1

To Li fe

ON THE COVER

Beyond Tradition from page 29

Rabbi Tamara

Kolton: "Death is

very personal, and

people deserve

options."

But Can You
Be Buried?

e- veral total Jeiiigf--
eteries Temple Beth- .
Workman's Circle, Adat
Shalom and Machpelah
– permit the burial of cre
mains (cremation remains)
Machpelah is a privately
owned cemetery, but also
the only one in town under
supervision of the Vaad, the
Council of Orthodox Rabbis.
The Vaad's Rabbi Joseph
Krupnik stressed that the
Council of Orthodox Rabbis
in no way supports nor
encourages cremation. So
how did cremains (about four
are now in the cemetery's
"cremains garden") come to
be at Machpelah?
Certain cases "have had
extremely extenuating cir-
cumstances," Rabbi Krupnik
explained. The Vaad learned
of individuals, for example,
who had already arranged
for plots at Machpelah. Then
they moved-out of state,
where they died.
Family members who
preferred not to deal with
shipping the body back to
Michigan opted for crema-
tion, despite the fact that
it was clearly against the
deceased's wishes. After all,
Rabbi Krupnik notes, no one
who wants to be cremated is
going to pay for a cemetery
plot,

- Elizabeth Applebaum

30

April 13 • 2006

powerful and deeply disturbing:
"No one is going to visit my grave
anyway"

The Cremation Garden
The guidelines for Jewish burial
come from the Torah. All the
matriarchs and patriarchs are
buried, and Deuteronomy 21:23
states: "You will surely bury him:'
referring to proper procedure
after death. Further, strict guide-
lines exist as to how a Jewish
body is to be handled from
the moment of death. A Jewish
funeral is not complete without
proper care for the body from
the Chevra Kadishah (burial
society), which would not be
included in a cremation.
So important was burial for
a Jew that even the High Priest
of the Holy Temple, a man with
stringent directives to avoid any
kind of contamination, was to lay
to rest the body of a Jew, should
no one else be able to perform
the responsibility.
Cremation, on the other hand,
is considered nivvul haguf,
mutilating the body.
"The way I see it, there ought
to be a difference between how
we dispose of paper plates and
banana peels and how we treat
human bodies:' says
Rabbi Boruch Levin
of Hebrew Memorial
Chapel.
Cremation, he
says, "indicates a
lack of sensitivity to
our lofty existence,
our purposeful life,
which contrasts so
clearly the difference

between us and our refuse. If we
are truly the fusion of a Godly.
soul to our body, then the body
must be respected for housing
that soul.
"Just as a Sefer Torah that has
aged and is not readable never
ends up in a trash heap but is
buried, so, too, should man."
It's a "shame he says, "the
People of the Book need to
become copycats of the latest
culture ... Maybe subconsciously
people want to be cremated
because if we respect our bod-
ies due to the holiness it carries,
then we are expected to live that
way — a sublime responsibility
that many don't necessarily want
to commit to."
Though many Jewish funeral
homes nationwide will help a
family with cremation (they
work with a crematory), very
few Jewish institutions choose to
actually advocate cremation as a
choice..
One that does is Temple Akiba
in Culver City, Calif., the state
with the most — 181— crema-
tories in the country (Michigan
has 57). Temple Akiba offers a
cremation plan as the "opportu-
nity to do a mitzvah. It is better
to give money to charity than

to bury it in the ground ... The
money saved should be dedicated
to future life (i.e. planting trees
in Israel, scholarships for Jewish
education, support of medical
research.)"
Another exception is the
Birmingham Temple in
Farmington Hills.
Just outside Rabbi Tamara
Kolton's office is a small patch of
land, nondescript, quiet. Here lie
the cremains of temple members.
The ashes "become part of the
Earth," Rabbi Kolton says, "and
return to nature." The graves are
unmarked, though a map notes
locations of the last remains of
loved ones, and a black marble
memorial wall allows a spot for
the traditional stones Jews leave
at a gravesite.
The cremation garden was cre-
ated, Rabbi Kolton says, "so that
temple members feel a sense of
peace in remaining dose to their
temple home.
"Our position is the freedom of
choice Rabbi Kolton says. "Death
is very personal, and people
deserve options. They should be
able to do what makes them feel
at peace."
Rabbi Kolton notes that in
many cultures and religions cre-
mation is, in fact, the preferred
choice. "Some consider the idea
of putting a body in the Earth, to
rot and get eaten by worms, as
torture."
In any case, a body has little to
do with who the person was, she
says. "People are not their bodies.
The essence of a person lives- on
in his or her good deeds."
Part of developing as a human
being is to address "taboo issues"
like cremation, she says. "When
we do, we evolve and push our-
selves beyond our fears and chal-
lenge ourselves to be reasonable."

A Mobile Society
As with the Jewish community,
men and women throughout the

Rabbi Boruch Levin:

"How can we treat a
human body the same
way we treat garbage?"

world are opting, in increasing
numbers, to be cremated.
A survey conducted by
Wirthlin Worldwide in 2005
and published by the Cremation
Association of North America
found that 46 percent of all
Americans hope to be cremated
— a huge jump from five years
earlier, when the figure was 31
percent. By 2025, the study pre-
dicted that 45.72 percent of all
deaths will end in cremation.
The study shows that most (24
percent) who choose cremation
do so because it's less expensive
than burial. Another 13 percent
are cremated because it will
save land, while 8 percent say it's
sinipler. Other reasons: it's less
emotional, its convenient, it's a
family tradition.
Those with the greatest objec-
tion to cremation are Baptists,
who avoid the practice for reli-
gious reasons. African-Americans
also are less likely to choose
cremation than either whites
or Hispanics. Their objection is
based on the importance of a
funeral, though cremation does
not negate holding such a service.

Lifestyles, Traditions
"I've worked here [Ira Kaufman
Chapel] since the early 1970s:'
David Techner says. "Thirty years
ago, almost all our calls [to pick
'up a body] came from a hospi-
tal." Today, in large part thanks to
hospice care, almost two-thirds
of deaths occur at home. Though
requests for cremation were not
unheard of in the 1970s, it was,
perhaps, one each year.
"Of course, when I first came
to the chapel everybody sat shi-
vah for seven days, too, and 70
percent of the services included
morning and evening prayers.
That's not the case today:'
Techner says.
Some, he says, see these
changes as disrespectful. "Others
say these are the choices people
are making and changes need to
be made."
A key issue in the increase is
transience, Techner says. "It has
meant the biggest change to our
business.
"It used to be that everybody
lived in the same town, and the
cemetery was part of your com-
munity," he says. "Now, we're very
mobile." Families rarely live in