Transcription:
One of the things that is great about Judaism is that our funerals are not overly long and they are not overly liturgical. It’s not Kol Nidre with a hundred different prayers in foreign languages that you won’t understand. It’s a very simple thing. The Book of Psalms is always associated with death in Judaism. That’s the famous words, the L-rd is my shepherd, I shall not want, he makes me lie down in green pastures, right? The Book of Psalms is a whole book about how to find solace in difficult times. And so we always open up the service by reading from the Book of Psalms and then we’re going to speak. Sometimes the family is going to choose to say something. Sometimes they’ll turn to me and say, we’d like it if, it’s too difficult for us to speak, we’d like it if you said some words about our loved one. Let me give you a sense of who they were and what was important in their life and I’ll speak on their behalf. And sometimes I’ll speak and the family will speak. Because funerals are not excessively long, you know, we don’t want to have 20 different speakers, but it’s common to have 2-3 speakers come up to reflect, to share their thoughts. At a Jewish funeral, it’s not improper to laugh, it’s not improper to share happy thoughts, it’s not improper to show gratitude. I’ve even been to funerals where they’ve read poetry and where they’ve sang songs. Nothing too crazy is going to offend anybody as long as what’s behind it is I’m paying tribute to the person that I’ve lost. It ends with a final memorial prayer and then the casket is escorted. Actually one of the most important parts of the funeral is honouring pallbearers, choosing people, family or friends to carry the casket. This is an important mitzvah because we think that actually words don’t and will never do justice to a person’s life. Even if they didn’t live a long life, words are never going to be sufficient to describe the love that they gave and the love that they received. And so we do things because our actions speak louder than our words as the expression goes. So we’ll carry the casket, we’ll shovel the earth with our own hands, right? All this shows I may not have the words to describe the depth of this moment, but I want to show in a tangible way that this is somebody who made a difference. And so I want to participate with my whole self to doing honour to this person.