Recently, I attended a
Jewish funeral service in a small cemetery chapel—the men seated on the right, the
women on the left. The service began with readings from the Psalms in English
and Hebrew:
“You will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal
pleasures at your right hand.”
At one point in the rabbi’s eulogy, he gave the mourners
a lesson in the Hebrew language. He explained that the word for love was “ahava” and that the root of that word, “ahav,” meant “to give.”
How beautiful,
I thought. Love was not a noun; it was a verb. It was not a person or a thing;
it was something we do. Nor was it something that “happens to us.” We do not “fall
in love,” as if we were innocent bystanders. We give ourselves to love—to others. In a word, love is a gift.
The lessons continued. When it was time to move to the
burial site, eight pallbearers lifted the simple wooden casket and stepped
slowly out of the chapel while the rabbi chanted a Psalm in Hebrew. The mourners
followed.
After the casket was eased into the ground, the bereaved,
both men and women, participated in the ritual by pitching three or more spades
of dirt into the grave. The first sounds of warm earth beating against the pine
box sounded with a solemn thud, tolling the finality of a precious life.
The lifetime companion of the deceased asked if I would
participate in the burial tradition. “It’s so powerful,” he said.
Naturally, I complied. And when I had finished, I handed
the shovel to a woman, which, as I learned later, was a violation of the
venerable ritual. I should have pierced the spade’s blade into the dirt. When I
had wrongly handed the shovel to the next mourner, I was symbolically transferring
my grief to her.
At the end of the ceremony, the rabbi instructed us to
wash our hands in a small water basin outside the chapel’s entry. We all
followed his lead.
As the people began to disperse, I searched out the
rabbi. He was a man in his early fifties with a trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and
a straight back.
“Would you explain two things?” I asked. “The
participative burial ritual and the washing of hands?”
The rabbi did not look at me. He scanned the sky—perhaps seeking
inspiration from heaven—but when he spoke, his voice was fluid, as if repeating
a familiar recitation. “We are told in Deuteronomy that God buried Moses. And
because we wish to be like God, we do as He has done. It is an act of love. We
are offering a gift to the deceased, knowing that she cannot reciprocate. And
so our love is pure.”
“I see. And the washing of hands?”
“We cherish life over all things. Whenever we are near
death, we quickly cleanse ourselves of its pall of grief.”
I thanked the rabbi as he turned to another who sought
his wisdom.
Standing still for a moment, I traced the evergreen
treetops that poked into the sky. As I thought about the rabbi’s answers, the
words that came to me were “closure” and “renewal.”
I have never felt closure more dramatically than when I
shoveled three spades of dirt into the open grave. For me it was a definitive
and immutable goodbye. But when I washed my hands, there was a sense of renewal,
a resurgence and rededication to life—a reminder to cherish whatever days
remained.
I was about to walk to my car, when my friend introduced
me to a woman with an effervescent smile. I hesitated to shake her hand. “I
just washed my hands,” I said apologetically, fearing my hands would be wet and
clammy.
“And I just washed mine,” the smiling woman said, as she
took my hand in both of hers. And at that moment I felt a surge of
gratefulness. Both she and I were clean and starting anew.
I will probably never see that lovely woman again, but she
reminded me that being alive merited a glowing, exuberant smile of
thanksgiving. When the Psalmist wrote, “You will fill me with joy in your
presence,” he was speaking of God. But at that moment in the sunshine—standing in
the presence of a warm and gracious woman, her hands sheathing mine—it was she
who filled my heart with renewed joy. And for that act of kindness, I am
consoled.
No comments:
Post a Comment