May 4, 2015: Building Community With a Funeral

The phone call came late Friday afternoon. The funeral home needed a burial plot number. There were no children, no relatives, no service. After all no body knew him. Just a quick burial. No need for me the rabbi to show up.

I explained to the surprised funeral home director, not Jewish, that I would be there. Just a couple of quick words, no big deal but the person, who I had never met deserved at least that much. I got off the phone. Called the chair of our cemetery committee. He said, “Rabbi, I’ll be there.” I got off the phone and resumed my weekly meeting with the president of our board. “Well, of course you’ll be there. It is only right. That’s what Jews do.”

And I stopped to think about it. He’s right. That’s what Jews do. So I sent an email to my professional organization, the Association of Rabbis and Cantors, ARC. How do you do a funeral for someone you didn’t know, with no one present. Every single answer was “Of course.” And in the process you build community.

After Shabbat I sent out an email to our community. I explained that I was doing a funeral for someone who died who left no one and that not many if any knew the person. I asked for people to show up. To be counted. To perform that last act of compassion with no hope for “pay back.” To make a minyan. And they did. We had 18 people present. Including his next door neighbors, his legal guardians.

Our person had been a member for years. He was a bachelor. Never married. Never had children. Born in England. He and his parents bought the house in 1947, right after the war. He loved Snookers. His mother had been a member. Played cards and canasta with some of our older members who still remember her—and her son. He had worked at the post office. He celebrated holidays with his neighbors. Loved television and video games. Played with the neighbors kids. Occasionally he went to Men’s Clubs meetings.

I sang psalms from the hearse to the grave. I did a couple of more Psalms. The funeral director’s father had worked with him at the post office. Someone remembered picking him up for Men’s Club. The legal guardians had a couple of stories. I recited El Maleh Rachamim. We lowered the casket. We said Kaddish. We gently filled in the earth, backwards shovelful by backwards shovelful. We didn’t want to break the cover on the cloth casket.

It occurred to me, the old midrash that Abraham died alone and it was only after he died that Isaac and Ishmael came back together. This man died alone. But he was not buried alone. We say that it takes a village to raise a child. Sometimes it takes a village to bury the dead. That village becomes community.

18 of us stood there. 13 of us, roughly, were Jews. No matter. 18 means life. 13 reminded me of the 13 Attributes of the Divine, which include compassion, grace, full of lovingkindness and truth. We are told we need to be like G-d. Like G-d clothed Adam and Eve we should clothe the naked. Like G-d visited Abraham when he was sick, we should visit the sick. Like G-d buried Moses, we should bury the dead.

The 13 Attributes reminds me of the book, The Thirteen Petaled Rose. I hadn’t read it in years. For me, as a college student it was an obscure work of Kabbalah. It was not accessible to me. Now gathered at a cemetery with 18 people, 13 Jews I realized just how relevant it was—especially since we were burying a man named Rose! Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, a pre-eminent Talmud scholar, teaches us about the four worlds, action, formation, creation and emanation and the angels that travel between the worlds. Then he explains how when we do mitzvot, we create new angels to raise up the universe’s energy.

We are taught that angels are messengers. 18 angels showed up yesterday so that this man could be buried with dignity. With honor. With kavod. In the process of completing that mitzvah, we created new angels. In the process, we created community. Kol hakavod. And thank you.

A Postscript. We had a professor, Rabbi Regina Sandler Phillips, at the Academy for Jewish Religion. She was our professor for death and dying. She taught a class in forgiveness. She offered an “intensive” in funeral practices. She currently teaches other congregations how to form “chevre kadisha,” a holy society, a burial society. Her favorite Talmudic quote is “In cities of diversity…we organize ourselves and our money…to sustain the poor…and visit the sick…and bury the dead…and comfort the bereaved…for these are ways of peace.” (Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Gittin)Every class she began by talking about her love of cream soda. When we went to the Blue Box Café afterwards, there it was: cream soda. I don‘t think I have seen it anywhere else in Elgin. It seemed beshert, destined. And part of this wider community, this wider village, reaching back to AJR. Obviously, that’s what I had to drink. And as Regina said, “Sweet.”