Funeral Preparation — Oninut

Remarks Prepared for Shabbat Dec 14, 2024 at Knesset Israel of Los Angeles.

On Sunday December 8 when Rabbi Jason Weiner was in at Congregation Or Torah in Skokie (a suburb of Chicago) I went to hear his presentation. He asked when was our next trip to Los Angeles. I answered that the next time I see you it will probably be for a funeral. The thought of the next day hearing the sad news of the passing of my wife Carol’s mother and the need to make travel plans for the following day was far from my planned Monday activities.

I have a personal heshbon (accounting) that says whenever I attend a funeral or another sad event, I have to balance it with attendance at a simha or other uplifting event. In Israel an event happened that was years in the preparation with the special reason is that it was the right thing to do.

This week the Embassy of Paraguay opened in Jerusalem. While this was planned more than three years ago by then Minister of Finance, Santiago Peña, because of internal political problems having nothing to do with Israel, the opening was put on hold. Santiago Peña visited Israel now as president of Paraguay and said at the opening of the Embassy of Paraguay in Jerusalem:

“I am very happy that this is happening at this time, in the current reality of the world.”

Just a few hours before the opening he visited the Kotel and thanked God with these words: “I am here today to thank God because three years ago, I came here to pray that I would be granted the position of President and the opportunity to serve my country. It is an honor for me to say thank you here and to renew my commitment to do good for Paraguay, for Israel, and for the Jewish People.”

Paraguay is a small country with only 6.8 million people including 1,000 Jews. The Jews are few in number but make significant impact on the society and politics of the country.

His remarks are connected to my remarks because what appears to us as almost magic took many man-hours of preparation and negotiation.

The sanctification of time is an important aspect of our daily Jewish routines. We can calculate and plan for the beginning and end. These times are predictable and can be anticipated years in advance. We have exact times for sundown and sunset for the determination of tephilot, Shabbat and holidays. We never know when a death may occur. Upon the passing the mourners immediately enter a period between the passing and burial called, oninut. The person becomes an onen and has one project to complete – making arrangements for burial. The period ends when the body is covered with earth and the mourner enters the seven day shiva period. While the beginning and end of oninut is defined, the length of the time period is variable. In Israel it may be a few hours, while in America it can be several days.

The mourning process has several levels beginning with the immediate grief and denial continuing to the acceptance of the finality that our loved one is no longer here. After the burial we have several levels of mourning, grief and acceptance before returning to normal. The first three days of shiva are the most intense and last days of shiva are less. Then we have the first thirty days called shloshim and the last 11 months. The laws and customs are for three basic reasons – 1. To honor the deceased (kavod ha-met) — 2. To comfort the mourners (nihum avelim) – 3. To help the mourners return to normal life. Because honoring the deceased is the last act we can perform for them, we want to get everything “right.” It is a set of actions that can never be repaid. Rabbis will tell you that the burial and mourning process involves many more questions of halakha, minhag, and human psychology than many other areas of daily and ritual life. Even after a class in mourning practices, 74 years of human experience, and 40 years as a gabbai, I found myself asking the rabbis and the funeral director questions. Some of the questions were procedural, such as how do the pall bearers perform their task? Others were along the lines of “Do people really do that?” Cities customs vary. Sometimes what is routine in one place is unthinkable in another. Sometimes the routines are based on city ordinances, union rules, or cemetery regulations that have nothing to do with the halakhic practice.

For example the use of burial vault is either a cemetery and or city regulation. A sealed vault is not permitted in halakha because it interferes with the decaying of the body and return to the dust of the earth. In the floods of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina many caskets popped out of the graves and floated in the flood waters. These caskets and vaults were sealed.

Once the coffin decays the wood can’t hold up the earth, the ground sinks and the grave looks sunken in. The cemetery ground keepers would have to fill in the void and re-sod the grass to make it look nice. The solution to prevent this is to line the sides of the grave with a burial vault1 or grave liner. A grave liner is not sealed and may have no bottom. The sides support a cover. A vault is a closed container for the coffin. A modern  vault is usually guaranteed for 100 years, but in reality should last centuries.

The grave liner solves the halakhic problem for the need to let the body return to the dust of the earth. A kosher vault has holes or a space cut out for water and dirt to get in.

The oninut period is one when kavod ha-met כבוד המת requirements are the strongest. The mourners have to make funeral arrangements at a time when the grief and denial are at their strongest. The onan is released from many positive mitzvot so that they can make the arrangements. This balances with many restrictions to limit outward manifestations of joy or levity. Since the reactions to death vary among people either by temperament or relationship, how a person mourns is different. For a death drawn out after a long period of limited health, death may seem like a release. For a sudden death because of trauma or massive organ failure (i.e. stroke or heart attack) the mourners are in denial. Some have remorse because they couldn’t do more to prolong the life. Some people have planned prepaid funerals. For others, a scramble is needed at the last minute to complete the arrangements.

(Based on what Maurice Lamm wrote in : The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning) The onen אונן is released from the obligations of prayer and many positive obligations, such as reciting the motzi over bread and birkat ha-mazon. A man may not be counted in a minyan because he has no obligation for daily prayers. The onen is still part of the community, and needs to take care to wash and cleanse him/herself properly. The onen should not perform commandments from which he is exempted as this would indicate a lack of concern for the deceased. The Rabbis insisted that there is no virtue in this action.

When my father died and when my first mother-in-law died, I had no first hand knowledge of any negotiations, plans or arrangements. When Carol’s mother died I heard all of the possible permutations of arrangements. For example the time of the funeral had to coordinate with travel plans. For me and the others from out of town, we had to clear schedules and make flight arrangements. A date and time for the funeral needed to be set satisfy the family, the officiant, and the funeral home. Thankfully, we had many forms of instant written communications to help us. After this process I am amazed at how other people manage to arrange a burial in Israel.

In Chicago we routinely get community notices of funerals and the observance of shiva affecting community members or their families. Until this week, I had very little experience in how much coordination, scheduling and planning needs to be done to make an announcement, such as : “The funeral for Ploney will be at X:XX time” For readers of a funeral notice the background preparation is invisible.

The first suggested funeral time was Sunday so that more people could attend without missing work. That was too long after the death. We are obligated to bury the body as soon as possible. In Chicago until recently Sunday funerals were not allowed because the cemetery unions would not open and close the graves on Sundays. Tuesday was not good because we couldn’t arrive on time. The second date the funeral home had available was Thursday at 2:30. The rabbi couldn’t make that time. The next time was Wednesday. The question was could everyone arrive in time? 2:30 was the time everyone could agree on. Through some great help from ha-kodesh baruhu ק”ה the flight from Israel was secured and Carol’s son Natan was able to arrive with hours to spare. Thus, the people, the venue, and the travel plans had coalesced and we were able to publish the funeral notice

Through the “magic” of getting people to co-operate and co-ordinate, people got together for the last act of kavod ha-met  (honoring the deceased) that is the completion of life, death and burial.

This davar torah is dedicated to the memory of Shirley Davis צפורה בת מוטל ורחל (July 29, 1930 – December 9, 2024)

May the mourners be comforted and have memories of better times.

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