Shabbat musings

[cellio]

This morning after services someone approached me because she had a question and, to quote her, "you know everything". That's scary. I don't know everything, of course -- but, so far, every time a member of my congregation has said that to me (in a Jewish context), I have in fact known the answer to the question that followed. Today was no exception.

Our rabbi is a storyteller, and as often as not his sermons will lead off with a story about someone he knows or knew (relatives, classmates, past congregants, whatever). He's very careful not to do this in a way that would embarrass the people involved. Still, this morning I found myself wondering what stories he might tell about us in the future, when he has moved on to some other congregation. If anything about me is memorable, will it be something profound or will it be some stupid little thing? I'll never know, because I'm certainly not going to ask. :-)

This morning at Torah study we were reading the beginning of parsha Tzav, which talks about how the priests were required to keep a fire burning on the altar all the time. It specifically says that each morning they must kindle this flame. Someone raised the question of how this interacts with Shabbat. Someone tried to put forth an argument based on "work", but I believe that is unnecessary -- even if work in the temple is not "work" in the prohibited sense, kindling fire is specifically forbidden. So does a specific command (keep this fire going on the altar) trump the general prohibition, or is there something else going on? The rabbi had already left for the second service when the question came up, and none of the commentaries we had handy addressed it. I should check the commentaries I have, and also see if this was covered when our mishna study group did Tractate Tamid. I mostly skimmed that one. (It can't be a general work prohibition anyway, as animals were sacrificed on Shabbat.)

I'm taking this out of order. Sometime before the Shabbat discussion, we -- somehow -- got to talking about cremation. The rabbi (among others) pointed out that cremation is against halacha, and someone objected that honoring the wishes of the dead should take priority. This caused someone else to ask why that matters, if the dead person won't know what you actually did with his body, which is a straightforward, practical answer if you don't believe that the soul lives on. (Some do and some don't.)

Someone said (correctly) that the prohibition is tied to the messianic resurrection of the dead. Someone then brought up the Shoah -- how could our tradition say that those 6 million people were condemned to not be resurrected when it clearly wasn't their fault? So I said that clearly if God can resurrect the dead then he can also reassemble the bodies from ash if need be, but that it is impolite (dare I say irreverent?) to make unnecessary work for him. This got a laugh, which I did not intend. I wonder how I should have phrased that.

Some people there felt strongly that they had to honor the wishes of the dead, and one person had had to deal with this problem personally. I have not had to deal with it (and I know that my parents have bought burial plots already), but I strongly suspect that I would not honor such a wish. There are two scenarios: either we discussed it in advance, in which case I had the opportunity to say "I can't do that; find soemone else to handle your funeral arrangements", or it was sprung with no warning after the fact (in the will, for instance), in which case I never even implicitly agreed to honor such wishes and would be free not to. And anyway, Jewish tradition says that honoring your parents stops before obeying a command to transgress. (Yeah, in my case there'd be the question of what applies if the dead parent isn't Jewish, but I'm not going there.)

Does this mean I personally believe in resurrection? Well, no -- it's not that I don't believe in it, but that I believe it is both unknowable and unimportant. The halacha, and respecting the tradition, still matter to me, and I would need a real reason to violate that. Now, if the societal norm changed to cremation and we were clearly running out of land to bury people in, and a case came up that I had to deal with, then I would re-open the question -- in a discussion with my rabbi, not on my own. But we're not there yet. <p

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

You may not know everything, but in the time I've known you here you have always struck me as someone who sets out to know a great deal about whatever it is she is passionate about, and you are certainly passionate about Judaism :)

A.
impressed with you :)

[goljerp]

to quote her, "you know everything". That's scary. I don't know everything, of course

Aha, but you know you don't know everything. That's very important!

so far, every time a member of my congregation has said that to me (in a Jewish context), I have in fact known the answer to the question that followed.

Aha, so you do know a lot. That's also very important. The combination, in fact, makes you a good person to ask.

clearly if God can resurrect the dead then he can also reassemble the bodies from ash if need be, but that it is impolite (dare I say irreverent?) to make unnecessary work for him.

Interesting. I like that approach. I'd probably approach it from a different angle, saying that both the body and the soul are important in Judiasm. Even the Nazarite (whom we read about this week) doesn't go wild in oppressing the body for the benefit of the soul; they are expected to cut their hair at some point. Mainstream rabbinic judiasm isn't big on the ascetic lifestyle. So, to get back to the point, I'd say that it's out of respect for the body that we wouldn't cremate it. Just as the tradition is to have people sit with a dead body before burial out of respect for the body, so too it seems disrespectful to me to cremate the body.