Chevra Kadisha Seminar - The Experience

By Susan Esther Barnes

Below is Part One of a two-part post about a seminar I attended. I'm posting it in two parts since each post looks at the seminar from a different perspective. This one is about the experience and the second one is about the knowledge I gained.

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On Sunday afternoon I attended a Chevra Kadisha (generally translated as “holy society”) seminar. It was an introductory lecture on taharah, the Jewish method of ritually washing dead people to prepare them for burial. It was an uncomfortable experience for me, in more ways than one.

When I arrived, I walked into a large room set up with tables and chairs. On the far side of the room were two women and a man seated at one of the tables. I walked over to them to confirm I was in the right place for the seminar. They invited me to have a seat.

More people came in, and they naturally gravitated to our table. In time, there were eleven of us gathered there, chatting amiably. That’s when the man who’d been there from the start said, “It looks like we might get enough for a minyan. If we do, we can daven.” (“Daven” means to say Jewish liturgical prayers, some of which require a “minyan” of ten Jews to say).

From my perspective, we already had a minyan, because there were at least ten Jewish people present. But by his statement this man was declaring he only counts men in a minyan. Without giving it a second thought, this man was telling me, and the other women at the table, that we don’t count. None of us said anything, but I think he picked up the change in body language from some of us, because a short time later he said some things such as he knew some of us were “liberated women.”

The point is, because of this comment, before the seminar even started, I felt uncomfortable. Since taharah is not common among Reform Jews, I started to think, “As I do this am I going to run into a lot of similar situations in which I feel like I’m being put down in some way because my customs are different?”

Aside from the cultural concerns that arose immediately before the seminar, my main source of discomfort during the seminar was caused by the talk of things like blood and mucus and oozing. My husband would probably think it serves me right, because whenever I have a cold or some other malady I want to describe it to him in great detail, and he does not want to hear a bit of it.

The fact is, I needed to hear about the blood and the mucus and the oozing. I still need to hear a lot more about it. This is because my biggest fear about trying to do taharah is there’s a very real possibility that when I see the blood or the mucus or the oozing, I might need to sit down and put my head between my knees in order to prevent myself from passing out. I say this based on past experience.

Frankly, it’s mostly the blood I’m worried about. The good news is, the woman sitting next to me said she’s been doing this for about ten years and so far she hasn’t encountered anyone who has had a violent death. So she hasn’t seen a lot of blood or similar unpleasantness.

Nevertheless, it’s clear I’m not going to be able to do taharah unless I can somehow desensitize myself to some extent to my natural reaction to blood. It’s going to be a bit hard to ritually wash someone while I have my head between my knees. The best way I know to desensitize myself, as with any irrational fear, is to approach it close enough to get uncomfortable, back away, talk about it, calm down, and then repeat the process as often as necessary. This seminar was one step in this process.

So although the content of the seminar may have been things I could have read in a book, my attendance at the seminar provided me with two important experiences: The realization that I need to prepare myself for encounters with people who observe different Jewish customs than I do, and a chance to approach my fears about blood. Not a pleasant way to spend the afternoon, but certainly one that was worthwhile.

Thinking About Caring for Dead People

By Susan Esther Barnes

This Fall our synagogue is planning to have a group of people learn how to do taharah, the ritual washing of people’s remains after they die. This mitzvah is considered to be one of the most holy, because the people who perform this task know the person on whom they perform it has no way to thank or reward them.

I looked it up online, and found the washing is done in a particular order, from the head, down the right side, and then the left. All sorts of details are spelled out, including what to do if there is any bleeding, the position of the person being washed, and the privacy of the room in which the washing is done.

Just reading about the procedure makes me nervous. It’s something I’d like to be able to do, but I’ve never been in a room with a dead person, and I don’t know how I’d react to it. I suspect that feinting at the feet of the person to be washed would be bad form. Especially since the instructions clearly state there should be no interruptions during the washing.

I’m not sure why I feel so anxious about it. I suppose being in the room with a dead person makes one think about one’s own mortality, but it’s not like I don’t do that on a regular basis. Since I’m severely allergic to fish, I tend to think about how quick and easy it would be to kill me every time someone mentions sushi or I see tuna salad at the deli counter.

There’s something more primal to it than the intellectual contemplation of death. The discomfort must be a deeply ingrained survival mechanism. In a world before disinfectants, refrigeration and antibiotics, I’m sure that being around a dead person was a pretty good way to catch your death of something. People who avoided dead people probably lived longer, and people who didn’t probably got weeded out of the gene pool over time.

I would like to think I could just go into a room with a dead person, take a deep breath, focus on the facts (this person is dead, I’m not, they’re not contagious, therefore there is no danger), and get on with the taharah. I have a terrible track record when trying to predict how I will react in a new situation, so it’s possible I’d be able to do this with no problem, but I doubt it.

Like any irrational fear (I was going to say phobia, but I think that’s a little strong in my case), I suspect these feelings can be overcome by a gradual introduction to the object of the fear. So it seems to me the safer path would be to act first as a shomeret (a guard) for the dead first. A dead person is not to be left alone between death and burial, so a shomeret (or shomer for a male) watches over the dead person, traditionally reading Psalms, but not touching the person. If I can do that without freaking out, then I’d be more confident about my ability to take it to the next level.

To a large extent I want to skip the shomeret part. I don’t like to give into irrational fear, and I don’t want to miss the first class just because I’m afraid of what might or might not happen. Frankly, I’m hoping there will turn out to be a requirement that everyone who doesn’t already have experience being around dead people has to be a shomer or shomeret before they learn taharah. That way I could ease into it without feeling like I’m wimping out.

At any rate, although I believe when someone’s dead they’re gone (I hope to whatever comes next), and I don’t think they hang around their dead body, I’m still enamored with the idea that we treat the dead with respect by guarding the remains and carefully preparing them for burial even though we don’t believe in open casket funerals. And I like the idea that it’s close family members, not a stranger, who throws the first handfuls of dirt on the coffin after it’s lowered into the grave. I don’t know why this is important to me, but it is, and I hope I’ll be able to keep myself together enough when the time comes to be able to participate in the tradition.