Chapter 1: A BRIEF HISTORY OF JEWISH BURIAL - Board of Rabbis

Menachemson, Nolan. A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries. Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2007.Chapter 1:A Brief History of Jewish BurialThe first Jewish burial was recordedin Genesis 23:19 when Abrahamburied his wife Sarah in the Cave ofMachpelah in the field of Mamre.Abraham understood that burying hiswife as quickly as possible was a finalact of respect for her, for Jews believein a concept called kevod ha-met, honouringthe dead, where an unburiedcorpse is considered to be naked andhumiliated. The injunction to buryJewish dead with haste is given a lowerpriority only to saving human life.Archaeologists have discoveredornamented Jewish catacombs withhinged doors and gabled columnsdating from the immediate centuriessurrounding the time of Jesus, whichsuggests that the practice of cave burialincreased in popularity from the biblicalera through the Babylonian periodand into Roman Palestine. In theTalmud Sanhedrin 96b (line 55) thereis a clear reference to Jewish cave burialwhere Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon isadvised by his Palestinian agents thatthe Jewish catacombs surrounding thecity of Jerusalem can shelter his army:“their graveyards are better [morepractical] than your palace!”The Jerusalem Talmud (Mo’edKatan 1:5) describes the practice oflikut atzamot (gathering of bones), atwo-phase procedure of burying Jewishbodies in deep pits (mahamorot) andwaiting for the skin to dissolve beforeremoving the bones for reburial. Thebones were then placed in an ossuary,or bone box, in anticipation of theresurrection of the dead. The Jewishacceptance of ossuaries was probablybased on Ezekiel’s prophecy of theValley of the Dry Bones (37: 1–14),but when the Romans arrived in Judeathey introduced the concept of groundburial in public cemeteries. Burial incedar coffins is more hygienic thandisinterring bodies and placing bonesin an ossuary.Ground burial in private plotsbecame common practice in Judea. Thefirst mention of a Jewish gravestonedates back to Genesis 35:20 whereJacob set up a “pillar” (the Hebrewword is matsevah, denoting a tombstone)on Rachel’s grave on the roadto Bethlehem. The desire among Jewsto return a dead body to the earth isprobably based on Genesis 3:19 whereGod informs Adam that he shall returnto dust. In Israel, people are often notburied in coffins unless the body isseverely injured so as to facilitate quickreturn to the soil.A medieval belief that a heavy stonehelps to retain the dead (in case theyhave aspirations of returning home)is probably a contributing factor inthe tradition of Jewish tombstones. AJewish version of this belief holds thatA Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries 1

Menachemson, Nolan. A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries. Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2007.soil and stone add weight to containa ghost leaving the body. Talmudicrabbis refer to a gravestone as a nefesh(soul) as there is a Jewish mysticalbelief that a soul hovers over the placewhere its body is buried. Owing to thesupernatural association with the dead,Talmudic rabbis ruled that, where possible,cemeteries were to be situated atleast fifty cubits (about 22 metres) fromthe nearest residence.The oldest existing public Jewishcemetery with ground graves is almostcertainly the Mount of Olives inJerusalem. The mountain has been usedas a cemetery since about 2400 BCE,initially by the Jebusites and later byJews, Christians and then Muslims. Itis considered by many Jews to be themost important Jewish cemetery in theworld because of a belief that whenthe Messiah arrives from the Judeanwilderness, he will come down from theMount of Olives and enter Jerusalemthrough the adjacent Golden Gate inthe wall of the Old City.In the Middle Ages, Monotheisticreligion canonized many of its beliefsinto religious legal texts with rationalcommentary. Many pagan practicesonce attached to early Judaism andChristianity were either incorporated tothe point where they became indiscernibleto lay worshippers or they becamelost to Western society. A result offormalizing religious material, as far ascemeteries are concerned, is that caveburial became associated with paganpractice and ground burial in publicJewish cemeteries became the standardfor the Orthodox Jewish community. Astone was no longer seen as a weight toentrap demons but became associatedwith affection and respect.Rabbi Solomon ben Aderet(1235–1310) of Spain is one of theearliest authorities to add a layer ofTalmudic complexity to burial. Hecomments on a biblical prohibitionon members of the Jewish Kohanim(priestly family) coming into contactwith dead people for fear of spiritualdefilement. See Chapter 7 question 26for a detailed explanation of Cohensand cemeteries.During the Middle Ages, anti-Jewish prejudice shifted from thecharge of deicide (Jews killing Christ)to the idea that Jews were bent onrevenge against the Christian worldin the form of price fixing and usury.Some unscrupulous state officialsand even kings would restrict Jews tounpopular professions such as moneylending and later threaten the communitywith assault or ransom if thedebts were not forgiven. In this climateof mistrust and hostility, and especiallyin Christian Europe, Jews were usuallycareful not to flaunt any good fortunethey may have enjoyed in their hostcountries. Their synagogues often hadplain exteriors, and gravestones weresimple markers carved out of woodor sandstone. The desire to createmodest tombstones is also motivatedby tradition. Proverbs 22:2 holds that[in death] “the rich and the poor meet A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries2

Menachemson, Nolan. A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries. Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2007.together.” This belief is strengthened byan ancient rabbi, Simeon ben Gamaliel,who explains in Talmud BereishitRabbah 82:10 that “we need not erectmonuments for the righteous; theiraccomplishments are their memorials.”While the Jews of Central Europeoften lived with the threat of victimizationon both sides of city walls, theirJewish cousins in Arab Morocco andSpain were enjoying a relatively betterquality of life. For Jews living in theArab World, the period 900–1200 CEbecame known as the Golden Age. Ina time when Europe was in intellectualdecline and disease was rife, the Arabswere building a great civilization.Jewish intellectualism made a majorcontribution to Arab science and literature,and the community had enoughgood sense to present a modest faceto their Muslim masters. MoroccanJewish graves were unadorned andlay horizontal instead of positionedupright like many of their Europeancounterparts. This tradition is todaymaintained in Israel, notable examplesbeing the graves of the prime ministersof Israel on Mt Herzl in Jerusalem.Catholic Spain lay at the crossroadsof these two vastly different Jewishcommunities. In 1391, about 100,000Jews lived in the Spanish kingdom.The word convivencia best describesthe Spanish Catholic grudging toleranceof “living together” with Jews.Anti-Jewish riots at the time were onlyresolved after a mass conversion ofJews to the shaky status of Conversos,or New Christians. The convertsnaturally attempted to balance a publicChristian life with their secret Jewishlife. Conversos would go to church,yet they would quietly observe theSabbath and Jewish festivals, sometimesat low-key synagogues. In the 1480s,political circumstances found the royalfamily unable to reconcile the doublelife of converted Jews, and Tomás deTorquemada’s fanatical Dominicanorder was brought in to administeran Inquisition to expose Conversoswho practiced secret Judaism. Theconsequence was disastrous for Spain’sJewish community. Within a decadeof burnings and torture, thousands ofJews were forced out of the country.They fled to the relative tolerance ofItaly and the Netherlands.The Spanish Inquisition had anindelible impact on the psyche ofEuropean Jewry. Violent anti-Semiticacts were a part of life, but they wereusually reactionary and not the result ofpolicy. Of course Jews had been facedwith conversion or death before, forexample in ancient Greece, but neverat the hand of a religious order withsuch access to the royal ear. Jews acrossEurope, even in regions that wererelatively safe, suddenly felt hunted. Aclose inspection of gravestones from theperiod demonstrates an emerging crisisin Jewish Diaspora (the Jewish worldoutside of Israel) thinking on the issueof ghettoization versus assimilation. Ina pre-Nazi world, many Jews naivelybelieved that conversion guaranteedA Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries 3

Menachemson, Nolan. A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries. Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2007.communities a tiny piece of land for aburial ground. In Venice, a monasteryon Lido island grudgingly relinquishedsome land to the local Jews. The ItalianJews were by no means the first Jewishcommunity to face this problem.Since the late 13th century, the Jews ofPrague faced a similar situation. Wallswere erected around their cemeteryto enforce a space barrier to allowmembers of Jewish priestly descent toreside without defiling themselves. Itshould be noted that space –not walls– is required by Orthodox Jewish lawto separate the dead from living Jews.Many East European Jewish cemeteriesdo not even have a fence.The Gentile (not of Jewish descent)practice of burying dozens of corpsesin a pauper’s grave became moreacceptable after the Plague of 1347– 1351 killed up to a third of Europe’spopulation. Infected bodies neededto be disposed of quickly. Jewish lawforbids bodies to share the same grave;it is considered disrespectful. The law,as explained by Talmudic commentatorsJoseph Karo and Shabbsei Cohen,requires that bodies be separated bya solid surface of a minimum of sixtefachim (handbreadths). The Jews ofPrague resolved their space problemby ingeniously digging a deep trenchin their cemetery and burying thedeceased in layers. Jewish law allowsbodies to be buried in rows one abovethe other so long as they are separatedby the same minimum of six tefachimof soil. Between 1439–1787, it isestimated that about 100,000 bodieswere buried in this cemetery in layerstwelve deep. This explains why in somesmall Jewish cemeteries tombstones arepacked closely together.The explosion of creativity duringthe Renaissance was not lost on Jews.After the Dark Ages and centuries ofreligious totalitarianism, superstitionand resultant fear, humanity beganto look at itself as a species of infiniteability. What began as a small classicalreawakening in Florence soon evolvedinto an examination of science and therealization of unlimited potential forhumanistic development, particularlyin the Arts. During the Renaissance,sepulchral art developed into a definiteand formidable style. It was during thisperiod that Jews began to commonlyadorn their tombstones with plantmotif. Images of ivy and fruit beganto appear; however, human imagerywas strictly forbidden. The practice ofplacing an image on a Jewish grave wasa concern for the rabbinic authorities.It brought into issue an injunctionagainst violating the Second of theTen Commandments with regard tocreating a graven image, or an idolwith human characteristics that couldlater be used to deify the deceased. Itwas, however, obvious to the Jewishauthorities that the stylizing of buildingsand gravestones with Greek andRoman imagery was simply aestheticand that society had no seriousintention of worshipping the figuresof ancient mythology that were nowA Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries 5

Menachemson, Nolan. A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries. Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2007.adorning civic halls and libraries. Jewsincorporated classical design elementsinto their sandstone tombs, and theysometimes adopted the Renaissancephenomenon of protecting these fragilestones with iron roofs, an excellentexample being the graves in the RemuhJewish cemetery in Kraków, Poland.In 1787, Holy Roman EmperorJoseph II became the first Europeanmonarch to legislate compulsory familynames. For centuries, Jewish males usedtheir father’s first name to completetheir identity, for example, Jacob ben(son of) Isaac. As the Jewish populationincreased, this naming system becameinefficient as a form of unique identification.On Jewish tombs, however,often both a traditional Hebrew nameand a secular name are placed on thestone.The exquisite carvings and architecturaladornments on Jewish gravestoneswere appreciated by more than simplya handful of relatives. By the 19thcentury, Judaism had incorporated theconcept of saint veneration, and Jewsin both Europe and the Arab worldwere actively visiting gravesites withthe intention of coupling their prayerswith the merits of the personalitiesburied there. The custom of prayingat the graves of great Jewish leadershas its origins in several sources. TheTalmud describes how Joseph wept athis mother’s grave before leaving forEgypt. In Vayechi 48:7, the Jews aresaid to have cried at Rachel’s tomb. InSeptember/October there is a traditionof visiting graves before the Jewish NewYear to ask the deceased to intervenefor the living before Yom Kippur, theDay of Judgment, which falls ten daysafter the New Year. In the early 20thcentury, three groups of Jews effectivelybrought the tradition of saint visitationto Judaism: the Hasidic movementin Eastern Europe, the mystics of thetown of Safed in Palestine, and theMoroccan Jews who were probablyemulating a similar Islamic marabout(saint) visitation practice called ahiloula. Misnagdim, mainstreamModern Orthodox Jews, particularlythe Vilna Gaon (1720–1797), opposedsaint veneration.In the new worlds of Americaand Australia, immigrant EuropeanJews established Jewish cemeteriesin thriving settlements like NewAmsterdam, New York (1656) andNewport, Rhode Island (1677) inAmerica and later in Hobart, Tasmania(1828) and Goulburn, New SouthWales (1848) in Australia. Theimmigrants developed organizationscalled landsmanshaftn, societiesof people from the same town orregion who came together to ease thetransition into their new culture. Thelandsmanshaft usually owned a sectionin the Jewish cemetery and plots werereserved for people from a certain townor region. In the New York City area,several Jewish cemeteries have namesof the original East European town orregion posted in Hebrew on the sectionentrance. A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries6

Menachemson, Nolan. A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries. Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2007.It is uncertain exactly when Jewsbegan to adorn tombstones withanimal and human motif. It is likelythat this practice was borrowed fromVictorians who were fascinated withancient symbols. What is certain isthat in Eastern Europe during thePale of Settlement (1791–1917) whenRussian Jews were confined to certainliving areas, Jewish tombstone carvingdeveloped into a highly stylized art.Symbols were designed to represent notonly human attributes but were oftenphonetic representations of the nameof the deceased. Jewish tombstonesymbols are discussed in Chapter 3.The tradition of stylized tombstonesymbolism reached its zenith in late19th – early 20th century Poland withnotable Neoclassical and Secessionistexamples in the Warsaw and ŁódźJewish cemeteries. No one could havepredicted that the gathering stormwould wipe out not only EuropeanJewry but reduce many of its cemeteriesto fields of broken stone. The Naziagenda for Jews was an all-encompassinggenocide. The Reich MainSecurity Office even had a plan for theexploitation of tombstones. When theNazis invaded Poland, they set aboutuprooting many of the tombstonesfor use as road pavement. It must beacknowledged, however, that someGerman officials went out of theirway to preserve Jewish cemeteries, forexample, the one in Worms.After the War, the Baltic Stateswere annexed by the Soviet Union.Czechoslovakia and Poland came underCommunist control. The Communistoverlord, with no sympathy forreligious national groups and especiallyfor Jews, effectively wrote six hundredyears of Jewish life out of their imposedhistory books. With few survivingJews to invalidate Soviet propaganda,generations of Czechs, Lithuaniansand Poles grew up in states that lookedmore aesthetically secular than theirthousand-year-old Catholic ancestrywould suggest. The neglect duringCommunism exacerbated the conditionof the surviving Jewish tombstones andby the end of the 20th century manyof Eastern Europe’s Jewish cemeterieseither no longer existed or looked likerubbish heaps. A concerted effort onthe part of world Jewry and manyaltruistic East Europeans to restoreand clean up the Jewish cemeterieshas made an impact, but Poland, forexample, with less than 20,000 Jews attime of writing, is no longer a Jewishcountry. Many Jewish cemeteries thatcannot be physically preserved for alack of funding now exist as virtualscrapbooks on the Internet. Jews have alove fascination with their past.A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries 7