Two letters in which the answer hinges on Jewish law

[conuly]

1. DEAR ABBY: I am 76. My husband and I planned our final wishes for cremation because I have had a lifelong fear of being buried underground. My children from my first marriage are Jewish and very much against cremation. When I told them my wishes, they attacked me with a barrage of negatives about cremation, such as, "You won't go to heaven," "You won't see your deceased mother or grandson in heaven," "We won't be able to say kaddish for you," etc., so I immediately changed my plans. My husband and I purchased side-by-side crypts, thinking it was an acceptable alternative.

I was wrong. For the last month, they have continued to push me to change to a regular burial. I finally had enough and told them to respect my choices and never discuss this with me again. So now, no contact at all except an occasional text from my grandchildren. Any advice or help would be appreciated. -- UNHAPPY IN FLORIDA

DEAR UNHAPPY: I assume from your letter that you are neither a conservative nor an orthodox Jew. Because your question involves Jewish law (which is outside my area of expertise), I ran your question by the most brilliant rabbi I know, Rabbi Elliot Dorff, who teaches at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. In part, this is what he had to say:

"The prohibition against cremation comes from the belief that your body belongs to God, not to you personally. It's not unlike renting an apartment. Part of the lease agreement is that you will not destroy or harm the property before you cease residency. (There is no restriction on piercing, which was practiced by Jewish women and men from the time of the exodus from Egypt. As for tattooing, the restriction against it goes back to the days when the Jews were fighting with the Canaanites, who used tattooing in their religious rites.)

"The restriction regarding cremation came about because of the belief that it is actively destroying God's property. According to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, cremation is prohibited, but if people do that their cremains may be buried in a Jewish cemetery -- but, unlike what your children are threatening, it has nothing to do with what happens after death. There are differences on this subject. Nobody knows what happens after death, not even rabbis. Jewish people have a positive commandment to save a life. Organ donation would be an example of this. Although it might be considered 'damaging a body,' saving a life takes precedence."

Rabbi Dorff said your children need to know there's a disagreement among rabbis as to whether interment in a mausoleum is equivalent to burial in the ground. So, cremation may be "out" for you, but you can be laid to rest next to your husband in a crypt. What is of utmost importance is that your relationship with your children be restored. In the precious time you are on this side of the sod, you and your children need to be able to love and enjoy each other. Weapons like threats and blackmail should not be used.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/dearabby/s-2832409

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2. Around a decade ago, my mom informed each of her children that she and my stepfather put a codicil in their wills disinheriting any of their children married to someone not recognized as Jewish by her local Orthodox Rabbinate.

I believe a will is not just about money; it’s also an expression of values and love. I have strongly objected to this codicil, or more specifically, to her having informed us about it: The two are thereby using their wealth as an implicit weapon in service of their religious views.

She says I’m reading too much into it. She claims she informed us in the name of “transparency,” so we wouldn’t be surprised later, and that it’s her money to do with as she pleases, anyway — though she concedes that she also informed us in case it may influence decisions we make.

I’ve since married someone who fits her definition of a Jew, so the codicil doesn’t apply to me. Still, I have three middle-aged siblings who are all not religious and unmarried, and I think they remain so at least partially because they’re stuck, unable to both follow their hearts and avoid betraying my mother’s love — and its most powerful signifier, her will. Is she right to have the codicil? And to have told us about it? — Name Withheld

What your mother and her husband are planning to do, as it happens, is at odds with much rabbinical thought concerning inheritance. A Judaic scholar I conferred with confirms that the mainstream Talmudic tradition of Halakha, or Jewish law, revered by the Orthodox Union, holds that apostates don’t forfeit their right to inherit. (Maimonides would allow a rabbinical court to fine an apostate at its discretion — but the permission is not given to the parents.) And then marrying a non-Jew isn’t as severe a transgression as apostasy; so if an actual apostate retains the right to inherit, it’s clear that someone who has merely married a non-Jew does as well. You might think that it’s awkward to penalize your kids for departing from Halakha by departing from Halakha yourself. But picking and choosing from the traditions you are going to respect is a widespread practice among Jews and gentiles alike.

The real question is whether the scheme is wise or decent. I fear that it is neither. That your siblings now have an incentive to postpone marriage until your parents are dead raises doubts about its wisdom. That your siblings might marry someone acceptable to the Orthodox rabbinate in order to secure this inheritance raises doubts about its decency. Whom we marry is properly up to us. Parents may express their views; coercion, though, is wrong. Does threatening to deprive someone of a substantial inheritance amount to coercion? Different understandings of coercion will come out differently on this. But it’s too close for comfort.

You suggest that once your mother and stepfather decided not to leave money to a child who hadn’t married the right kind of Jew, it would have been better had they kept it to themselves. That’s an odd conclusion, but a cogent one: They should have restricted themselves to morally acceptable forms of suasion. In the meantime, you might encourage them to discuss their codicil with a rabbi, who could explain to them what the Jewish sages had to say on the subject.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/magazine/disinherit-ethics.html

Comments

[conuly]

1. Man, every day I am happy that my entire family already knows my opinion on difficult topics like cremation vs. burial. Usually I say this about other topics like LGBTQ issues (if you wait until your children are grown to tell them you won't mind if they're gay, you've waited entirely too long) but stuff regarding death is a close second. My guess is the kids would not be throwing this hissy fit about Mom's cremation now if they'd known about it for the past 30 years. They would've had time to get used to it, and also, it's very likely that some of their freakout has to do with the reminder of her impending death rather than the specifics of what she wants to happen to the body. Oh, not that their religious views aren't sincere, I'm sure they are - but it's a complicated emotional stew.

For the record, I want to be cremated unless human composting is an option wherever I happen to die, in which case, compost all the way. Also, yes on all organ donations.

2. Those parents should be ashamed of themselves. Many commenters pointed out that Jewish law may be entirely irrelevant anyway, because it's very possible that the legal law in their state prohibits this sort of discriminatory disinheritance anyway. Others reminded LW that Mom and Dad can leave everything to one child, but they can't keep that child from splitting the money up after the fact.

[minoanmiss]

I am not Jewish. But it seems to me that LW #1s children are acting reminiscent of Christians. And I mean that as a rebuke.

When I was 15 I would have thought putting after death messages in a will was clever. Now I just think it’s mean.

[fox]

As a jewish person (I have always spelled it with a small J for reasons that I don't think need exploring at this juncture) I have personal 20th-century visceral objections to cremation that I admit have nothing to do with Torah, Talmud, Halacha, or any of that. I think my father did, too. Meanwhile my mother intends to donate her body to science and have cremated whatever science doesn't want. They couldn't agree on this; they finally arrived at, if he died first, she'd carry out his wishes for his remains, and if she died first and he couldn't bear to have her cremated, he'd bury her whole, and how would she even know? Which, all my other issues with my mother aside, I think was very big of her to end the conversation on that note. Then when my father was dying, and he told me he intended to be — is it interred? lodged? placed, anyway — in a crypt, as my aunt had been, and I surprised both of us by bursting into tears and all I could say was I didn't want to put him in a drawer. And as stubborn as he'd been about not being able to bring himself to do what my mother would want (moot, by that point, anyway), he revised his own plans and allowed us to bury him in the ground. (In, as it happens, a plot that can by local regulation take one coffin and up to four cremains, so they can be buried together even in their disparate states, because my brother and I do intend to do as Mom asks when the time comes.)

[haggis]

I am not sure how LW1 is supposed to follow the advice about restoring the relationship with her children, given that she is not the one who broke it. The children have made it clear that they will repeatedly pull every manipulative lever available to them to get their own way so there is only really a choice between silence and capitulation.

[jadelennox]

I am so glad she asked experts, because fuck no burial practices have no effect on either mourning practices or theological result, and refusing to say kaddish for your parents (both because it dishonors them by claiming you know more about halacha than your parents, and because saying kaddish for your parents helps them on their journey toward the world to come) is a vastly worse halachic violation than something as dumb as burial practices. This is not your business. You can think of your parents' graveplot as sacrilegious, but even the strictest halacha holds that you can enter the cemetery and attend the funeral as long as it's not in a church, and you don't need to think about their crypts to say kaddish or yizkor. Stop being jerks and kaved et imecha v'et avecha, oh my god.

I hate that I'm an apikoros and I care more about actual halacha than these manipulative dirtbags.

[ambyr]

When I told them my wishes, they attacked me with a barrage of negatives about cremation, such as, "You won't go to heaven," "You won't see your deceased mother or grandson in heaven,"

This is so alien to every branch of Jewish theology I have ever been taught that I have difficulty believing this letter is real. (Or, I mean, maybe it's real and the kids are actually evangelical Christian, but the LW changed it to Jewish to anonymize without thinking through how little sense that would make? I don't know.)

[ysobel]

...is there even such a thing as Jewish heaven?

[mrissa]

I feel like Abby completely missed the mark on whether the first letter writer's question involved Jewish law and not, like, the relationship with her children. "So here's what the rabbi I asked said" is not useful. The letter writer could just keep calling rabbis, asking them about death, and compiling a document. It would be an interesting document! I, a shiksa, would totally read it! But Dear Abby does not exist in lieu of a Jewish pope, to give ultimate arbitration in cases of rabbinical disagreement, she's here to help people talk to their relatives.

[purlewe]

Every person I know has a different idea of what they would prefer for their funeral/burial/vision for what happens after they die. And it never seems to make anyone happy. But my rule of thumb is this: do what the person wanted bc it is the last time to respect their wishes. And it is their wishes not yours. (unless they have no wishes and then well.. you do what you would prefer/can afford/find the most reasonable way to accommodate your feelings about it.)

I feel the same about wills as well. (and they can get totally spiteful to their relatives as if they can be nasty for all the times they have ever wanted to be nasty.) Do what you can to follow the letter of the will (it all goes only to one person? even if there are 3 who could have received something? fine it all goes to that one person who then can do what they want.. which hopefully is give it to the others or even give it away.) but this idea of making people comply with you after you are dead is.. silly. They are their own people with their own lives and you, well you are no longer here so it shouldn't matter anymore.

Doesn't mean people don't try to do all sorts of manipulative things about death and wills and burials etc. all of it is so hard. All I wish is for easy and I respect anyone who tries their best to make it easy for the people they leave behind. LW #1 was trying to make it easy by telling their family their wishes, it is the family who is making it hard. LW #2 is trying to make it hard for the family, and the family is trying to comply and tying themselves into knots to make it past their death to finally get to live their lives. OOF on both counts.