some of the ones that I've I've been present for. It is there's a witnessing, >> right? There's this kind of like extending your energy like towards somebody.

[00:14:07]>> There is nothing that we can say, right?

[00:14:09]There is nothing in this moment I can do.

[00:14:11]>> You just did the hardest thing. And then we get in our cars typically, right? And we generally accompany very often the mourers and as they begin their ship up process. And there's some there are more rituals along the way. There's handwashing. There's a stunning ritual of the first meal for the mourers which is not prepared by themselves or by often the people who are at the funeral but by their neighbors. The people who may not be so close to them as they were at the funeral or the burial but the people who live amongst them who show up to to feed them to make sure that they are fed in their traditional foods depending on your background.

[00:14:48]What we eat often very simple foods round foods an egg things like that.

[00:14:52]Shiva is a Hebrew for seven and it's a 7-day period of morning and we say sit shiva because the tradition was to sit on the ground. So, you know, a lot of the things that we talked about are these moments of doing things different than we typically do. And this is one of those one of those things, right?

[00:15:08]Everyone else might be standing or sitting normally, but now the the mourers are going to be on the ground.

[00:15:13]Uh we do things like covering the mirrors. Um lots of reasons for that. Uh there's often a candle burning that'll go for the entire time. These are special. These are they'll burn for a week. Typically people bring food and so that you know it's and different people have different traditions. So if you're visiting some people are like you never eat the food. Other people like you have to eat the food. But if you come into a house of morning there will typically be there'll be food and likely photographs and other artifacts of somebody's life to provoke stories to share memory. One of my favorite things that we've kind of gotten really far away from, I think, in a lot of communities, but one of the powerful reasons for SHA, right, for this sitting is not for the people who are in mourning to host, right? We don't want this to feel like um a cocktail party. And I think so often in today's day and age, we have we feel really uncomfortable, right, around death. And that the discomfort that we feel about death is often translated into I have to fill this. I need to fix this. I need to I'm going to I'll talk to someone over here. You know, I'll ask about how they're doing in their life or I'm going to, you know, I'll I'll grab a bite to eat and something to drink. But the one thing that we're actually supposed to do when we come into Asia home is really nothing, right? We're supposed to come in and sit down across from the mourers and just be there.

[00:16:27]>> Yeah.

[00:16:27]>> We're not actually supposed to talk until we are spoken to, until the mourner speaks. So they may ask us a question, tell a story, they might cry.

[00:16:39]And the the piece that I think is one of the hardest things for us to do, but also the most important is the witnessing.

[00:16:47]Our role of just being present, of witnessing them in their grief, holding that regardless of how uncomfortable it might be.

[00:16:55]>> Sometimes people feel like they need to talk because there's silence, but really everything is what does the mourner need? And if the mourner speaks to you, fine. But maybe they do not want to hear anything right now. This is not a small a small talk time. This is not a chitchat.

[00:17:11]This is really your present with them.

[00:17:14]And if they want to talk, great. And if they don't, you just be there.

[00:17:19]>> Yeah. Yeah. And we live in that world, right? Seven days. And again, the mourers are freed of all their obligations. And they are not expected to do anything else in this time, right?

[00:17:28]There is no there is no obligation to to work to show up at synagogue. This is the deepest grief, right? This is that time. It's sacred time really. Um and what a gift that we have that. And from there the the bridge between Shiva and Shiva 7 Shiva and which is the first 30 days. The bridge is actually this walk >> and we don't many people don't know about the walk but it's again this physical ritual that takes something that is so unnameable something we we just can't talk about and it transforms it into something actual something that is visible to the outside world. The ritual is to get up.

[00:18:10]It's like a getting up right. We have sat Shiva and now we are getting up from Shiva and the practice is to get up and to walk around the block whatever that looks like wherever you are and it's a symbolic walk often and maybe a close friend or their family members will come to a company again right this idea of accompanying them and physically walk around the block to signal I am getting up right you're you're making this boundary between one time of being until the next to say I am I'm about to re-enter it doesn't say I'm right just says I am I am going to now re-enter the world and I think our our scholars in all their wisdom there's something really powerful about this that we could get lost in our grief >> we could sink into depths and not come out and they they don't say you're not sad anymore right they're not saying you're not grieving anymore right we don't get commentary much on that that's not up to other people to dictate or explain but it says but now you have to move back into the world, right? Do not keep yourself separate from them. And so we get up and we walk. And now we actually have to move back into the world, but there's a recognition that the first 30 days are also different.

[00:19:23]And so for Schlushim, this is a slow re-entry. There's a practice of not uh shaving. You're not going to big parties, things like that. There's still a boundary between the whole world and you. And then after that, we're moving back into the bigger world, right? It's like the doors that keeps opening and opening. Yeah.

[00:19:42]>> And for many who are saying kadesh the mourner's prayer daily. So people are often saying that for the first depending on relationship and you know where you come from but they're saying this prayer for the first 11 months of their grieving process of their mourning process and at the end of that the process closes and at the year mark that is what we call York site and that's the year anniversary of the death and that that mark is often done with lighting this site candle right so we we carve out a space we welcome them in obviously for many of us we're carrying them with us always, but it's this moment of it's been a year, right? Like we are we are tracking this time. Uh and there's also after the first year a tradition of unveiling the headstone. So at a a Jewish funeral typically you do not also have a headstone when you when you first go to to a funeral burial, but that will come as a ritual moment a year following the death. It does not doesn't have to be exact. It's not hala. It's not law, but um that is that is the practice. And so you know from there we move back in.

[00:20:44]But as we all know, right, there's no timeline. There's no trajectory that says like, okay, now I'm fully in the world, right? Like now I am completely here in some way, shape, or form. It's going to look different for each of us at every step along the way. So let's go back a little bit. We've now hit the 12 months, the one year. Let's go right back to that very first day when the loved one passes away. What happens to the ma the body of the person who is now gone >> after their deceased person arrives at a funeral home? This is often when the kadisha when the sacred community of volunteers arrives. Judaism has a tradition not to leave a deceased person alone from the time of death until burial or final disposition. There are several reasons for that. One of the reasons came from first a very practical place. We we didn't want the body to be desecrated. We you know things like animals, things that go bump in the night, grave robbers, so many things.

[00:21:41]The body in Judaism is a holy vessel.

[00:21:44]It's a holy vessel for our souls. And that should be treated as such. And so one of the two core rituals that the kadisha, this community provides is called or guard or watching. These days when we have fewer concerns about things that go bump in the night, it's taken on much more of a spiritual component. The guarding is really, you know, it's physical, but it's also a spiritual guarding. Um, Judaism is not one central belief, but there is a commonly held belief that the soul is still hovering, that it's still present. So just like we talked about um an being this in between time for the soontobe mourers right the people who have just suffered this loss who are navigating this really intense initial period of time one might imagine that the soul is going through that same moment they've been in a physical realm for so long and now there's a separation what is happening where am I what's going on that sense of confusion possibly and so this idea that we can be there as a bomb in a way to soothe to help with this transition is kind of remarkable, >> right? And if you don't believe in the soul, let's just imagine that this is still a holy being, >> right? And that this care and this comfort, right, can go to them, but also to their loved ones to know that their person isn't alone, right? hasn't gone from being among the living and being cared for and being present with other people to absolutely now nothing that we're still there, right? That we're going to be there the whole way through.

[00:23:22]And the Kadisha is comprised of people in the community, right? It's people who may go to synagogue with the family or the person who died. Um they may be people who shopped next to them or were at the library or studied with them.

[00:23:35]There are people from all walks of life within that community, that geographic community. Um and often um we don't know who is actually there. One of the things about the kabra kadisha is there's a sense of privacy that we hold really dear. Someha practice full anonymity. We like to teach if we don't talk about it no one's going to know about it. But we'll get into a little bit later why that's really important.

[00:23:58]>> We don't share like who shows up from the kakadisha. But we like to say it's always sacred never secret. Like I grew up thinking that the kakadisha was the secret society. And anytime I ask that question, Miriam, someone's like, "Oh, yeah, me too. The secret society in Judaism." Like, "No, we don't have that.

[00:24:14]It's not secret." Is that what that is?

[00:24:16]No. So, yeah. So, we're there, right?

[00:24:18]We're there from the time that someone arrives typically until the funeral. One of the other rituals that happens in that time. uh and it's really the core >> part of kadisha work the beating heart if you will it's called tahara which is the watching the garden and tahara which is the ritual washing dressing and casketing of the deceased the tahara ritual is one of the most stunning rituals that we have in Judaism and I would say one of the least known rituals >> yes >> the volunteers in the community often a team of four or five are coming to enact this ritual it is a fourpart art choreography, if you will, that involves a physical washing, a spiritual washing, a dressing in burial garments that we use called um and then a raising up to place in the Aron into the casket. This can take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half depending, but it is done with the most love, the most respect, the most care. It's just it's unbelievable. And it's paired with liturgy that gets recited the whole way through. It's holy. I just I I feel like it's it's a gift to be able to do it.

[00:25:28]>> Yes.

[00:25:28]>> As a living person. Um and we often hear this from people who are part of the Kadisha. They'll leave a tahara and the sky is a little bit bluer, right? The air is a little bit crisper. We we hug our family a little bit tighter. When you when you touch death in that way, often it impacts you as a living person in really holy and remarkable ways. And it's also this incredible gift that we give to both the deceased and to the people who care for them, right? To know that the last hands who touch the person that they love might have known them or know them, right, the living and are doing so with the most respect and dignity and care. That is that is an incredible gift and one that can never be repaid.

[00:26:07]>> Right.

[00:26:08]>> Yes. It's it's often described as the mitzvah for which there is no repayment.

[00:26:13]The person you're >> taking a shame, >> right? Right. cannot take care, you know, cannot reciprocate in any way, they are infected. So there's >> this idea that it is so profoundly different from any other type of mitzvah or ritual that we typically would see in in Judaism and do in Judaism. And to your point, the Kadisha really are the last people on this earth to see the face of that person who has passed away.

[00:26:39]Traditionally in Judaism, there's not an open casket situation. I once had a conversation with a member of the kadisha here in Boston and they told me about a practice they have to be fully present in this ritual and part of that is to learn something as much as they can actually about the person who has passed away so they can have specific intentions in mind as they perform the ritual washing. So for example uh when they wash the hands they would be thinking I know this person knitted blankets for people. So they think of that as they wash the hands or as they wash the feet they know that this person used to take rescue dogs on hikes and that's what they will have in mind as they wash that part of the body. So each time there is a an action done to wash and prepare the body, they are thinking about who this person was in life and keeping that in mind and bringing that into the preparation room as they prepare this person for their final journey. Also just because the human body in and of itself is considered bellum elohim made in the image of God.

[00:27:39]So one wants to be as present and have as much intention as possible when doing these rituals. What have you found to be really important thoughts or intentions or rituals or ideas for folks who do serve on Kadisha to carry into that room with them as they do this ritual?

[00:27:57]>> There are so many values and intentions that we bring into this, right? You can imagine if something as straightforward as as the ritual itself, right, has incredible depth and layers to it. And one of the ones that we teach that I think is really special and that a lot of us carry in. You know, one of the things that I mentioned earlier, right, was about the secret society versus like privacy and anonymity versus secrecy. We recognize, right, as volunteers that we are seeing someone in a really vulnerable state. We are about to be present in a way for someone that we never would have been in their life. And we don't hold that lightly. One of the other reasons like we don't talk about who we've served is so that that no one should ever feel both either, you know, the reason to say thank you to us. Like we're not looking for the thanks, but also never to cause harm or to cause anyone any any embarrassment because we we have been in a really really important vulnerable moment with the physical body. And one of the values that we carry in intention that many people carry in with them is non-judgmental love.

[00:28:58]>> Right? We don't we don't know everything about this person. We as as humans, we are so quick to to to make judgments, right? Like our our critical flaws, right? Like we we cannot help but make these judgments, but we show up from a place we do our best to center ourselves in non-judgmental love. We don't know about their life. We don't have to approve of everything in their life and every choice that they made, things on their physical appearance. Our responsibility in that room is to care for them from that holy place. In fact, um that idea of non-judgmental love also elevates us into a place of godliness, right? It literally asks us to to become messengers of the divine um to step outside of our base humanity and be someone different for that really short period of time. And that also enables us to show up with like more dignity and more respect and more tenderness in those moments. One of the things that we do at the very beginning of a tahara and some groups do it at the beginning and some do it at the end and some do it at both is we we actually ask for forgiveness. There's a prayer called the mila which is um some people might know mkila from the yum kipur prayers asking for forgiveness from from other living people but we ask forgiveness from the dead and it is the time that if you do the prayers in liturgy in Hebrew we encourage you if Hebrew is not your mother tongue to say it in English because you're talking directly to the ma to the deceased person and you're saying like please forgive me yeah >> please forgive me for anything that I might have done there's another teaching um intention that we like to teach to help bring into the room which actually comes from uh one of my dear teachers and and mentors Nina Rubin who did a beautiful study on the words tahour and tame. So tahara it means to purify right it's a purification tame is often translated as impure say pure and impure and they're really rough translations like they just don't serve us so well the the language and I grew up I went to orthodox day school Jewish day school growing up and I grew up with this real binary like tahor good tame bad >> as did Nina Ruben who then worked really hard to come to a new understanding of these terms and offers There's I think a different framework for which to hang all of this which leads to an intention we can bring into this work with us. And what Nina did was she essentially did a a full review of the text of the Torah and every time we see the word tahor and every time we see the word tame she comes to offer a shift in the lens. So what if because like there are things that make us tame that bring us into a state of impurity that are really holy and beautiful like childbirth or sex.

[00:31:37]Whereas tahor though is often used in a state of of wholeness, right? Like the pure flower, the pure oil, the pure gold. And so we look at kind of like how the terms are used and it it wasn't the the scales didn't feel balanced. And so Nino said, what if we think of Tahor and Tame a little differently? What if we think about Tahor being spiritually whole? M >> and what if we think you know when we're talking about us and what if we think of Tame as spiritually vulnerable or spiritually broken open and she teaches that we're born into this world to right we're born in whole and life as we tumble through and we bump up against all of the things that will break us open whether that's disease whether that's loss whether that's heartbreak >> or losing a job or losing a friendship or whatever those moments are right they will break us open time and time again and we have to we have to find our way back to being our whole selves. Our tahor Judaism offers mikvah, >> right? Ritual immersion in in a body of water as a way to come back to wholeness, right? If we're thinking about um preparing ourselves um for ritual, like full ritual preparedness.

[00:32:46]We may also think of coming back to our tour in simpler ways like a therapy session, a walk in the woods, getting to journal, making yourself a cup of coffee, whatever it is that kind of reenters and brings us back, which will look different, right? like depending on where you are in your life, but we're constantly in this eb and flow, this movement from what is whole to what is broken and back again and back again.

[00:33:05]And at the time of our death, we can no longer do that for ourselves.

[00:33:11]And so she teaches that it is the role of the kadisha to bring us back into our tahor that the tahara that this ritual pouring of water, right? This continuous flow, the living waters, the love and the care and the gentleness bring us back into a state of tur as we are leaving the world a gift to give us that we can no longer give ourselves. Oh, that's so beautiful.

[00:33:37]>> Yeah. Wow.

[00:33:39]As as somebody who learns to all the time, those terms, you know, ritually pure and impure are everywhere and they carry a lot of baggage. it can be really difficult to explain and really difficult to grasp because they carry such weight. I think that's a really beautiful explanation and lens through which to look at these terms and especially in this context since we're talking about specific terms. I would love to talk a little bit about the fact that many of these death rituals that we've been talking about, they're not explicitly spelled out in one place in Jewish text. We get it all from here and this is why we do XYZ thing. Um, it doesn't say in the Torah and these are all the steps that you're going to do.

[00:34:21]It doesn't say that in the tomet either.

[00:34:23]There's certain areas that we learn from different texts, but it's not like in one place where it's all written out.

[00:34:29]Judaism has many topics where you have to understand it in from many sources, many teachings and to get to the understanding of how we do these practices today. But so I'm curious, what are some of the sources that do inform where we derive the practices that we've been talking about?

[00:34:44]>> Yeah, absolutely. It's one of my favorite things to teach and talk about because to your point right I think a lot of people imagine that something as sacred and as important as the things that we're talking about right and the like they must come right from the depths and I posit that they do and many people right that we've been doing this for millennia we've been washing bodies and caring for one another with this deep love and respect for a really long time >> and we don't have the proof text for it the first time that we get a full book that is written that outlines the liturgy and the steps that names that talks about the Tahar ritual isn't until the 1600s. It's actually 400 years ago to the year 1626.

[00:35:26]>> Wow. Rabbi Raba writes a book that gives us the this information. It's called Maavoke and it's the first time that we get it written down in some sort of way.

[00:35:37]And that's not to say that we haven't been doing it. There there are moments across time and cultural artifacts and other texts that indicate that this was happening in different ways. Maybe not with the same exact liturgy, maybe not with the same terminology attached to it, >> but it was happening.

[00:35:52]>> Um, but cottification of it, right?

[00:35:54]>> It was happening quietly. It was happening in the communities. was happening as part of Jewish life but it wasn't being kind of explored or looked at in that in that way >> in like one cohesive place where you go and you find all the things that you should do >> like where what are the laws right doesn't exist so we say this is mostly Minhag this is mostly tradition it is not it is not law and it's incredible to see also the different mhagim that come right that across the world across different communities even how it's being done and how it's being done maybe slightly differently in a slightly different order, you know, slightly different rituals within the Tahara itself. And it's really it's really incredible when you think about this kind of development of the ritual to know that >> kind of like power to the people like we've taken it right and we're going to use it. There's core elements that I would argue, you know, stay the same and within that there are adjustments. But one of the texts that we have that when we look back, it's it's a great text to look at. It's really the only mention of these groups. Uh it comes from Mo Katan.

[00:36:56]Oh, one of my favorite trackates, Moatan 27B. The Gumar relates that when Rav Hanuna once happened to come to a place called Demata, he heard the sound of a chauffear announcing that a person had died in the town. This is something we've seen in other stories in the Talwood, including memorably in Baba Mitsia 59, the oven of Aknai story. So that a chauffear is a symbol that somebody has passed away. Okay. When he saw some people doing work, he said to them, "Let these people be under an excommunication. Is there not a dead person in town?" They said to him, "There are separate groups in the town, each one responsible for its own dead."

[00:37:34]Knowing that the deceased was not from our group, we continued our work. He said to them, "If so, it's permitted to you." And he revoked his excommunication. He's like, "Oh, I had no idea this was your local custom. My oopsy whoops, my bad. They have a system already worked out here."

[00:37:49]>> Yeah. This text does two really important things. It both mentions the groups which we can get into a little bit here and it also indicates minhag right the the tradition of the place which is really important especially as we come into kind of modern time.

[00:38:04]>> Yeah.

[00:38:04]>> But I'm curious when you're reading this like what's standing out to you with Rav Hamuno when he's when he comes into this town like what's what does it indicate this this first part? These folks already have an established death practice and they've already decided which groups of people will be responsible when somebody passes away.

[00:38:25]It sounds like they have a spreadsheet.

[00:38:26]They've got this organized. They they know who will be doing this and who's going to still be doing whatever other jobs need to be taken care of in town.

[00:38:35]They have already a structure in place.

[00:38:38]He's coming ahead and assuming that they don't and thus they should be excommunicated and then he has to walk that back because they are very organized. There is a group there is a groupisha as it were a community dedicated to this specific task that needs to be done. Um so that says to me this practice exists by the time he enters the town they have this practice already.

[00:39:01]>> Yeah. Yeah. They've already set up an entire system, right? And that system we can extrapolate is based on our friend Rav Hamuna like initial kind of appall too.

[00:39:11]>> He's like right >> like what what's going on? It it shows us right the absolute importance.

[00:39:17]>> Yeah. He shot their work. What are you doing?

[00:39:21]>> Why are you doing where I come from? He's saying like we stop everything. everything in this town stops and we show up to take care of the dead, right? Like this is such a tremendous and important moment. Like we should all stop and we don't know much about this town.

[00:39:40]This town also as far as I as far as I know and I'm not a town scholar, but it didn't exist on the map. Right? This is kind of more of a parable, but we might assume that this town has grown to such a size >> that could we all stop, right? Is it a different world? like, you know, is it important that everybody stops what they're doing and that then attends to it? We have a lot of stuff we don't know that's happening here, right? But this town has evolved to create a system so that they do not ignore when there's a death, >> right?

[00:40:11]>> But they have come to a new way of of approaching it >> and it's news to him when he arrives >> and it's totally news to him which is all I mean like the the hubris of it, right? Like I I'm in town like here.

[00:40:23]>> Okay. Yeah.

[00:40:25]>> But also right like that's that's so it's fascinating like because it also lets us know that when you come to a new place right because he revokes his excommunication when you come to a new place you follow the traditions of that place and for Kadisha too that's really important because we respond to a moment right we don't have time to craft new ways of doing every time like someone shows up like to be part of a tahara for the like this is how we do it.

[00:40:50]>> Yeah. you're going to follow the rule.

[00:40:52]And so in Jewish tradition, right, this idea of like, you know, if you show up at a synagogue on a Friday night and they're using a different tune for >> you're not going to be like, "No, that's use this sad when you're praying. Use this sedor, not the one you have here.

[00:41:05]Use the one I'm bringing."

[00:41:07]>> I think there's also like you can extrapolate from this a lot of things about how different practices in Judaism, there's maybe a group that comes in and they assume that their way is right and thus the people doing it a different way are wrong. Um, but it's interesting here. He really jumps the gun and goes right to excommunication.

[00:41:22]That's how seriously it's taken, but also how little he understands or perceives around him. And then he has to walk that back. So, I think moral of the story, find out what the local custom is. That's what you go by. You don't come in and impose yours. And then you won't have to pretend that you did not excommunicate people cuz that is kind of a big deal.

[00:41:42]>> Yeah. A little embarrassing.

[00:41:43]>> A little more.

[00:41:44]>> I mean, I'm sure he's going to be okay.

[00:41:45]>> Yeah. But we see these groups and that that's really exciting, right? Like it's the very first time. They're not calledisha. We don't know what rituals they're doing, right? Caring for the dead too looked really different at the time that this was written. Um we often we died at home, right? Death looks really different >> across the board now likely, right? We died at home. The role of the kadish at the time too was it covered a spectrum, right? It was this this kind of from visiting the sick through comforting the mourers.

[00:42:13]>> Yeah.

[00:42:13]>> And in between that, right? So from imminent death until like caring for the mourners or through caring for the mourers. But you had the moment of death, right? When the the mate would be carried out on a beer.

[00:42:25]>> Yeah.

[00:42:25]>> Right. You had um there were rituals of of stamping in the streets. There was whaling. There was the grave. The professional whalers >> who were often women. I I know this because this happened in Moatan around I forget exactly what page, but there's this whole thing about hiring professional mourners to lament kind of bringing us back into like that the you have the physical tear. You've got the the noise like it's it's the yeah sensory.

[00:42:51]>> Yeah.

[00:42:52]>> Moving things from the inside to the outside. But you have this group that would do every like they sewed the burial garments. They dug the grave.

[00:42:58]They did the tahara. They probably led the funeral and the burial itself, right? They were the ones like maybe giving eulogies also. And so their role is really pivotal. And so to be now in a place in time where we're saying, okay, like >> it doesn't belong to everybody in the community in the same way. It's beginning to shift.

[00:43:18]>> So we get this mention, right, of the groups and we get the reflection of how important it is to stop what you're doing and care for the dead. And what's interesting is in that in that story, in that parable, we get the idea that they knew, right? They knew it wasn't the death maybe wasn't a surprise. They knew who was supposed to care. Maybe it was the sound the chauffear made. it was blessed in a certain way. It was like for a specific group. One thing that we've learned also that elevates how important this is, right? Like how important it is that we we we stop what we're doing and we care. And like in our modern world, right, obviously like the the WhatsApp chains is like our modern chauffar. But >> yeah, >> when there's a death, right, like how how we're supposed to move into that space as people who are on the outside, right? As people who are caring for other people in that. And there there's a a teaching around a mate mitzvah. And a mate mitzvah is um someone who has died who doesn't have anyone to care for them, right? Who whose family can't pick up the phone, who has died alone, where there is no no family. All of the rules essentially get set aside. And Rashi, who one of my favorite gods, gets into a a story about he explains about a maintenance spot that even a priest, even someone when we talked about Tahor and Tame becoming ritually impure, right? Like the priests at the level of class, right? Like you you don't touch a dead body, right? And even nowadays, many people who are kohanim, who are of the priest descendency, they won't join a kadisha, right? They don't you can't, right? You cannot touch death in that way. And there's all sorts of rules about how you show up at a a cemetery or not and when and how and all of this, but that in the case of a mate that even a priest who would normally avoid all contact with the dead must step forward, >> right? Like it is so important that all the rules go out the window. And it establishes this principle that no person should be abandoned in death.

[00:45:12]>> Nobody is too important to do this.

[00:45:15]>> Yeah. Yeah. You have to show up for it.

[00:45:17]Which is so powerful, right? Like when we think about Jew Jewish life and Jewish death are so deeply inter intertwined and the responsibility falls on all of us as a community. And I think for modern day like when we read that through a modern lens also that value right that like no one is too important to show up and stop what you're doing whether it's someone you know or like this is this is a very specific moment but like could we not carry over that teaching into how we show up in our modern world.

[00:45:47]>> Yeah.

[00:45:48]>> Right. Like just show up like this is so important.

[00:45:54]>> Absolutely. We have an obligation not just to to the dead but to the living.

[00:45:58]There's attached to this, right? So if you think back, so there's this time of like abandonment, right? Like you have a body and maybe it's not abandonment but like you have a body that's unclaimed like someone has died that they don't have family. So we need to show up as a community. We are this family. We are going to take care in this moment. A little bit later we come to to a story of Raban Gamliel who has a really interesting reaction to the times. We've kind of like fast forwarded a few hundred years and we're living now in a time when there are incredible divides, economic divides in society. I mean, there always are, but now they're even more prevalent. And they are such that there are poor families that are actually abandoning their dead like they are leaving their dead on the side of the road like unclaimed because they don't have the money to have an elaborate beautiful funeral burial, right? They can't afford the nice garments that other people are being dressed in. They can't, you know, they can't whatever, you know, that what needed to be paid for in that moment. And they were embarrassed. And so rather than suffer that embarrassment on top of the grief, they would abandon their debt. And Rabangle looks out on this situation and says, "When I die, this great rabbi, right, thousands of followers, when I die, I don't want the elaborate funeral." Raang says I don't I don't want the fancy give me a simple burial and from there we derive the practices to where we are now. You know not every part of the world uses a casket but in Jewish in Jewish areas where you are using a casket for burial the preference is the simplest a plain pine box. Um we actually got that term in the in the 1980s from Rabbi Arie Goodman who wrote a book trying to bring us back into the simplicity again. So often we in our communities get pulled into the trends like we're human.

[00:47:48]>> Yeah.

[00:47:49]>> You know, and it's amazing. There are real trends.

[00:47:52]>> A casket should not be a flex. Like I think this is what a really truly beautiful thing in Judaism. They're like, "No, everyone is equal in death.

[00:48:00]>> You don't you do not get a fancy schmancy >> casket because you are rich and thus you are better. Everyone gets >> like nobody should feel right in death.

[00:48:10]We are all the same. We bury the same.

[00:48:13]We're dressed the same. The Kadisha shows up the same to offer the same level of care.

[00:48:19]>> That's what it should be because that's what it is.

[00:48:22]>> Yeah.

[00:48:22]>> We can't take with us the wealth and the riches and the whatever, right?

[00:48:26]>> Yeah.

[00:48:27]>> We are at the end the same. And that underlying theme, right, it gets really woven through even into into modern >> traditions. Yeah. So, as we've just sort of talked about, Judaism is not a static thing that has existed in the exact same way forever until the present. It adapts. It changes. It is dynamic. And that's one of the most fascinating things about it to me. What are some of the changes that you are seeing happening right now?

[00:48:53]>> Yeah. I think so often we get caught up in thinking about Judaism aesthetic.

[00:48:56]>> It must be the same. It's it's been that way since. It's >> been that way forever.

[00:49:00]>> It has not.

[00:49:01]>> Absolutely not. we are seeing it in some really fascinating and beautiful and important ways. One of the ways that we we talk a lot about is around gender expansiveness and the the liturgy and the practices of the kadisha specifically have been in a binary.

[00:49:17]>> Yeah.

[00:49:17]>> Right. They've really been one way for a really long time. They haven't had uh the liturgy edits or the practices edits or the structural edits to be able to actually serve everyone in our community the way that they deserve to be served both as volunteers and as the mate as the deceased. And so there is a lot of work uh being done now to open up the binary to think about people in our community who are non-binary. Um there are a lot of work also around trans bodies so that to ensure that everyone is treated with the utmost dignity and respect in the way that they should be and so there is there's tremendous work happening across the country um across pluralist Kadisha and a lot of places to grow those practices and we we have the beautiful fortune of being able to partner with Keshet also as we begin to um which is an organization committed to LGBTQ plus um equality and Judaism to help uh think about what are those edits and how are we doing that in the ways that are respectful and sustainable and inclusive.

[00:50:20]>> Another thing that we are seeing also is, you know, I use the word disposition a lot.

[00:50:25]>> Yes, >> we'll always advocate for a grand burial. The, you know, burial touching earth, our full bodies in contact with the earth, right? Whether that was in a cave or in the ground is a traditional Jewish way. It's not always green burial. I will say that especially in modern age, but it's it's what what we would point to if someone said like, well, what's the what's the Jewish way to do this? And there are a lot of new dispositions that are coming into uh into into modern life, right? Like a lot of people are making choices and those include things like cremation. They include natural organic reduction or human composting, um aquamation, um which is by water.

[00:51:03]>> That one is >> by water.

[00:51:07]>> Yeah. Yeah. Incredible processes. is there's I just learned about mycelium coffins which is a whole other way >> and some of them feel really far from Jewish tradition and others feel a little bit closer but at the end of the day my role um at home is not to um to pass laws about um the choices that people make but what we can do and what we can talk about is how to show up regardless of the choices that people make >> and to be able to offer to harah or until that final disposition.

[00:51:37]>> Yeah.

[00:51:37]>> Right. Um, I think that there's something my rabbis nor go to synagogue talked a lot about is you really have the opportunity here for two mitzvah, right? You have the opportunity to, let's say, do a Jewish burial and to have a tahara.

[00:51:51]If you're not going to have a Jewish burial, should we take away the opportunity for the other >> mitzvah, right? This other obligation, this other beautiful opportunity.

[00:52:00]>> I imagine a lot of folks heard you say cremation and went because, well, obvious reasons. But the truth is that it's not your decision as the Kadisha to decide if somebody else has decided already when they were alive and they made it known that this is what they wanted to happen to them when they died the Kadisha can't change that like we can't that is their wish their wishes but you raised a very interesting point does that mean that these rituals leading up to however they wish their body to be interred or cremated or however turned into was it mushrooms >> mushrooms >> right whatever that happens to Does that mean that they cannot have or should not be given this care? I don't I don't think so. So, I think if even if people have problems with the concept of some of these modes of disposition, is that what you call them? That's not really relevant to the work that the community does for the person who has passed away.

[00:52:53]>> Yeah. Yeah. Rabbi Elliot Dorf taught to our community just a few years ago and and in it in this conversation said, you do the most Jewish you can. like what's how what's the most Jewish we can show up >> and the that the people that we're impacting too, right? The dead are dead, >> right? We can educate, right? We can educate. We can make things more accessible for sure. But once the decisions been made and once it's happened, right?

[00:53:15]>> The people who are still alive.

[00:53:17]>> Yeah.

[00:53:18]>> Those are the ones that we need to be like that kind of love and care as opposed to something wrong has happened.

[00:53:23]Like what would it look like if we came from a place of love and abundance in that moment >> and not excommunicate before we know better?

[00:53:31]We talked about a few texts. Do you have a most meaningful text or story about death or end of life in Jewish tradition that you find especially powerful for you?

[00:53:42]>> Yeah. I mean, there's so many and it's so hard to pick one. The one that I like and I'd really like to teach and to share with other people cuz if if you haven't gotten it yet, like it's not I mean I hope I'm not morbid like the death of Seth, right? It's not morbid. I think that there's >> this is a part of human existence >> deeply so right this is this is life and the people who are in this work are so in life like we held a conference you know a few months ago and the people in the room you know over 120 people the most alive people like and with I say that with you know great great reverence like these are people who touch death but know so deeply how that impacts our lives and so one of the teachings that I carry with me or one of the the Jewish the moments. It's it's both prayer and ritual is when we say elohima. There's a a Jewish prayer upon waking one of the the waking prayers that we say is elohor.

[00:54:41]>> Yeah.

[00:54:43]That uh like praise be you god the soul you have given me it is pure. It is whole. And the practice of waking up every day right because Judaism also holds right. We have feelings and thoughts about sleep >> and sleep being a taste of death. Right.

[00:54:59]160th of death.

[00:55:00]>> 16th of death. Yeah.

[00:55:01]>> Love our 160th. We should all learn to count by 160th. Um that when we wake, right? What? First one, a miracle. And secondly, that we are imagining our souls are being returned to us.

[00:55:15]And it could just be like, hey, thanks God for returning my soul. That could be the entire prayer, but it's not. It's the soul you have given me is tahor.

[00:55:23]>> Yeah. And this affirmation that every day I wake up and I think to myself, I am whole.

[00:55:33]I am in this world. I am whole today.

[00:55:35]>> Yeah.

[00:55:36]>> And I'm going to bump into them. But every day I wake up like there is that moment of wholeness.

[00:55:40]>> Yeah.

[00:55:41]>> That I connect so deeply with mortality and I hold that and it it sustains me.

[00:55:48]It reminds me of what's important. It helps drive how I show up and the decisions that I make and who I am on any given day. The fact that's embedded in my Judaism and our Judaism. Oh my gosh, how cool is that? That is a really beautiful teaching. I think sometimes when I when I play the angel of death in Jewish law reactions, in a way it's every time I do that, he's a character, right? It's a story. These are stories about him. Every time I I film him, I feel such a great appreciation for life.

[00:56:23]And it's the the juxtiposition that is so profoundly powerful. And I think what an amazing thing that I am alive and what an amazing thing that one day when I pass away there will be a community to make me whole before I move on to the next whatever whatever may come. So I I want to encourage anybody out there who's watching this and who's maybe never heard of this before and maybe people who have heard of it before but never thought that they might do it.

[00:56:53]I think everybody should serve on the kadisha at least once in their lives. I think it changes who you are as a person. I think it changes how people relate to community, how they relate to death. So, how can people who are watching right now get involved and support work that you are doing and receive training or learn more about perhaps joining a kadisha that is in their area.

[00:57:18]>> Beautiful. Yeah. The first thing to do is to find out if your community has one on the kab website because we're more of an umbrella organization. We do have a directory. So, folks can go check out that directory of kabriadisha across North America. You can ask funeral homes who's doing this work. You can ask clergy. You can ask the Googles. You can ask me. We find out if that exists.

[00:57:39]Also, you know, we know that Tahara is not going to be for everyone.

[00:57:44]There are so many ways to be involved in Kadisha and more and moreish are thinking about what are the ways that we can open. So whether that is sewing burial garments, many buy, but you could be sewing if that's craft is your your calling. We need the organized spreadsheet people. We need the people who are social workers who can be there to or therapists to have a conversation after something challenging in the community, right? There are roles for lots of different people. They're the the Shiva people, right, who go and set up the the Shiva homes and the people who visit the sick. There is a space on that continuum. And if you don't have one, um, and you're interested in building it, Kavikum does. We do trainings, we come into communities, we educate, we can teach you how to educate. But the more that we talk about it, right, even if everyone's not on a kadisha, like that's okay, >> but everyone needs to know what it is.

[00:58:31]Like the first time that we hear about it should not be when we have to make that decision, >> right? It's just it should just be part of Jewish life. We also offer really cool classes. We do 101 classes, community meetups. There are spaces for built-up conversations. We bring in guest educators to come and teach us. We make a lot of opportunities to enter the conversation to both learn about the rituals but to think about how do we apply them you know even if they're not part of every day right like in that way but how are we living our lives with this with this in mind and of course people can always um support our work financially um you know without the support of our community we can't show up um in small towns across uh the country to teach and to educate to nourish to grow to inspire which is part of what we want to do right we have a goal of seeing a kadisha in every Jewish community that will serve any Jew in that community and that any Jew can serve if they would like to as part of it. And so we are steadily working to to get ourselves there.

[00:59:27]>> That is a a beautiful, incredible goal.

[00:59:30]Zorit, thank you so much for talking to me about death and about all of the incredible Jewish practices that surround it. There's so much more else that we could talk about and cover, but I'm so glad you were here to tell us about the the sort of central and vital aspects of these practices and these rituals that are so powerful and so beautiful. Thank you so much.

[00:59:51]>> Thank you for having having me and having us on. The more that we talk about it, the more that we'll all learn how to be in it with a little bit more comfort. It belongs to all of us. It really does. Amen.