Ashes to ashes

I was surprised to discover, some years ago, that many Jews in the UK are cremated, as was the case today with the late Amy Winehouse. (Always weird using that additional appellation so soon after someone has died. Just a few days ago she may have been "late" for an appointment; now she is forever "Late", by virtue of dying early) She had a Jewish funeral service in a Jewish part of town and her body was despatched by a loyal band of (mainly) Jewish North Londoners. But instead of going into the ground, according to the strictures of traditional Judaism, her corpse made its way into a furnace. There isn't a nicer word for that - and "oven" has all sorts of ugly, historical connotations.

P was intrigued to read a discussion* of this among readers of online news coverage of the funeral. One said Winehouse couldn't have been a "proper" Jew if she made her final exit this way, rather than under the ground. Another noted the seeming hypocrisy of having the funeral take place within a couple of days of her death, according to Jewish tradition. A third reader wondered how it could possibly be relevant to make all this fuss about someone dying "as a Jew" when their entire adult life, if not childhood as well, seemed to have been lived as a heathen !

Halachically - that is according to halacha, traditional Jewish law - you are Jewish if your mother is Jewish. Simple as that. And you remain Jewish, except in a few extreme cases, such as Spinoza's (he was excommunicated), until your dying day. It may seem ridiculous to make so much fuss of someone's purported identity only as they are being laid to rest.

But let's face it: funerals are more for the living than the dead. The reassertion of some kind of meaning and community at times of tragedy is most welcome to those left behind, especially if they happen to be the parents. Moreover, Judaism will always remain somewhat confusing to non-Jews (and many Jews too) in being neither just a "people" nor merely a "practice" but, somehow, both.

As for cremation, I understand that it became the most common form of burial in the UK quite a long time ago, mainly for financial reasons - it costs a lot less in a country where land is scarce. And, freed of religious shackles, an increasingly secular population perhaps viewed cremation as "cleaner" and more efficient. No doubt a significant number of British Jews, at the more liberal end of the religious spectrum, saw no reason not to follow this practice. Amy's own grandmother was cremated in the same Golders Green cemetery.

Nevertheless, it remains a dramatic contrast to the funerals of orthodox and traditional Jews, who, like Muslims, must be buried in a plain white garment and in a simple wooden coffin. In hot countries, such as Israel, there is in fact no coffin at all, just a shroud. The thinking behind this is the literalistic notion of Messianic revivification, thus requiring a "complete" body, returned to it's Maker in the same humble state as when it arrived in this world.**

It is this demand for physical completeness that prompts groups of specially trained orthodox men to scour the ground after a terrorist bombing in Israel. They are looking for every possible piece of flesh, all of which must be buried. I always wonder how they can know that some of the terrorist's flesh isn't mixed up with that of the victims ?

This physical burial requirement obviously makes no sense at all if you were one of the millions incinerated in a Nazi death camp, or if you were lost at sea, eaten by an animal, forcibly decomposed by your murderer in an acid bath, etc. etc. But as with most things religious, ours not to reason why ... well, you can try but you're unlikely to find a satisfactory answer.

This desire for "completeness" in death is also why traditional Judaism, like Islam, prohibits organ donation. This is beginning to change now, no doubt based on the overriding principle that nothing is more important than saving a life.

A fascinating, if unappetising subject. In death as in life, different strokes for different folks. The loss of any loved one, especially when so young, leaves a feeling of incompleteness. That, rather than the theoretical state of the deceased, is what must be focused on and, hopefully, fixed. One minute they were there, now they have vanished. Where exactly the now-empty husk of a human resides is perhaps not, in the end, a matter of life and death.

* I initially wrote "heated discussion" but quickly thought better of this unintentional pun. Respecting death means tiptoeing through a verbal minefield. I recall my sister once walking into a roomful of subdued mourners and exclaiming: "Deathly silence in here !" before realising too late her mistake.

** In fact, traditional Judaism makes much of the idea that our bodies never actually belonged to us in life: they were on loan. Just as they must be "respected" in death, so they should be protected while in use; hence the ban on piercings, tattoos and substance abuse. Hard to see Amy Winehouse as a traditional Jew in that regard.

Update: Having just seen a photo of a man carrying Amy's ashes out of the crematorium, looking for all the world like a bodyguard who could have been escorting the living, breathing woman only a few days ago, I can't help feeling a little queasy at the merciless rapidity of transition from now-you-see-me to now-you-don't. A high-speed Jewish burial followed by high-speed bodily destruction is perhaps a little too much for me. But I wouldn't dream of imposing my particular sensitivities on anyone else.

Update 2: Oh dear. The bodyguards-posing-with-ashes photos get worse.

Update 3: Just realised I forgot to explain why Jewish burials take place with what some might consider indecent haste. It is because Judaism draws a huge iron curtain between life and death. The latter is considered a form of impurity to be kept strictly separate from all living things. As soon as death occurs, the soul leaves the body and has no further use for it. Indeed, any kind of focus on the now purely physical object could be considered akin to idolatry, something which is anathema to Judaism. Thus, the imperative of a speedy burial, after which the focus can return to the living, in terms of a seven-day period of mourning to comfort the bereaved and accompanying prayers to "help the soul on Its way". Such is the "uncleanness" of death that certain Jews, considered to be of priestly descent, have very specific restrictions preventing them from coming too close to a dead body. And a very religious Jew will, upon waking in the morning, give top priority to washing his hands and saying a Hebrew prayer thanking God for reviving him (obviously, religious women too). Sleep is considered to be a mini-death - a 1/60th fraction of death to be precise !

On a practical level, the typical high-speed Jewish burial can cause terrible problems, with far-flung family and friends often unable to attend. I remember my own mini-drama when my aunt died. A rookie reporter at a magazine, I was told to finish my news stories before being allowed to leave work. As a result I had to bomb up the motorway from London to Manchester at breakneck speed and, having parked at the wrong corner of a large cemetery, then found myself running like a madman past endless gravestones in order to arrive at the small Jewish section. I had missed the service but was thankfully just in time to see the burial.

One last thing: It is not very orthodox Jewish these days to say "rest in peace", perhaps because this valediction seems to blur the physical body and the soul. Ironically, the phrase seems to have it's origins in the book of Isaiah and was used on ancient Jewish gravestones, written in a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic. The sentiment and words live on in Hebrew prayers recited during regular synagogue services.

The traditional Jewish words acknowledging a deceased person are "zichron l'bracha", often abbreviated to z"l, which means "may their memory be a blessing"*** The focus is on life and the living, as is the traditional death-notice wording: "May X's family be comforted among the mourners of Zion" and the in-person greeting to family of the deceased: "I wish you long life". It seems to me an unsatisfactory and rather clumsy thing to say, appearing to focus on quantity rather than quality and at a time when the duration of a grieving person's life may be the last thing on their mind.

But the Jewish way is to consign death to a separate metaphorical room, and while honouring the dead for at least a year via special prayers, nevertheless to remove them very quickly from among the living. In Judaism, the memory of a person and their good deeds is all-important, rather than their former physicality, which those of a Kabbalistic disposition would no doubt say was all an illusion anyway, since this world is simply the dreamlike ante-chamber to the "real" world that is to come.

*** This is often translated as, "May his / her memory be FOR a blessing" but I've never understood why this jarring, foreign-sounding inclusion of the word "for". As any decent translator knows, you don't do a literal translation if it doesn't sound right in the second language. One might say the same of "I wish you long life", rather than "I wish you A long life", but as all fans of Fiddler on the Roof know, tradition is tradition ! Grammar shmammar !