Episode 2: Wash and Be Clean
What is it about the taharah ritual that can transition a person from this world to the next? And why does it necessitate gallons of water? Rabbi Linda Holtzman, founder of the Reconstructionist Chevra Kadisha of Philadelphia joins Kaddish to talk about the origins of the local progressive community that washes and prepares the dead for burial. David Zinner, Executive Director of Kavod v'Nichum and the Gamliel Institute shares historical and contemporary context of the ritual.
Transcript
Episode 2: Wash and Be Clean
What is it about the taharah ritual that can transition a person from this world to the next? And why does it necessitate gallons of water? Rabbi Linda Holtzman, founder of the Reconstructionist Chevra Kadisha of Philadelphia joins Kaddish to talk about the origins of the local progressive community that washes and prepares the dead for burial. David Zinner, Executive Director of Kavod v'Nichum and the Gamliel Institute shares historical and contemporary context of the ritual.
Names to check for spelling: Sid Weisman, Margot Stein, Alex Stern, JB Brager, Jei-Jei Tan, Chelsey Noriega, and Tiny Victor.
For transcript errors: rorymalone@protonmail.com
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Transcript:
[R. Ariana Katz]: Hi. I'm Ariana Katz and this is Kaddish. This month's episode will be about taharah, the ritual washing of the body before burial. One thing I know to be true about death, and dying, and mourning. And what happens after even all of that, is that there aren't enough rules. There aren't enough…expectations for how all of this is gonna go down. We have a lot of guesses. We have high hopes, we have advanced directives. But when we are in the muck of dying, and of mourning, time doesn't make sense. The grief doesn't make sense. And there's a lack of systems. Something is wrong here. And we can't quite put our finger on what but the reality as we know it has changed and it's unacceptable.
So, one thing I am grateful to Jewish tradition for is the system that it moves us through time. That in Jewish mourning, there are rules that say, burial happens at this point, this point seven days later, you get up, a month later, you change your, 11 months to a year later. But every year, something might have shifted inside of you will come back to that darkest, saddest, most confusing, disjointed place. (overlapping vocals).
And so sometimes rules are constricting. Sometimes we feel like we're supposed to conform our emotional state of being to the expected laws or societal laws of mourning. But I find redemption in this set rhythm that we can move our lives through, when nothing else makes sense.
So, this season of Kaddish will be following the timeline, the arc of mourning that happens over the course of the year. In Episode One, we discussed sickness and hospice and advanced directives, and decision making at the end of life. This month's episode will be about taharah, which happens immediately following death, proceeding burial. Taharah is the ritual washing of the body and placing it in the casket before burial. Taharah is done by a group called the chevra kadisha which is the holy society, which is the group of people that does the work around this period of time in Jewish sickness, dying and burial.
I was listening to 2 Dope Queens last week. And in it, Jessica Williams, one of the cohosts speaks at length in their opening set about a cancer scare. And her process of getting a biopsy and being mistreated by the doctor and the pain of a biopsy. And does so really personally and publicly in the middle of a comedy set. And when it was done, the audience cheered for about five minutes straight.
[Jessica Williams]: …results back earlier today. And they are like negative!! (live audience cheering)
[R. Ariana Katz]: And I was thinking about what guts it takes to put yourself into the product that you're making. Because when we're talking about anything, but especially about death and dying, we want to seem objective and emotionless. And that vulnerability keeps us far from each other. And so, because of that, I want to put myself into this podcast into the storytelling, because this is a journey that we're on together this year. So, we're going to try it out. And I want to know what you think.
This episode about taharah is incredibly dear to me because I've been a member of the Philadelphia Reconstructionist Chevra Kadisha since the winter of 2014. And in learning about taharah and why it matters and what it does and what it transforms and why taharah works, taharah has worked on me. Taharah has given me clarity about what the end of life will look like, that no matter what, I will be buried in technicism, and my ancestors were and so will the people that come after me.
This episode is coming to you in two parts. And it's been a pleasure to research and talk to the people who we’ll hear from. Rabbi Linda Holtzman and David Zinner will be on this episode teaching us 101. What is taharah? How does it work? Why does it matter? And then the next episode coming out, also this month, we'll learn from Dr. Joy Ladin and Noach Dzmura about the intersection of issues around taharah and transgender lives and bodies. So I bring you episode two part one, "Wash and Be Clean."
[R. Linda Holtzman]: I'm Linda Holtzman. I'm a Reconstructionist rabbi, I'm in Philadelphia. I am on the faculty of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and I am the Rabbi of a chavurah community that's called the Tikkun Olam Chavurah, and I'm the founder of the Reconstructionist Chevra Kadisha of Philadelphia. I have always believed that honoring somebody in, after they die honoring the body after death is important. And taharah, the ritual Jewish way of honoring the body feels extremely important to me. In Philadelphia in the 1980s, there was only one chevra kadisha, one group that honored bodies by ritually preparing them in a Jewish traditional manner, and it was an Orthodox Jewish group.
I taught a course at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, a lifecycle course, when we focused on death, went as a as a visit to a local Jewish funeral home. And at once decided that I wanted to know more about the way the local chevra kadisha that existed already, worked around all of their policies about who they would prepare for burial. So, the late 1980s, when I was, there was the height of the AIDS crisis in the United States. And I was working with the LGBT synagogue in Philadelphia, and was very aware that there was concern about whether the Jewish community would be responsive to people who died due to complications of AIDS. In particular, one man, a member of the LGBT synagogue that I served came up to me and asked me, if I could guarantee that when he died, I would make sure that his body was prepared according to Jewish tradition. And I said, of course I would. So, when I was at the funeral home with my class, I, it's a bunch of questions. I said to the funeral director, listen, I want to know if the local chevra kadisha, the Orthodox group, has any policy about doing body preparation, doing the taharah ritual for somebody who dies of AIDS. And he said, ack, you know, funny, you should ask. And he ran in the back and came out with a little piece of paper. And he said; This is the question. They have a rebbe in Brooklyn, and they write to their rebbe, and they ask whatever questions they might have. And they wrote to the rebbe and they asked, do we have to do taharah for someone who dies of AIDS? And both the class and I were appalled at the question, but we listened. And the Rebbe wrote back saying, No, you don't have to, because if there is any danger to any of you, because of the Jewish principle of pikuach nefesh, of always saving a life if you possibly can, you're not required to do the taharah, you're not required to do that ritual. And I said, but you know, there is no danger, like the AIDS can't be transmitted. We wear, you know, someone would wear gloves, it would all like they'd be protected. There's, it's it's not going to happen. And he said, I know. I'm just telling you what they said. So, at that moment, I decided that we needed a group other than the Orthodox group to do taharah, to do this ritual.
And I put a call out to people in the neighborhood in which I was living, to ask if anyone was interested in considering being a part of a progressive group that did taharah that (out), just starting to think about how we would do it and what we would do. I thought I would get three or four people and I got a couple dozen, and we gathered around in my living room. And we gathered around week after week for several months, we explored liturgies from other groups that did this work around the United States. We called people and found out how they dealt with different kinds of questions. We processed how we would deal with all of the possible fears that would come up, like would we do taharah if someone was going to be cremated when cremation clearly violates Jewish law? We kept on doing all of those, like all of those questions, and we sat down as a group and we answered all of those questions for ourselves. And we largely decided that we wouldn't come to any full conclusion on almost any issue, we would leave it up to the people who were available to do the ritual at any given night.
[R. Ariana Katz]: So it's important to pause here and note that this chevra kadisha uses both collective and personal decision making as its structure. Many, well, most, chevra kadisha will not prepare someone if they know that they will be cremated after their taharah nor will they dress them in other clothing that honors the dead. So, this chevra deciding that members can participate as they feel comfortable, as long as it upholds the overall values of the chevra kadisha, is a pretty unique thing.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: We put together the liturgy, and we then did nothing, it kind of stopped, we decided that we would have a training, and we did a very brief training. And the person from the gay and lesbian, the LGBT, synagogue lived for a long time. And we really kind of put on hold our work. And then he died. His partner called me and said; “My partner died. And he really wants the taharah ritual. We're not using the funeral home, it's going to be in our house on the dining room table. We want our friends to come, they are men and women and Jewish and not Jewish, I want to participate. And I'm not Jewish, my partner's brother wants to participate. Would you come? And would you lead us in this ritual?” So, I said, of course, and brought a person or two with me, and went at night to the dining room of this man, and stuffed the room with towels, because there's a lot of water in this ritual, and did what I remembered of the ritual, although it was far from perfect. And I didn't remember enough details. I wasn't sure I tied the knots right. I wasn't sure of any of the details, because I had only had a brief training. And it had been months and months and months since that, and I hadn't used it. So, we did it. And at the end of that evening, what was clear to me was that, first of all, it was the most spiritually moving thing I've probably ever done. And second, that in order to really honor people, I needed to learn how to do it well. And I needed a group that really knew how to do it well.
[R. Ariana Katz]: So, the first time I heard Linda tell this story, I remember asking her what happened with all the water. We'll talk about this in a little bit. But taharah ritual requires nine kavim of water, which is basically two giant buckets. And to do a taharah ritual, you pour all of this water over the body of the deceased person. So here it was Linda and the family of this man doing a taharah in their dining room. And I said, Linda, what did you do with all the water? And she looked at me and said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “Well, when we were done, we mopped it up”. When I'm doing a taharah, I find myself thinking, there is no other thing I could be doing in the world that feels as important as this in this moment.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: People with AIDS at the time really felt as if often felt as if their religions had deserted them, and often felt as if their bodies were considered, you know, dirty and were not respected at all. People were told that they cause their deaths. People were told horrible things around AIDS. And we did taharah for many people with AIDS, and it always felt as if the idea of the ritual being called taharah, purification, was just right. Because what we were saying is your body is clean, your body is pure, and knowing that they were going to have this ritual before they died meant a lot to lots of people. The beginning was seeing someone as pure who felt very impure, I see it as a spiritual purity. It's nothing, nothing at all, about physical purity here. But one of the parts, probably the part, of taharah ritual, the actual taharah, which involves just pouring water on the person who has died and saying “tahor hu” or “tahorah hi”, he is pure, she is pure, feels magical, like those moments feel magical. And we know you pour water on a person, it doesn't actually physically change the person. But it does in some spiritual sense. We often have a feeling, that the person, like the person is dead, but we feel a shift in energy during and after that moment, the time when there is water poured. So, it's really a good, strong, positive feeling that has grown way beyond any sense of where we start, because all of our bodies are pure, right, like, and our beings are pure.
And in those days, it was saying, it doesn't matter if we're gay, and we have sex with somebody who has a disease that can kill you, we are still pure. And now we see lots of other things like it doesn't matter who you are, or what the configuration of your body is, or what shape it is, or how you identify or anything about you. You're pure.
[R. Ariana Katz]: So, Linda and the team left this first taharah in a living room knowing that they needed more information. One of the pieces that is grounding about taharah is how real it is- hands on, in the muck of death, and surrounds the dead with respect. This is not something you can learn from reading a book, you have to learn from someone else who has been down the road before you.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: Training was someone who knew a lot and who walked us all through it in very close detail. And we then formed a group, we've been doing it for almost 30 years, and it's still the most spiritually powerful thing I ever do. And I've done by now, dozens and dozens of taharahs. And the group has changed. Some people are still the same, as those who were there at the beginning, take breaks and come back. But we've been doing it since then. We do the traditional ritual, we say one of the traditional liturgies. There are lots of different liturgies. But we certainly use one that is quite a traditional liturgy with lots of traditional prayers included, we don't make any changes most of the time. So, in that way, it's a very traditional chevra. It's not at all traditional in that, in tradition, men do taharah for men and women do taharah for women. And there are very few instances where women can step in and help men, there are none where men can step in and help women. We understand gender differently, we don't understand it as quite on the same kind of binary. So, we're much looser and freer, about what we're all comfortable doing. We have people of all genders in our group. And that has been a great way to not be exactly traditional.
[R. Ariana Katz]: So, I've been doing taharahs for almost three years. And sometimes when you're doing a taharah, this washing ritual, you can still feel the soul in the body. And sometimes you can't. Sometimes I sense the soul in the top left corner of the room, just lingering, watching. Sometimes it's still in the person. And sometimes if it's been a long time, or it's been a hard death, the soul has already long gone.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: The first taharah that we did, somewhere, I don't know within a year of our starting, where I suddenly felt, whoo, there was really a shift here. Something happened from (like) beginning to end, there's energy, there's spiritual force, there's something different. And I thought “och, Linda you’re losing your mind”, and I walked out of the room and went back to get-we get a sheet that says that we performed the taharah from the funeral director- and I walked back to get it from the funeral director and to tell them we were leaving. And when I came back to the group, I said to the group, I had a very strange experience in that room. And they all looked at me and said, Oh, you felt it too. And I thought, okay, something happened here. It has shifted my beliefs. That I believe that there is something and I don't know what it is. I'm still a skeptic. I don't know what it is. Would I call it a soul or a spirit or energy or force or something, I don’t know. But there's something, sometimes we do play a role as soul escort, freeing the soul, and letting the whole being be at peace. That feels very powerful.
[R. Ariana Katz]: Okay, so hopefully it's starting to be clear what a taharah can mean, both for the dead and the living. Let's dive into the steps of the taharah ritual itself and learn about what actually happens in the taharah room.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: (water pouring sounds) So Jewish body preparation, basically is based on three major values, one of the values is honoring the dead, one of the values is that everyone is equal in death, and not denying death. Taharah responds to all three of those. We, everyone, is dressed in a white shroud, everyone is washed in the same way, everyone has water poured on them in the same exact way, which is a way of doing all of those things.
[R. Ariana Katz]: Now’s probably a great time to introduce David Zinner. David is the Executive Director of Kavod v'Nichum and the Gamliel Institute, a North American organization that provides education and resources along the end-of-life spectrum.
[David Zinner]: So, there's a number of different pieces that happen in the physical process of the taharah. One piece is the liturgy and the prayers that we say, they’re the first things that we do when we come into the taharah room. Many groups do, not all, is we asked forgiveness from the met or metah from the person who died, for anything that we might do that causes dishonor, and explain that it is our intent to only do what is respectful, which is a really interesting thing for, you know, modern day Americans to speak to a dead body. But it's traditionally done in, in the vernacular and the language that you are comfortable in, and it's not a Hebrew prayer to G-d. It's a discussion. It's a one way conversation with the body of the person who's died. So, we say it in English, if that's our language. The prayers are very interesting because they track what we actually do.
[R. Ariana Katz]: So, after we enter the room, we wash our hands without a blessing. We put on aprons or smocks, sometimes shoe covers or masks, and definitely gloves.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: You know, like the they're not latex, but they're latex-like whatever those gloves are, medical gloves, because it would feel too intimate. And the person who died didn't give us permission to touch their body directly with our hands, not wanting to touch someone who didn't give me permission to touch them. I don't try to touch the living who don't give me permission to touch them. And I want to be careful about that and only touch people who say yes, please.
[R. Ariana Katz]: Then we prepare all the supplies that we'll need. Cotton wipes, nail polish remover, we fill the buckets with water, locate towels and sheets, check the tachrichim, the shrouds, to make sure that they're all there, open up the pants, and the other garments, to make them easier to use when we'll need them. Because most of the taharah that we do are in funeral homes, most of this is set up for us when we arrive.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: The first step in taharah is washing the body, cleaning the body, and it's the very physical, just cleaning, whatever needs to be cleaned. And in that way, you can honor the body and you can treat it respectfully. At the moment that we are finished the cleaning of the person. That while we're finishing with some water pouring, we recite different passages, of Song of Songs for the person. The Song of Songs is a biblical love poem. And it's a poem that declares how totally beautiful the beloved is. So, all it is, is over and over again, all the ways that the beloved is perfect and beautiful and how highly we value that being. So, saying that over the dead body when it's clear that you know that the dead don't look so good, right, like they're not beautiful in the in the way that we see beauty in most of our lives. But acknowledging that there's a deep beauty in each of those beings and saying a biblical love poem that acknowledges that beauty- I love, it's actually my favorite piece of liturgy of the of the entire night.
The second step is the taharah itself, the purification ritual itself, which involves pouring the biblical measure of nine kavim of water, which is like 24 quarts of water plus, in a one steady stream above the body, with the words “this person is pure” being spoken above the person. And that also is something you would never do for the living. But you do it for all of the dead and it is the ultimate honoring.
[David Zinner]: We dry the body and dress the body in tachrichim, which are burial garments, usually a shirt, a jacket, pants, belt, headcovering.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: As you dress the person in shrouds, the liturgy that you recite is the same liturgy that is written about the high priest in the Book of Leviticus. And that is a way of honoring the person who has died, of treating them equally along with everybody else, because everyone wears those shrouds, and really not denying death, because you would never wear those shrouds when you were alive. The feet of the shrouds are sewn together so that you couldn't get your feet out of the bottom of the pants. Because they're not made for walking, right- they are made for lying still. And everything about the shroud- it's white linen, it's very simple, it's tied, it isn't like buttoned or zippered, there's nothing fancy about it. So, it's very clearly a clothing for someone who has died. But it is also the ultimate and honoring.
[David Zinner]: Then lift the body and put it into the casket. And then put Israeli earth on the body as well as most groups use pottery shards on the eyes and mouth, close the casket, and light a candle, and put it on the casket. And that's the physical aspect of it.
[R. Ariana Katz]: After the deceased has laid inside the casket, and we put the lid on top, and we lay our hands on the casket, and offer up apologies and blessings to the person who we know is inside. We then sing a song, that for me stays in my bones for the hours following and sings me home.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: The singing is of a text that talks about how, it says you are surrounded by angels you have and it names the angels that are named in the Hebrew Bible. And it talks about how there are one in front, one to the side, one behind you, one to the other side, and above, the Shekhinah, above the presence of G-d. And saying to this this person, we're not leaving you alone. Whether or not there is someone sitting there with a body- we're not leaving you alone, we’re leaving you surrounded and held by angels and by the presence of G-d. (singing)
B'sheim Adonai elohei yisrael,
mimini Michael umismoli Gavriel,
Umilfanai Uriel umeachorai Rafael,
v'al roshi shechinat el.
[Hebrew script below]
בְּשֵׁם הַשֵּׁם אֱלֹהֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, מִימִינִי מִיכָאֵל, וּמִשְּׂמֹאלִי גַּבְרִיאֵל, וּמִלְּפָנַי אוּרִיאֵל, וּמֵאֲחוֹרַי רְפָאֵל, וְעַל רֹאשִׁי וְעַל רֹאשִׁי שְׁכִינַת אֵ-ל.
Go to the angels. The angels will take you. Like they're holding you and you're singing it in the first person as if you were the person in you know, in that casket. Oh, it also was a statement of trust. Yeah, I know, I'm surrounded, I'm held and having the Shekhinah, having the presence of G-d above you, is also very powerful.
[David Zinner]: If you're into ballet, then there's this whole ballet choreography of, you know, five people, six people, working around the body, not bumping into each other, flowing smoothly, you know doing all the different tasks and there’s traditions about not reaching over the body and traditions about not doing extraneous talking. We don't talk about the football game or things like that. But some groups do talk to the person who's on the table. Some groups do talk about the person and about their life and what was important to them. And, you know, some groups read the obituary before they begin doing taharah or hear a little bit more about the person.
Liturgies, they get modified. You know, a group decides that they're not comfortable with this one, or you know, they want to add something and so, the liturgy does get modified. What gets modified more than the liturgy is, is the action. So different groups do different things. The Sephardic ritual is a little bit different than the Ashkenazi traditional ritual. For example, they use some herbs and spices, where Ashkenazi groups typically don't, they may use rosewater. In a way, similar to the way Muslims do when they wish the deceased. But they also use different herbs and spices. They may do more than one washing. Traditions around cutting nails and combing hair and traditions of putting egg and vinegar on the forehead or different parts of the body, that vary from group to group, (in) some groups the tachrichim different. (or) The head coverings and some groups have mittens, and some groups leave the hands exposed, and some groups have booties and in other groups the pants are sewn shut at the bottom. But these are relatively minor variations. They're interesting variations, but they don't….no group that I know of deviates from the honor and the respect and the compassion that they show. You know those basic qualities and grounding pieces for the chevra are universally observed for groups doing this.
[R. Ariana Katz]: So, the historian Steven Moss wrote about the authorship of the authoritative handbook for taharah called Ma’avar Yabbok. It was written in 1626 by Aharon Berekhiah ben Mosheh of Modena. It's full of readings and laws and customs related to sickness, deathbed burial and mourning. About writing the work, Aharon Berekhiah ben Mosheh of Modena said, “I recently overheard that the community desired that one of the members undertake the task of arranging for them a prayer book, so they could join in song and prayer at the time of the going out of the soul. I composed new ideas and different explanations to provide them as an offering, and as an incense in love and reverence before the holy congregations.” So, let's run through some of the symbols.
Dirt:
[R. Linda Holtzman]: Based on the number of little plastic bags of earth from the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, it's hard for me to believe there's still a Mount of Olives, but there is, so I'm not sure how completely I trust this industry. But we have a little plastic bag that states on it, that it's from the Mount of Olives. And when we sprinkled that Earth on the person, it fulfills a kind of a mythic purpose. The myth is that when the Messiah comes, all human beings will gravitate to Jerusalem, the Holy City where everyone will be at peace. And the Jewish people, of course, want precedence over you know, everybody else, we want to get there fast. Som the earth serves kind of as a GPS device, where it is sprinkled on the person and then it's a little bit of a head start, because it lets that person's spirit know that the way to Jerusalem is to just follow. That earth is ascending them and then they'll go to the Mount of Olives, where we will all of course be there when the Messiah comes. People who don't necessarily want earth from Israel placed on them after they die, because they don't feel a connection to Israel, or for any number of reasons, for political reasons. One person (who) said, “I want earth from Philadelphia”, and we had earth from Broad Street, which is where the funeral home where we happen to be doing the taharah was, and we sprinkled it on the person. And that felt nice because it felt as if- what we're trying to do I think with the earth, even if the myth about the Messiah is something that we don't quite buy, is form a connection, and form a connection with the earth.
The power around dying is that in Jewish tradition, is that we go back to the Earth. We’re buried in the Earth. And it is a way of saying, we really are, we really go back to the Earth. And by actually placing earth on top of the person, and by placing local earth on top of the person that's in connection with a part of the world that was important to somebody, which feels good.
Canopy-
In our tradition and the taharah we do, we hold up a sheet above as a canopy, high above the body while the water is being poured. And we do it very deliberately because we mostly were very concerned about modesty and the dead body and while we're washing the dead body and while we're dressing the dead body, we keep the body covered, but you can't pour water directly on a body and have the body covered. So, we lift up this canopy so that it's symbolic. For everyone who ever does a taharah, it feels like the wedding canopy. It just jumps you right back to the wedding canopy because it's liminal moments and the wedding canopy is symbolic of, of moving you into paradise. And that's what's happening here. In a different way, but it's what's happening.
Water:
There are people who go to a mikvah to dunk right before Shabbat, right before holidays, right before their wedding, women doing it monthly, (right) before fertility, which is before they're fertile, in connection to life and possible life. And here it's death and connection to whatever the journey is that goes after death.
Shards of pottery:
[David Zinner]: Typically put over the eyes in the mouth, in a number of traditions, not in every tradition, but in many, we’ll say that we put pottery on the eyes, because it's a connection to the earth. And you know that it's clay and you know, we're formed from the Earth, and we return to the Earth. I like to think of pottery as reminding us -the those doing the taharah also- that these are part of the broken vessels that contain the divine light. And that it was part of this person's life to do tikkun olam to help bring those pieces and recapture that divine light. And we should remember that we're part of that tradition that continues, that it’s everyone’s (intelligible) to carry on trying to repair the world and make it a better place. One of the most interesting stories I heard was that one family took their mother's China that she used in her life and broke a piece of it, and used that pottery over her eyes and mouth, which I thought was a really nice connection, although my mother would have killed me if I had done anything like that, you know, she spent years preserving the China and would have been horrified if I had like, broken it, you know, especially on purpose.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: I was part of the group for my mother's taharah. And I debated about whether I could do that, do I want to be there with someone I really loved? And my last memory of her would then be her not being able to move, her not being dressed, her being turned by this group of women. And I decided that I valued the ritual so highly. And it feels to me like a very gentle ritual, even those moments when we have a hard time getting this shirt on somebody or whatever is, you know, difficult. It feels like a very gentle ritual, it feels like a very loving ritual. And I never see the body as anything other than something to be honored. And anything other than something of beauty, maybe it's because of the words that we're surrounding them with, or the physical ritual that we're surrounding them with. But it feels very loving. And I thought I want to be there for my mother, and I didn't leave the ritual. I didn't do the liturgy that night out loud. Usually, there's only one person who does that, keeps it moving along to make sure we do the next and I do that often and love doing it. And I didn't want to do that for her. But it felt very good to be there and to be able to honor her in that way. And to be able to treat her as lovingly as we treat everybody else.
The thing is that, you know, relationships between mothers and daughters are not always easy. And my relationship with my mother, well, it was loving, was also challenging. And there was nothing challenging about this. It was very straightforward and very sweet in a way that my relationship hadn't always been. It felt healing but can feel wonderful for somebody you know. And what I recommend for people is that they think about it really seriously, like is this something that will be helpful for you or will it be just too painful? I also I found it to be a good reality check in the way that it's easy to deny that someone you really cared about is dead. And it's very hard to deny. You're standing in a room with them preparing their body.
Before the chevra, there was family. I mean, the first examples of organized chevra kadisha we have are the Middle Ages, but we don't have any before that, but people did it. And the ritual had evolved to the point where people were washed and dressed. But death gradually got separated out. And now actually are doing this is kind of claiming control over death in the community, where we're not professional funeral directors, we’re just volunteers.
[David Zinner]: The first recorded washing that we have of a Jewish person is the care of Jesus after he died. And it's so interesting that for Jews, this was one thing that we don't have recorded in Talmud, you know, other than just general references. But what we do have in the New Testament, is a Jewish man being washed by women. But, you know, it wasn't until the 1600s that the taharah ritual was written down and codified. And from there it, you know, spread through Europe, and it was sort of a, the ritual became a combination of the confraternity movement, which was a social movement, and the Kabalistic influence that came on the spot. And then, you know, was also enhanced, because the printing press and the ability to, you know, take the written word and communicate it. (It) was brought by immigrants to the United States and Canada. And it was interesting, because it was traditional in new communities, that the first thing they would do would not be to form a synagogue, the first thing they would be they would do would be to create a cemetery. And the reason for that is that as soon as you have a community, if one person dies, you need to bury them.
[R. Ariana Katz]: The biggest challenge for chevra kadishas in the United States and in Canada, and what differentiates them from other countries, is that around the early 1900s, the profession emerged of undertaker, mortician, and then eventually funeral director. Those professions became a guild, and they lobbied to have exclusive license in the United States. So instead of chevra kadishas, as the group that takes care of Jewish rituals is become professionalized, exclusive, and no longer part of the volunteer structure of the Jewish community. Around 1975, it began to shift with Jews learning and taking back control over burial practices. And we see it growing now in the larger North American world around home burial.
[David Zinner]: I think most people who get involved in it don't know whether they can do it or not. My experience is that if they learn about it, and understand what it is, before they go through the actual process, they have more of a spiritual and an intellectual grounding, that helps them you know, work through some of the difficulties involved in actually washing and dressing a body that may not be in the best shape. People get involved in it, come at it, for lots of different reasons, some to maintain a religious tradition and others to get in touch with the spiritual side of their life that they may not have been able to connect with. And still others to provide comfort to the various folks involved, the met or metah, the soul, the relatives, the community. The group, however, traditionally dealt with much more than death, they dealt with that whole continuum of the end-of-life from visiting the sick to you know, doing the taharah, the ritual washing, from digging the grave at the cemetery and maintaining the cemetery, to providing shiva minyans. But in old days, they also, you know, did a lot of charitable work. They also helped provide dowries for brides that had no family. So, their work was very expansive and not limited. And that's why I say that everyone can do something in the chevra kadisha. No one should feel that they are unable to do it. You may not feel comfortable, you know, washing the body of a person who died. But, you know, there's lots of other tasks involved that everyone can do at some level.
[R. Ariana Katz]: So, with all this time spent with the dead, what does it exactly mean for the living?
[R. Linda Holtzman]: Doing taharah has pushed me to ask many more questions about death, to look at death more closely, to come to terms with the reality of death in a different way. I've done a lot of funerals over the years as well. And they also do, you know, it's the like, being with a family at the time that someone really beloved in their life has died. And being able to help walk them through it, whether it's by doing taharah, or by doing a funeral and honoring the person who died in that way, or by comforting mourners right afterwards, that the reality of death is present for me. And I think for a lot of rabbis, but certainly for those of us who do taharah frequently, is present there in a different way. It's still frightening, and I still don't have a clue as to, you know, what happens afterwards. But I think a little less so. And I think that I'm somewhat less afraid than I was, and more accepting of the fact that death really is a part of life that needs to be taken in and honored in the way that any other part of life is. I never felt any kind of “Ugh, can I really touch a dead body? Ugh, that sounds horrible”. There are people who after they do that taharah find a way to do something for themselves, to do some kind of purification. People who go home and take showers or people who go home and get washed thoroughly. Or who do, you know, range of different kinds of things. I go home and hug my dog and I hug my dog because my dog is very alive. And I need to reconnect with life afterwards. And that feels like the best thing that I can do.
[David Zinner]: I view life differently from the first moment I came out of the taharah room after my first taharah. (I left) the taharah room and go outside it was evening, but it was actually, just the sun was going down. And I saw a tree and it was amazing! You know, this was a living tree, it had green leaves. And you know, it was startling because I just spent an hour caring for a dead body and you know, you lift up the person's arm to dress them but the arm doesn't stay up, it comes it falls back down. And you know, you get no help with getting it done. And you know, the world was just starting startlingly amazing to me. You know, I saw it with different eyes. And, you know, it's inspired me to develop and appreciate the emotional side, the spiritual side. You know, of what I am. It changed how I view life. Rabbi Mel Glazer says that whenever we do a taharah, we don't just do a taharah for the person who is lying on the table in front of us. We also are doing a taharah in our head, in our mind, for our parents, and imagining what that looks like, and also for ourselves, imagining what it's going to be like when we die, and someone takes care of us.
[R. Ariana Katz]: We'd be remiss in our seasonal obligations to not name the biggest day of the year, when we imagine what it might be like when we die and who takes care of us. Yom Kippur is a day when we reenact our deaths and wonder about how we might be judged.
[David Zinner]: Yom Kippur is the chevra kadishas’ holiday really. It is in so many ways, parallel and overlapping and integrating. You know, on Yom Kippur we do Viddui, where we ask for forgiveness and confess our sins, and we do that also as part of the tradition when we're dying. On Yom Kippur people wear a kittel, which is one of the garments of the tachrichim. On Yom Kippur we fast which is essentially a mini death. You know and get in touch with our feelings in different ways. Because of that, you know, the whole- and on Yom Kippur, we do Yizkor, which is, you know about remembrance. So, it really is a holiday that resonates in a lot of ways.
[R. Linda Holtzman]: Jews do death well. Like, I think the Jewish tradition is better at death than we are at lots of other things. Like we're just, I think we're almost perfect, not quite, but almost perfect. Because we understand the needs of the person who is dying, and then has died. And we understand the needs of the mourners, and we’re able to really respond to those needs. And here, it's about the needs of the dead. And to say that the dead has needs is kind of a strange thing. But the dead does, and needs to be put to rest. Through taharah it feels as if we're able to do that. So, there's power in that, that we can cause movement. A really good ritual causes you to move from one state of being to another, and the dead body moves from one state of being to another over the course of our ritual.
Second, what I think is particularly powerful about this ritual, is that it is the absolutely most powerful confluence of holy and mundane that I can think of. What we're doing is so every day, we're washing a body, we're removing nail polish, we're combing hair, we're dressing the body, we're doing very physical down-to-earth things. And it's about the sight and the smell and the feel of this body. So, it's very, very, very mundane. And yet, it is absolutely sacred. It is touching the space between life and death, which is a very powerful transitional space, and touching that, at that moment adds to its tremendous power.
[R. Ariana Katz]: Thanks for listening to another episode of Kaddish. To learn more about taharah, you can go to Kavod v'Nichum’s website, Jewish-funerals.org. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes and leave a review and a rating. It helps other people find the show. Check out the website, kaddishpodcast.com and the press section, in particular, where you can see all the great coverage we've been getting in the past couple of months. You can also check out the blog that features a piece written by Dane Kuttler of the Social Justice Warriors Guide to the High Holidays, and the Book of Solace. If you want to see your writing on the blog, send me an email, Ariana@kaddishpodcast.com. If you're not yet subscribed to the newsletter, do that. You'll find out about mini-episode releases as well as updates on the press front, upcoming blogs, and Twitter chats. The first Twitter chat about taharah is going to be this month, probably during Sukkot, so in the middle of October, stay tuned to the newsletter and social media for that. Follow me on Facebook at Kaddish Podcast and on Twitter at Kaddish Podcast.
I'm so excited about our next episode coming out in the middle of October; interviews with Dr. Joy Ladin and Reb. Noach Dzmura talking about issues impacting transgender people when it comes to taharah. I want to hear your stories call me at 240 KADDISH. Yes, that's right. I was able to get the Google Voice number that spells out the name of the show. You can leave a 30-second voicemail about your reflections on the show, a question that you want to learn more about, or some feedback. Thank you to Rabbi Linda Holtzman, David Zinner, and Leo the dog all for appearing in this episode of Kaddish. Thanks to Sid Weisman, Margot Stein, Alex Stern and the team that makes Kaddish sound real good: JB Brager, Jei-Jei Tan, Chelsey Noriega, and Tiny Victor. As always, a huge thank you to the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford. I'm Ariana Katz and this is Kaddish. Sometimes your shiva minyan is digital.
Note: The original text of Ma'avar Yabbok is available online at: https://www.sefaria.org/Ma'avar_Yabbok