….for many decades, most Jews in the United States have lost touch with those protocols ”” if they have ever heard of them ”” in favor of conventional funeral home services that replace volunteers with professionals who, by their nature, skip the more metaphysical and personal elements of the process.
Now, a movement to restore lost tradition has motivated a new generation of Jewish volunteers to learn a set of skills that was common knowledge for many of their great-grandparents: the rituals of bathing, dressing and watching over the bodies of neighbors and friends who have died.
It is a nationwide revival propelled in almost equal parts, experts say, by an emerging sense of mortality among baby boomers, a reaction against the corporate character of the funeral home industry and a growing cultural receptivity to past spiritual practices, even some that make many people squeamish.
Noteworthy (for me, at least) is the comment:
[blockquote]“We don’t think of this being we are preparing for burial as a ‘body,’ †said Rabbi Zohn, an Orthodox Jew whose knowledge of burial tradition is mainly sought after by the non-Orthodox. “It’s a person; and that person in our view is still alive in a parallel world, very much aware of what’s happening.â€[/blockquote]
I’ve known Christians who think that Judaism has no concept of an afterlife. I’m not sure I’d call it a “parallel world,” and I’m not sure about “very much aware.” As I write, I’m reminded of the Hymnus ad Exequias Defuncti of Prudentius. Herbert Howells set part of it to music – “Take him, earth, for cherishing.”