Dear Judy,
My family is Jewish, observant some years but not others (don’t ask. This year, no Seder. Last year we had one). I am 18 years old. My grandmother is dying: she has Alzheimer’s, but also other things are badly wrong with her. My parents think she doesn’t have much time left and they are quarreling with each other, and also with me about how she is to be buried.
Basically, my parents are conflicted about cremation, which is what my grandmother told EVERYONE (me included) she wanted when she could still think straight. My mother, though, feels cremation is “unacceptable” (my mother’s word) for Jews.
My mother says it’s because of the Holocaust when, as you know, Jews were sent to the ovens by Hitler. My father says it just isn’t her call. It’s his mother, and he tells my mother ”She’s just as Jewish as you are and what she always told us goes.”
I think they’re both weird to even discuss the subject and I have told them that. But on the whole I think whatever my grandmother wanted when she was in pretty good health she should have, even if it creeps me out, which cremation definitely does. So now my mother isn’t speaking to me. She says I always take my father’s side on everything, which is not true.
My father said I should write you, which is what I’m doing, for your opinon.
Jessie
Dear Jessie,
I am so sorry about your grandmother, and also obviously about the family quarrel over her last wishes. It is true that a lot of observant Jews refuse to cremate their dead relatives, but not really because of the concentration camp crematoria to which millions of Jews were once dispatched. It goes back farther than that.
According to Rabbi Arnold S. Gluck who wrote about the issue in the magazine Reform Judaism, “Jews view our bodies as gifts from God…In life we are forbidden to harm them, and in death we are commanded to treat them with dignity.” Which means, he adds, washing the body and then burying it.
On the other hand, Rabbi Samuel M. Stahl disagrees. “Most Reform Jewis do not believe in the literal resurrection, which lies at the basis of the traditional Jewish prohibition against cremation,” he explains. “We stress that people live on in spirit…”
So the answer for Reform Jews is…there is no answer. But I’m a big believer in abiding by the last wishes of the person who’s near death, and that happens to be your grandmother. So tell your mother that I’m siding neither with her nor your father. Nor even with you. But with the person who can no longer speak for herself.
Thank you for writing
Judy
I personally think that an 18-year-old has no business getting involved in an argument between parents
If the argument involves a family member of his, he definitely has a right to get involved in the argument. I agree with the kid and think whatever the grandmother wants is what she should get.