About three weeks ago I was asked to participate in a Taharah for a 42 year old whose family has been long term members of Congregation Shearith Israel, often called The Spanish Portuguese Synagogue on the West Side of Manhattan, the first synagogue in the US established in 1654 in New Amsterdam. (before it was called New York). They call me from time to time when they need help. They do their Taharahs a bit differently (I told the Rabbi …
Category: Taharah
Why join a Chevrah? Why now? This essay seeks to address these questions from two angles, one global and one personal, as well as to explore the intersection of the two. First the personal. My father died in 1999, my mother in 2012. In both cases I felt compelled to find ritual means that would allow me to honor their individuality and the specificity of my connection to them. The idea of handing things over to “professionals”, whether a …
It’s the bodies that haunt me. Each tells a story, shares a history. Scars from cuts or C-section births, bruises from blood draws or recent falls, surgical incision lines. The first Meitah (deceased woman) I saw with her mouth agape and her body wrinkled, was in her 90s. As a new member of the Chevrah Kadisha (CK), I was given the job of holding the meitah’s head while others performed the rituals of Taharah (ritual purification). I felt awkward …
My Uncle Harry died in March of 2002. I had gone to Kansas City to visit my parents and, hopefully, to help them move from an apartment into an assisted-living facility. Between the time I had made my travel plans and the time I arrived, my uncle had been hospitalized for what the emergency room doctor thought was a heart attack. In doing their morning check-in, the nurses at the assisted-living facility to which my uncle had moved in October …
Now that we have passed the annual Selichot service, and we are about to enter into the days of awe, it is again time to pause and take stock, review where Expired and Inspired has been, where it is, and where it is going. It is appropriate – Elul is a time of introspection, retrospection, and prospection. Expired and Inspired began as a concept in early 2014 as a way to share some of the experiences, thoughts, emotions, and …
[Ed. Note: This story by Marjorie Ingall originally appeared in Tablet magazine July 17th 2019,, at tabletmag.com, and is reprinted with permission. The original can be linked at https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/287796/lessons-burial-society. Our thanks to Tablet for granting us use. Holly Blue Hawkins, the person interviewed, is a Gamliel Institute student and teacher. She has submitted other blogs to Expired And Inspired. — JB] Lessons for Living From the Burial Society What a ‘death midwife’ has learned from the dead and dying By Marjorie Ingall …
It’s 7:45 am and I am sitting in my car outside the funeral home. I’m flipping through Rick Light’s Powerpoint presentation “Taharah Training”. I’m more than a little nervous. What if I do something that is considered dishonoring to the Meitah? What if I get faint at the sight of a deceased person? As a hospice volunteer, I have been in the presence of several of my patients after death. But each one has been peacefully resting in bed with …
Chevrah Kadisha Leadership— Regional Networking and Disaster Preparedness When I first heard of the tragedy in Pittsburg, what immediately came to mind was that “this was their Shabbat morning minyan.” I thought of our own minyan, picturing the dear friends and community members I’ve known for decades. Soon my thoughts turned to, G!D forbid if it had happened here what would I, as the Rosha of our Chevrah, what would I have done, especially since members of our tiny Chevrah …
“I got a weird notice from our Jewish funeral home,” began the daughter of a hospice patient who I will call Donna. I was on the phone with her because she had asked for a rabbi on our hospice staff. “They have those dinners, you know, where they try to get you to prepay?” I thought to myself, no, I didn’t know they did that! She continued, “And what confused me is the paper they gave me that said ‘burials …