Jewish burial

The common funeral burial in Judaism is burial ( Kewura ), which the rabbinate also prescribes. Part of the funeral is that the rest period in the Jewish cemetery is unlimited in time.

Dying and Death in Judaism

The dying person is given special respect. It must not be touched. Nothing should delay his death, but nothing should speed it up either. The truth about his situation in life must by no means be withheld from him if he should ask about it. If a Jew dies at home, the Jews who are close to him gather around him to pray the confession of sin and psalm verses (e.g. 121; 130; 91) with him. This special prayer is usually only said on the highest holiday in the Jewish calendar , Yom Kippur . It is the day of atonement between God and his people.

If death has occurred, the dead remains as he is in the room. His eyes are closed and his face is covered with a white cloth. The wake begins with a candle lit next to his head. The burning light indicates the soul that is still in the room. One more time is prayed together with the deceased. Then the windows are opened so that the soul can leave the body. The water standing in the house with which he had to deal is poured out.

Ritual supply of the dead

Soon - depending on the sex of the dead - the Holy Brotherhood ( Chewra Kadisha ) will be called. This consists of men or women of the community who lift the corpse from the bed onto the floor and subject it to ritual cleansing according to certain regulations. The tahara is a ritual cleansing process in which the body is cleansed and cared for and water is ritually poured over it. After the cleansing, the deceased is wrapped in special white clothing (tachrichim), indicating purity and holiness. The man is put on his prayer shawl. The dead are placed in a simple coffin (Aron) so that - as faith promises - they can be gathered together with the fathers (2 Kings 20:22). A little sack of soil from Israel is placed under his head. There is also the custom of covering the dead man's eyes with shards of pottery.

Religious disengagement

During the Jewish period of mourning, the pain-gripped person (Onen) is looked after a great deal. He is released from all religious obligations in the period between death and burial in order to be able to calmly and carefully prepare for the imminent burial.

Basically, the mourner is released from the daily duties of prayer in the synagogue before the funeral . Because of his pain, he is not even able to do this. That is why others pray for him and with him. His time is devoted exclusively to the preparation of the funeral service ( kewura ). The mourner only practices the most essential personal hygiene, abstains from all pleasures and refrains from cutting hair, bathing and, as a male Jew, shaving. Enjoyment includes not only conjugal duties, but also study of the scriptures. An old Talmudic wisdom recommends: Do not try to comfort your friend while his dead person is still ahead of him.

graveyard

The cemetery (Bet-hachajim) is called the House of Eternal Life or House of Eternity or just a good place in Jewish vernacular . The funeral begins there in the designated room with a spoken prayer, which ends with the quote from the Book of Job : The Lord gave it, the Lord took it; the name of the Lord be praised. Sometimes the sayings of the fathers are also quoted: Look at three things and you will never fail in life: Know where you come from and where you are going and to whom you will one day have to answer. In principle, there is no singing in the mourning hall or in the cemetery. The rabbi gives the memorial speech (Hesped), other speakers can join in to duly honor the deceased, unless he has expressly forbidden this during his lifetime.

It is the duty in the Jewish community to accompany the dead at least a few cubits (halwajat hamet), which is called the levaja (accompaniment - the funeral procession), during which the body is accompanied to its resting place, a sign of respect for the deceased . The Hebrew word "Levaja" also means "to participate" and "bond". Participation in Levaja is intended to give comfort to the soul as it makes this difficult transition from one life to another.

After the funeral, the eulogies fall silent. Prayers and Psalm 91 accompany the funeral procession. In the vicinity of the freshly dug grave, if this has not already happened in the house of mourning, the burial brotherhood tears a tear (K'ria) in the hem of the robes depending on the degree of relationship of the deceased. This indicates the tear in the heart. Originally this ritual took place at the time of the news of death. Once the coffin is lowered into the grave, all those present take part in the funeral with three shovels of earth. They say: Because you are earth and you should become earth . If the coffin is completely covered by the earth, Psalm 16 and the sanctification prayer ( Kaddish ) are said at the grave or later in the mourning hall , so that the ascent of the soul is promoted.

Comfort trellis

Then those present can line up like a trellis so that the mourners step through and hear the words: The Lord comfort you in the midst of the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. At the beginning of the Sabbath they are greeted by the congregation in the synagogue with the same consolation .

Shiva sitting

After the funeral, the week of deepest mourning begins, the so-called shiva sitting (Hebrew shiva = seven [days]). During this time of mourning, those who have come sit on low stools or, as originally, without shoes on the floor. All mirrors and pictures in the house have been hung up, the mourners will not leave the house. The neighbors and friends come to express their condolences and to strengthen the mourners with food they have brought with them. The writer Manès Sperber describes in the third volume of his autobiography Until One Puts Shards on My Eyes, sitting shiva after his grandfather's funeral.

On the first seven days of the mourning period, neither professional work nor everyday duties are pursued. The Sabbath alone interrupts the funeral customs. A candle burns in memory of the deceased: a lamp before God is the soul of man (Proverbs 20:26). The Shiva ends - depending on the degree of kinship - after the week of mourning, the month of mourning or the year of mourning with a memorial ceremony. The anniversary of death - called the year - is celebrated with a candle and a kaddish .

Sadness

The Hebrew word for mourning ( Ewel ) already contains in its letters all the binding information of the seven relatives who are mourned at all: These are above all the parents, the father, the mother, who are mourned for a whole year. Brother, sister, son, daughter, wife, husband are mourned for only thirty days.

The customs differ in the history of Judaism . They are characterized by the adoption and rejection of non-Jewish rituals and by their own ideas in Judaism. In piety, the mourning of the individual is differentiated from the mourning of the community, as it is expressed on the day of Atonement ( Yom Kippur ) or on the day of mourning for the victims of the Shoah , since those who pray wear their death robes. The Jewish tradition tells of God's mourning for Moses , whom he himself is said to have buried (Deuteronomy 34: 6), for the destruction of Jerusalem and his temple, and for his people.

literature

Günter Sternberger: The Talmud . Introduction - texts - explanations. 2nd edition. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-08354-4 .
The bible . Based on the translation by Martin Luther. With apocrypha. German Bible Society, Stuttgart 1999.
Jewish Lexicon. An encyclopedic manual of Jewish knowledge in four volumes . Founded by Georg Herlitz and Bruno Kirscher. Jüdischer Verlag, Königstein (1927) 1982, Volume III, pp. 1027-1031.
Friedrich Thieberger (Ed.): Jewish festival, Jewish custom. Jüdischer Verlag Athenäum, Königstein 1937. (3rd edition. 1985, pp. 434–450)
Israel Meir Lau : How Jews Live. Believe everyday celebrations. Recorded and edited by Schaul Meislisch, translated from Hebrew by Miriam Magall; with the assistance of Michael Krupp; With a foreword by Josef Burg; with an afterword by Benyamin Zeev Barslei. 3. Edition. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 1988, ISBN 3-579-02155-9 , pp. 341-358.
Klaus Dirschauer : The Jewish burial and the rituals of his mourning. In: Friedhofskultur . Journal for the entire cemetery sector. 102nd volume, 1/2012, pp. 15-17.
Klaus Dirschauer : The Jewish burial and the rituals of his mourning. In: Buried with words: Designing and creating funeral speeches. Donat Verlag, Bremen 2012, ISBN 978-3-943425-08-6 , pp. 91-99.

DVDs

The tango of the Rashevskis
Everything on sugar !

Individual evidence

↑ "The reverence for death and the dead is only surpassed by that for life and the living." Max Simonsohn: Mourning regulations and mourning customs. In: Friedrich Thieberger (Ed.): Jewish festival, Jewish custom. Jüdischer Verlag Athenäum, Königstein 1937. (3rd edition. 1985, p. 434)
↑ Very vividly in the comedies "The Tango of the Rashevskis" and "Alles auf Zucker!"
↑ "During the week that followed the news of the death, our apartment was transformed into a house of prayer. According to tradition, the father did not leave the house; from early morning until late at night he sat on the stool, friends and acquaintances came to consolation Those who had known the deceased spoke of him with praise and assured him that justice would be done to him in the hereafter, that only good would happen. The consolation was accompanied by those present with deep sighs and at the end with loud "Amen". In all of this, the important thing was that my father could say the funeral prayer morning, afternoon, and evening without leaving the house, but that would require a minyan, or at least nine men, to form a prayer community with him mostly not difficult to bring the minyan together, since we, the three sons, were mostly present. " In: Manès Sperber: All the past. Volume 3: Until they put broken pieces on my eyes. Europaverlag, Vienna 1977, ISBN 3-203-50642-4 , p. 134.

[1] "The reverence for death and the dead is only surpassed by that for life and the living." Max Simonsohn: Mourning regulations and mourning customs. In: Friedrich Thieberger (Ed.): Jewish festival, Jewish custom. Jüdischer Verlag Athenäum, Königstein 1937. (3rd edition. 1985, p. 434)

[2] Very vividly in the comedies "The Tango of the Rashevskis" and "Alles auf Zucker!"

[3] "During the week that followed the news of the death, our apartment was transformed into a house of prayer. According to tradition, the father did not leave the house; from early morning until late at night he sat on the stool, friends and acquaintances came to consolation Those who had known the deceased spoke of him with praise and assured him that justice would be done to him in the hereafter, that only good would happen. The consolation was accompanied by those present with deep sighs and at the end with loud "Amen". In all of this, the important thing was that my father could say the funeral prayer morning, afternoon, and evening without leaving the house, but that would require a minyan, or at least nine men, to form a prayer community with him mostly not difficult to bring the minyan together, since we, the three sons, were mostly present. " In: Manès Sperber: All the past. Volume 3: Until they put broken pieces on my eyes. Europaverlag, Vienna 1977, ISBN 3-203-50642-4 , p. 134.