The Information Channel Felist.Com -*-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Do not Reply this message! Please send messages to kehilasmy@yahoo.com Message from News - Agudath Israel of America (News@agudathisrael.org) +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Dear Friends, | | | |As you may (or may not) know, Agudath Israel of America's director of | |public affairs, Rabbi Avi Shafran, writes weekly essays that are | |syndicated to Jewish papers across the country (and around the world). | |They are often about current events -- from an observant Jewish | |perspective -- and sometimes about basic Jewish concepts. Although | |generally written with a non-observant readership in mind, the essays are| |often found worthy by frum readers as well. | | ------------------------------------------------------ | | | |Originaly this article has issued on Friday, February 2, 2007. The | |feedback on it had reveled the need for slight changes in original | |article. I would like to share the reason behind sending the revised | |version. | | | |At Agudath Israel of America, before taking a political or social stance,| |launching a new effort or offering educational material, we look to our | |rabbinic leadership for guidance. | | | |Although we obviously do not bother the members of the Moetzes Gedolei | |HaTorah (the Council of Torah Sages) with much of the day-to-day work we | |do in the realms of our advocacy, public service or education, when faced| |with new situations requiring policy decisions, we consult the Council. | |Similarly, while I do not submit everything I write for Am Echad | |Resources to the Council, when I am addressing something of unusual | |importance, or have any concerns about what I have written, I make sure | |to ask Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe and the rabbinic head | |of Agudath Israel of America, to review it first. | | | |Since "Burning Issue" deals with an important topic and describes a | |fundamental Jewish belief, I faxed an early draft of the essay to Rabbi | |Perlow's study early last week. When I hadn't heard back from him by | |Friday, I assumed he had found it acceptable and released the essay. | |Unfortunately, the fax had only come to his attention on Friday | |afternoon, at which point he called me with two concerns. | |One was my omission of the concept of "honoring the dead" from which the | |halachic imperative of burial derives; | |the second was my statement that the revival of the dead is "not | |explicitly expressed in the Written Torah." | | | |Although the statement is not inaccurate, the Talmud takes pains to | |stress that there are in fact indications of the concept in the actual | |text of the Torah. Rabbi Perlow felt that it was important to more | |clearly note that. (An astute and knowledgeable recipient of the essay, | |the renowned Professor Jacob Neusner, had earlier that day made the same | |point to me.) | | | |And so, I edited the essay accordingly and resend it here. | | | |I hope it will help convey Judaism's attitude toward cremation and, | |through the history of its editing, something about commitment to Jewish | |integrity and Torah leadership. | | | | Rabbi Avi Shafran| | ------------------------------------------------------ | | | | BURNING ISSUE | | | | Rabbi Avi Shafran| | [Director of public affairs| | for Agudath Israel of America.]| | | |A crematorium recently opened for business in Israel, for the use of | |citizens who want their remains reduced to ashes. | | | |A decade ago, just over 20% of Americans who died were cremated. In 2005,| |the rate had risen to 32%. The Cremation Association of North America | |confidently forecasts that by 2025 more than half of Americans will | |choose to have their remains burned rather than interred. While no one | |knows what percentage of American cremation-choosers are Jewish, there is| |little doubt that, at least among Jews with limited or no Jewish | |education, or who became estranged from Jewish observance, cremation has | |become acceptable, if not a vogue. And now, the Jewish State has it own | |facility for burning human bodies. | | | |Yet the fact that the establishment is the first of its kind in Israel | |does bespeak an essential Jewish attitude toward the services it | |provides. | | | |Some Jews recoil from the idea of cremation because the Third Reich | |incinerated so many of its Jewish victims. | | | |Others, and many non-Jews, disdain the burning of human remains because | |of infamous cases where crematory owners, after accepting families' | |payments, presented them with urns of animal ashes, turning a further | |profit from the sale of the bodies entrusted them to brokers who then | |conducted brisk businesses of their own selling body parts. | | | |Judaism's inherent abhorrence for cremation, however, predates and | |supersedes both Nazi evils and ghoulish crimes. The roots of the Torah's | |insistence on burial of human remains lie elsewhere. | | | |Judaism's opposition to cremation is sourced in the Torah's statement | |that humans are created "in the image of G-d." As a result, we are | |charged to show "honor for the dead" by consigning human bodies, in as | |undisturbed state as possible, to the earth - even, if necessary, if it | |means forfeiting the performance of another commandment. | | | |And then there is the related, fundamental Jewish belief that there will | |come a time when the dead will live again. Although the idea of the | |resurrection of the righteous may be surprising to some, it is one of | |Judaism's most important teachings. The concept, the Talmud teaches, is | |subtly evident in the Written Torah's text; and fully prominent in the | |Torah's other half, the Oral Tradition. The Mishna, the Oral Tradition's | |central text, confers such weightiness to the conviction that it places | |deniers of the eventual resurrection of the dead first among those who | |"forfeit their share in the world to come" (Sanhedrin, Chapter 11, Mishna| |1). As the Talmud comments thereon: "He denied the resurrection of the | |dead, so will he be denied a portion in the resurrection of the dead." | | | |That our bodies are invested with such importance should not be | |startling. Not only our souls but our physical selves, too, possess | |inherent holiness. Our bodies, after all, are the indispensable means of | |performing G-d's will. It is through employing them to do good deeds and | |denying their gravitations to sin that we achieve our purposes in this | |world. | | | |And so, Jewish tradition teaches, even though we are to consign our | |bodies to the earth after death, there is a small "bone" (Hebrew: | |"etzem") that is not destroyed when a body decays and from which the | |entire person, if he or she so merits, will be rejuvenated at some point | |in the future. | | | |The idea that a person might be recreated from something tiny - | |something, even, that can survive for millennia - should not shock anyone| |remotely familiar with contemporary science. Each of our cells contains a| |large and complex molecule, DNA, that is essentially a blueprint of our | |bodies; theoretically, one of those molecules from even our long-buried | |remains could be coaxed to reproduce each of our physical selves. | |(Intriguingly, the Hebrew word "etzem" can mean not only "bone" but also | |"essence" and "self.") | | | |Burning, in Judaism, is a declaration of utter abandon and nullification.| |Jews burn leaven and bread before Passover, when the Torah insists no | |vestige of such material may be in their possession. The proper means of | |disposing of an idol is to pulverize or burn it. | | | |Needless to say, G-d is capable of bringing even ashes to life again (as | |the ashes of the Nazis' crematoria victims will surely demonstrate one | |day, may it come soon). But actually choosing to have one's body | |incinerated is an act that, so intended or not, expresses denial of the | |fact that the body is still valuable, that it retains worth, indeed | |potential life. | | | |The new Israeli crematorium's owner, in fact, describes himself as an | |atheist, as do most if not all of his customers. One, a teacher in | |Jerusalem, gave eloquent expression to her reasons for choosing | |cremation, telling The Jerusalem Post: "I was not sanctified in my | |lifetime so my grave won't be sanctified either I believe that there is | |nothing after death" | | | |That is the philosophy underlying the choice of cremation. | | | |It is the antithesis of the belief-system called Judaism. | | | | (C) 2007 AM ECHAD RESOURCES | | | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Please visit our web page http://www.kehilasmy.org ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Buy books with 10% off from Artscroll and Artscroll will donate us 5% of your purchase: http://artscroll.com/linker/kehilasmy/home -*-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: http://felist.com/member/unsub?grp=lit.kehilasmy&email=e@mail http://felist.com/ mailto:ask@felist.com