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It’s called Shmira – the root is ‘shamar’, keeping, guarding, and Shmira relates to guarding the dead before they are ritually washed and prepared for burial.  We Jews don’t embalm.  There’s no idea of preserving a dead body.  The coffin is of raw wood, which will degrade and become earth as will the corpse, but while the body is identifiable as a person who was alive and is now defenseless, we want to show care and respect.  This individual once had agency, will, motion, life, and personality.  All that is gone, so we sit quietly, sometimes just that, sometimes reading material fit for the occasion.  If the individual is known to us, perhaps, remembering.

I’ve done this 5 times, 4 of them here, as a member of the Chevra Kadisha, the sacred – it really signifies separated – association whose contribution is part of Jewish life.  I have found it deeply fulfilling.

First, simply because it is stopping.  We sit quietly in two-hour shifts, and are a little removed from the world-racket and the pressure of ordinary activities.  We are simply here with no other place to be, completely adequate as we are, and we don’t need any special kind of Jewish knowledge.

Second, if we know the dead person, it’s a last favor we can do for them, an act of love and care, an intimate goodbye.  If we don’t know the dead person, it’s an act of kindness that can only be repaid by the same kindness when our own lives have ended.

Third, in one case, I had a disagreement with the person, and was able to feel that I had mended the rift between us, to make peace, as we say when we pray, sim shalom alenu.  I leave my sitting feeling raised a little, a sense of completion and contentment.

I am writing this as an invitation to people in CBE to consider joining us.  Anne Wolf is our coordinator and point person, a very happy choice for us.  We are hoping to get a burial ground up here and so to make more complete the ceremonial life of our congregation.