Transcription:
And if we touch with soul, we start to feel soul. So long that there is a corporeal life walking around the face of this Earth, it’s easy to touch with body and it doesn’t take a lot of effort. But as soon as the soul leaves the body, more effort has to be taken. In a way, the relationship between loved ones becomes stronger after the passing of someone because the soul is not inhibited by the body, but it’s painful, the absence is challenging. But yet at the same time, Jewish death and the process of Jewish bereavement is a very, very soulful one, a very deeply spiritual one. And that’s why I believe that it’s not just the cessation of life and let’s bury the body, but it’s more of a transition into a much different type of relationship. And when someone engages in the process of Jewish burial, Jewish mourning, Jewish bereavement, they learn a very soulful and Kabbalistic and spiritual process of building relationships that transcend time and space. So when someone passes away, Jewish law and tradition teach us that when one passes away, we shouldn’t touch the body anymore if possible, only for basic necessities. We try also not to look at the loved one anymore. We try to cover it out of respect. When someone can’t defend themselves, the greatest respect for them is to show them dignity. So even if one is at home with a loved one who passes away, you should try to cover the body and then call a rabbi, a clergy, or a funeral home to start that process of preparation for the funeral. Even once the body is taken to the funeral home, the Chevra Kadisha, those that are in charge of purifying and preparing the body for the funeral, have myriads of laws that they do in preparation, both in cleansing the body, cleaning the body, but also how they go about that with the utmost of respect not to look when one’s not needed to look, not to touch when it’s not needed to touch. It’s just out of the dignity and the uphold of the dignity of the person, of one’s loved one. So Chevra Kadisha is a term historically used in every Jewish community for a sacred group of people that are entrusted and volunteer their time to really allow for this transition, which is a sacred transition, between the soul’s journey down here and the soul’s returning to its Maker up above. The Chevra Kadisha are usually a group of community members who attend the funeral home and prior to the funeral are given the sacred duty to prepare and clothe in the proper shrouds one’s loved one and then transitions the body back over to the family and the clergy in preparation for the funeral. It’s called a holy group because historically that is the greatest mitzvah of the Torah. It’s called chesed shel emet, which translates as eternal truth, eternal kindness. Kindness could be altruistic, but even in our world when we do something altruistically, there is subconsciously maybe the potential to get something in return for the person that we do it for. But at the end of life when there’s nothing to get back in return and someone wants to stand there and help someone in this process in general, but how much more so in preparing the body for its final journey to its resting place, there’s nothing greater and more altruistic than that. When one passes away, once the soul leaves the body, we want to make a bold statement about who we really are, and that is we’re actually souls housed in bodies versus bodies which has a soul. That means ultimately that we emphasize that life is about soulfulness. If we nurture our body to house our soul, then we know it’s a means to an end. If we nurture our soul just to promote our body, that’s counterintuitive to really the Jewish perspective on life. Once the soul leaves the body, it’s our job to not emphasize materialistic or corporeal elements. We wash the body out of respect to its final journey. We bury it with the utmost of dignity, but we don’t want to emphasize anything other than soulfulness. So simplicity after one passes away is the real Jewish answer to everything. Shrouds is a statement that no one is better than others. We’re all equal. Doesn’t matter what net worth we were an hour ago. That was all a means to house G-d’s soul in our body. Doesn’t matter how wise or simple, we all go to our final resting place in humility equally, and that’s why in Jewish tradition it’s been instituted that we have simple shrouds for everybody. It’s a statement about camaraderie. It’s a statement about respect for every person. It doesn’t matter their net worth. It doesn’t matter what they’ve accomplished in this world. We come simple and we leave simple. That being said, when it comes to choices of coffins, when it comes to choices of what we do in general, Jewish thought and practice asks us to look through a simplistic lens, through a soulful lens. The less corporeal, the less materialistic, the more soulful, and that’s why traditionally Jewish cemeteries don’t have an overemphasis of materialism, of flowers. It doesn’t mean that there’s no good taste in a Jewish cemetery, but in general it’s all about the soulfulness. Part of coming into this world is knowing that we come bare bones. Everybody comes into this world looking the same, if you will. When we leave this world, we make a bold statement that we leave the same way, and that’s through simplistic tachrichim, which are shrouds. It doesn’t have any pockets, making a statement that we can’t take anything with us. It doesn’t matter what we amass. The true things that we leave behind in this world are the impacts of our children, of our families, of the good deeds that we’ve done in this world, and the Torah that we’ve learned and the mitzvahs that we have accomplished. That goes as wings and support for the soul, but that’s a soulful element. Materialistic things help us in our life whilst down here in this world, but once G-d recalls our soul, our job has now been completed and we take nothing with us. The shrouds are white. Jews have a custom to wear white linen or a kittel, if you will.