An elderly woman came up to her rabbi and told him that she was planning to be cremated and to have her ashes spread over a shopping mall. When the rabbi asked her why she wanted her ashes scattered over a shopping mall, the woman answered, “At least I know my daughters will visit me at least twice a week.”
What are the advantages of a traditional Jewish burial over cremation? Many people say they want to be cremated because it is more convenient for the family, or they don’t feel any connection with the ritual of burial. However, a traditional burial, while involving many details, can help mourners cope with their loss more easily, gives them a sense of closure and involves the deceased in the natural process of death and rebirth.
A woman came to Rabbi Aaron Moss of Australia and said that, while she initially approved of her mother’s decision to be cremated, she had a sense of detachment and coldness during the actual ceremony. She could not identify the jar of ashes as her mother, and felt it awkward to “say goodbye” to something lifeless and cold. Rabbi Moss reports that he often counsels people through their decisions over burial and comments that he has not yet met a person who regretted giving their parents a traditional Jewish burial, but he has come across many mourners who wished they had not participated in a cremation.
Many Jews feel discomfort at the thought of cremation, since millions of Jews were burned in ovens during the Holocaust
(peace be upon them), However, Jewish law espoused burial because in the days of Moshiach (the Messiah), there will be a resurrection of the dead, and Jewish souls will be reunited with bodies. There are other advantages to burial, since it allows the deceased to have a resting place in this world, and one’s children and grandchildren can visit their graves. On a mystical level, burial is optimal because it reunites the body from the vital dust from which it was created, and continues the cycle of life through contact with ferile soil. Burial gives us the sense that death is not the end, but that the dead nourish and encourage us in this world, just as a body lies in the same soil from which new life springs forth.
Related: Sitting with the Dead