Transcription:
We have something called a Chevra Kadisha within our congregation, which is a society of volunteers who view it as a tremendous honour to be able to devote some of their time to preparing the body for burial. With the assistance of the funeral home, they will do something called a tahara, which is to do a ritual bathing of the body to make sure that the body is clean, that all of the parts of the body are intact or as intact as possible. And they also do something called shmira, which is to watch over the body from the time of passing until the time of burial. And that’s also considered to be an act of respect, to make sure that the body is watched and protected at all times. And to actually, during the tahara process, the volunteers themselves actually speak at times to the body that they are taking care of, asking forgiveness if they have in any way shown any disrespect to the body. We have a very strong tradition in Judaism that there is a remnant of a person after they pass away. And that remnant is called the neshama in Hebrew, the soul in English. And according to the traditional texts, the soul lingers around the body for the first hours and days after the passing, because when we die, it’s a reorientation process. I used to be a living being who was inside a corporeal, physical shell. And now my soul is disembodied and is disoriented as a result. And so the soul tends to hover around its body because it is so familiar with it. And it takes a while for the soul to eventually detach itself from the body. So recognizing, according to this tradition, that the soul is attentive to what is taking place to its body, we try to be as respectful as possible and as sensitive as possible to the remains and to the soul that is lingering in this process. Traditionally, at least some of our texts tell us, that the soul lingers around the body from the time of death to the time of burial. It always lingers with the body. At the time of burial, the soul then goes back and forth from the grave to the Shiva home, where people are sitting Shiva. And that’s the reason why our rabbis tell us that the purpose of Shiva is not just the consolation to the mourners, but it’s also a consolation to the deceased, whose soul is actually present quite often in the Shiva house, listening to the conversation that is being said about itself. And that’s also why our Shiva traditions are very carefully orchestrated to make sure that we stay focused on topic about the deceased and we recall their memory fondly, not only for the purpose of the persons who are sitting Shiva, but also for the purpose of the deceased who may be present. After Shiva is over, the body then, the soul rather, starts to hover between the grave and its final resting place. And it’s a process. The first 30 days is when the soul is starting to get more and more acquainted with its new existence as a disembodied soul. And then eventually, after a full year, we assume that the soul has found its final resting place in whichever heavenly dimension it finds itself.