Death, dignity, obligation

Jewish burial society founded in Prescott

LEISAH NAMM
Managing Editor

A group of Jewish individuals in Prescott have organized a Jewish burial society.

The Chevra Kadisha of Northern Arizona, Inc., which received nonprofit status last month, provides services for Jewish families facing death and dying issues.

About a dozen volunteers are learning the traditional Jewish procedures for preparing a body for burial and will host educational programs at the local synagogue, Temple B'rith Shalom, after the High Holidays, said Nina Perlmutter, who spearheaded the effort. "There was a need for this kind of service in Northern Arizona and so a few of us decided to get together and do it."

"In the past few years, I've had a good number of friends die all too young," she said. She credits two of these friends as the inspiration behind the chevra kadisha.

"One was totally nonaffiliated (with the Jewish community) and the other was somewhat affiliated with the synagogue here but not really involved," she said. "But both of them found - as often is the case (when people face death) - they wanted more traditional touches to the experience. They were interested in 'How do Jews die?' and 'How do Jews understand death?'"

One of these friends introduced Perlmutter to the traditional tahara (purification) ceremony, the cleaning and bathing of the dead.

"She asked if I would do that for her," she said.

About a year ago, she brought the idea of a chevra kadisha, also called a "sacred society" or a "holy society," to the religious practices committee at Temple B'rith Shalom, a Reform congregation, and the Chevra Kadisha of Northern Arizona was born.

Until then, Jewish families relied on a few volunteers to sit as shomrim (to "guard" the body) or handle personalized body preparations, said Rabbi David Lipman, who has served as the synagogue's spiritual leader for two years. Although the chevra kadisha is not formally affiliated with the synagogue, Lipman helps organize male volunteers and will teach some of the classes.

The synagogue membership has 170 families, Lipman said. He estimates that there are about 350 Jewish families in the Prescott area.

While Prescott's Heritage Memorial Park has a Jewish section in the cemetery, there is no funeral home that offers traditional Jewish burial services so the chevra kadisha is working with several local funeral homes, Perlmutter said.

Perlmutter notes a revival of traditional burial practices across the Jewish spectrum. "For a long time, it was just the very Orthodox who were doing it and now there are national networks and newsletters and annual conferences," she said.

One such organization is Kavod v'Nichum ("honor and comfort"), formed in No-vember 2000 to promote Jewish funeral practices and provide education and assistance to synagogues and communities throughout North America.

Two hundred people attend-ed the organization's first American Chevra Kadisha conference last year in Rockville, Md.; a June confer-ence this year in Las Vegas had 70 attendees.

Fran Garner, head of the Temple B'rith Shalom's religious practices committee and Sheila DeWoskin, head of the synagogue's funeral practices committee, at-tended this year's conference.

"All phases of Judaism were represented at the con-ference," said Garner. "Everybody came together in their feelings about that what you were doing was the right thing ... (to offer) your com-munity this service."

Plenary session topics at this year's conference included the role of the chevra kadisha in the 21st century, the Jewish afterlife, and Jewish com-munal obligations in death and dying.

Workshops included a demonstration of the tahara process and other chevra kadisha rituals.

These traditional rituals include hotza'ah (removal and transportation of the body), tahara (purification - which includes washing and dressing of the body with dignity and reciting special prayers), tachrichim (burial shrouds) and shmira (the vigil - the shomer, or watchman, remains close to the deceased at all times and recites psalms).

Chevra kadisha volunteers can choose which aspect they want to be involved with, Perlmutter said.

"It's very, very powerful for people who have been involved to face their own fears and concerns about these issues," she said. "It's been a wonderful bridge for nonaffiliated Jews to step closer to Jewish com-munity."

The Chevra Kadisha of Northern Arizona provides a wide range of services, "but ultimately we want to both respect the Jewish tradition and the family's under-standing of the tradition," Perlmutter said. For instance, if a family wants the deceased to wear a favorite dress instead of the traditional burial shroud, the chevra kadisha will accommodate the family's wishes.

In Phoenix, there is no formal chevra kadisha, said Jonathan Perlman, director of Sinai Mortuary. However, the mortuary provides the services through volunteers, primarily through local Orthodox insti-tutions, he said. There are 10-15 people who are available to conduct the tahara rituals and about two people who volun-teer as shomrim. If anyone is interested in volunteering, they can contact Sinai Mortuary at 602-248-0030.

Besides her involvement with Temple B'rith Shalom, Perlmutter and her husband Tom Broderson run Lev Chadash, an organization in Prescott that offers workshops on Jewish meditation and Judaism in nature. Perlmutter teaches philosophy and religious studies at Yavapai College in Prescott.

"I discovered that lots of people have felt a need over the years to reclaim Jewish tradition that they didn't even know about," she said.

"(The chevra kadisha) is very powerful work. I consider it deeply sacred work."

For more information about Chevra Kadisha of Northern Arizona, call Perlmutter at (928) 777-8172. For more in-formation about Kavod v'Nichum, visit www.jewish-funerals.org.

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