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A review by lpm100
When a Jew Dies: The Ethnography of a Bereaved Son by Samuel C. Heilman
3.0
Book Review
When a Jew Dies.
3/5 stars
"Informative, but somewhat bloated."
*******
This is a brilliant（if wordy) book.
For the record, it was written by a Distinguished Professor Jewish sociologist as a way to heal from the death of his own father, and he included his experiences as a member of the Chevra Kadisha.
Who else could write a book like this?
I find more beauty in the description of these rituals than what most people do in the sociological cliche of Yeshiva/Kollel bunnies (p.32) "remaining sheltered in the pages of sacred texts" (i.e., finding any excuse to not get up and get a job and do REAL work or be of service to REAL people).
These Jewish rituals around the dying, mourning, and commemoration processes are so refined as to be the sociological-technological equivalent of GPS or rocket science.
There is almost no single step within the grieving process that has not been standardized in order to allow mourners grieve in a dignified and organized way--as an antidote to chaos.
I have read a number of books about the dying process and about the funeral industry.
1. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (Doughty);
2. Dying Well (Byock);
3. Being Mortal (Gawande)
And in the "dying process" case, it seems like even though we all know that we are born and will die, each individual has to face his mortality as if it's the first time anybody *ever* figured it out.
In the case of the books about the funeral industry, much of what animates the industry is a desire to separate mourners from the reality and finality of death.
This is emphatically NOT the Jewish way. And, if other Western people adopted this perspective....... It would probably work out so much better for a large number of people
And the number one question that I come away with is: why don't more Jews preach what they practice?
This setup is excellent and could benefit so many people.
In addition to the nitty gritty details of purification of a corpse for burial, these steps for disposing of human remains are all imbued with a profound practical / spiritual meaning.
1. All of the life cycle events, birth, circumcision, bar mitzvah, marriage, childbirth, and death can be found in a single siddur. And it's because they all form a complete life cycle, and none of these things are a surprise and they are all benchmarks to a completed life.
2. When a person dies, burial must take place within a day. (None of these two week holding periods that you see so commonly among "the 13%" in the US.) And this eases the transition between people who are in that indeterminate state (which Heilman calls "onein") to being people who are mourners that can begin the process to bring closure and move on with their life.
3. Most interments are done by friends and family who have to actually participate in throwing dirt over the loved one-- and so the finality is underscored and there are no props to take away from understanding that this is a complete life cycle. (No flowers. No other props. No embalming to make you think that the person is asleep. No banalities that make it seem more like a going away party.)
4. The handling of the preparations of the body as well as the funeral are highly ritualized things (to the point where certain precise verses are recited at every step in the process), and they have been for thousands of years--even during the area of Rabbi Gamliel and before.
And they seem to serve the function of transforming death from something chaotic into making it more of an orderly transition.
5. The process of the ritual purification ("tahara") is so...... thoughtful. Perfectly analogous to the way that daily prayer is meant to parallel the Temple Sacrifices, the rituals to purify the deceased are to parallel the same rituals that the high priest (Kohen Gadol) used when he purified himself. Also, the clothes of the Kohen Gadol are meant to parallel the burial shroud. (And that would make sense if Jewish people are a nation of priests.)
*******
Other things learned/mysteries solved:
1. Stones are put on the graves of people as a reminder that somebody is still visiting and cares about that person. (p.212)
2. Yizkor has been with us since around the 12th century in Western Germany. Believe it or not, the Prayers for Martyrs had been part of church services about 8 centuries before. (p. 217). The author stops short of saying that Jews borrowed it from Xtians, but it is right on the tip of his pen.
3. (p.209). Spending too much time at the cemetery can be a short step to ancestor/intercessionary worship. To maintain Jewish purity is a reason that Kohanim are flatly forbidden from entering a cemetery. R'Yechiel Michel Tucazinsky gave us the ruling that it is completely inappropriate to pray to the dead in any intercessionary capacity.
4. (p.53) All waste that is in the rectal cavity of a body is pumped out during tahara and then those orifices are stopped up with unrefined flax.
*****
Second Order Thoughts:
1. There was a lot more sturm und drang than I have come to expect from Orthodox Jewish mourning: The author's father lived 4 days past his 88th birthday.
I don't see why it took so much emotional effort for him to get himself prepared for something that was quite clearly inevitable.
Henry Heilman father had a good run.
2. I happen to be an Observant Jew (even though I don't look like one), and only a minor fraction of this book added value to me. Notably, the rituals and procedures around the purification of the decedent.
Also, studying the history of the different types of kaddish was value-adding for the book. (Hard to believe that it took a thousand years to get Kaddish to us in its current form. Or, that Mourner's Kaddish became ubiquitous after the Crusades. Or that Mourner's Kaddish started to punctuate sections of the service by the 1500s)
3. The class of people who could best benefit from this book are Jewish people who have lost contact with their observance. (Which is probably 85% in the United States.)
4. I would have to say that the book expatiated just a *bit* too much. 234 pages could have been more properly 150.
Of the book:
8 Chapters plus one introduction and conclusion:
1. Gosses/ petira
2. Onen
3. Tahara
4. Leveiya
5. Shivah
6. Shloshim/Kaddish
7. Twelve months/ yahrzeit
8. Beit Olam/Yizkor
234 pages of prose
Average chapter≈23.1 pps
There is a glossary at the end.
The book is heavily sourced--503 citations over 234 pages of prose. (≈2.1/page).
Verdict: Recommended at the price point of $3.
Vocabulary:
Kutonet
Mitznefet
Avnet
Ephod
Sovev
Gosess
Kelicha
moral will (p.85)
threnody
trice
hypnoia
propinquity
mitron
aron (coffin)
liminal
Proverb:
"Birth is the messenger of death." (p.72)
"Q: What should man do that he may live? A: He should bring himself to death." (p.232)
When a Jew Dies.
3/5 stars
"Informative, but somewhat bloated."
*******
This is a brilliant（if wordy) book.
For the record, it was written by a Distinguished Professor Jewish sociologist as a way to heal from the death of his own father, and he included his experiences as a member of the Chevra Kadisha.
Who else could write a book like this?
I find more beauty in the description of these rituals than what most people do in the sociological cliche of Yeshiva/Kollel bunnies (p.32) "remaining sheltered in the pages of sacred texts" (i.e., finding any excuse to not get up and get a job and do REAL work or be of service to REAL people).
These Jewish rituals around the dying, mourning, and commemoration processes are so refined as to be the sociological-technological equivalent of GPS or rocket science.
There is almost no single step within the grieving process that has not been standardized in order to allow mourners grieve in a dignified and organized way--as an antidote to chaos.
I have read a number of books about the dying process and about the funeral industry.
1. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (Doughty);
2. Dying Well (Byock);
3. Being Mortal (Gawande)
And in the "dying process" case, it seems like even though we all know that we are born and will die, each individual has to face his mortality as if it's the first time anybody *ever* figured it out.
In the case of the books about the funeral industry, much of what animates the industry is a desire to separate mourners from the reality and finality of death.
This is emphatically NOT the Jewish way. And, if other Western people adopted this perspective....... It would probably work out so much better for a large number of people
And the number one question that I come away with is: why don't more Jews preach what they practice?
This setup is excellent and could benefit so many people.
In addition to the nitty gritty details of purification of a corpse for burial, these steps for disposing of human remains are all imbued with a profound practical / spiritual meaning.
1. All of the life cycle events, birth, circumcision, bar mitzvah, marriage, childbirth, and death can be found in a single siddur. And it's because they all form a complete life cycle, and none of these things are a surprise and they are all benchmarks to a completed life.
2. When a person dies, burial must take place within a day. (None of these two week holding periods that you see so commonly among "the 13%" in the US.) And this eases the transition between people who are in that indeterminate state (which Heilman calls "onein") to being people who are mourners that can begin the process to bring closure and move on with their life.
3. Most interments are done by friends and family who have to actually participate in throwing dirt over the loved one-- and so the finality is underscored and there are no props to take away from understanding that this is a complete life cycle. (No flowers. No other props. No embalming to make you think that the person is asleep. No banalities that make it seem more like a going away party.)
4. The handling of the preparations of the body as well as the funeral are highly ritualized things (to the point where certain precise verses are recited at every step in the process), and they have been for thousands of years--even during the area of Rabbi Gamliel and before.
And they seem to serve the function of transforming death from something chaotic into making it more of an orderly transition.
5. The process of the ritual purification ("tahara") is so...... thoughtful. Perfectly analogous to the way that daily prayer is meant to parallel the Temple Sacrifices, the rituals to purify the deceased are to parallel the same rituals that the high priest (Kohen Gadol) used when he purified himself. Also, the clothes of the Kohen Gadol are meant to parallel the burial shroud. (And that would make sense if Jewish people are a nation of priests.)
*******
Other things learned/mysteries solved:
1. Stones are put on the graves of people as a reminder that somebody is still visiting and cares about that person. (p.212)
2. Yizkor has been with us since around the 12th century in Western Germany. Believe it or not, the Prayers for Martyrs had been part of church services about 8 centuries before. (p. 217). The author stops short of saying that Jews borrowed it from Xtians, but it is right on the tip of his pen.
3. (p.209). Spending too much time at the cemetery can be a short step to ancestor/intercessionary worship. To maintain Jewish purity is a reason that Kohanim are flatly forbidden from entering a cemetery. R'Yechiel Michel Tucazinsky gave us the ruling that it is completely inappropriate to pray to the dead in any intercessionary capacity.
4. (p.53) All waste that is in the rectal cavity of a body is pumped out during tahara and then those orifices are stopped up with unrefined flax.
*****
Second Order Thoughts:
1. There was a lot more sturm und drang than I have come to expect from Orthodox Jewish mourning: The author's father lived 4 days past his 88th birthday.
I don't see why it took so much emotional effort for him to get himself prepared for something that was quite clearly inevitable.
Henry Heilman father had a good run.
2. I happen to be an Observant Jew (even though I don't look like one), and only a minor fraction of this book added value to me. Notably, the rituals and procedures around the purification of the decedent.
Also, studying the history of the different types of kaddish was value-adding for the book. (Hard to believe that it took a thousand years to get Kaddish to us in its current form. Or, that Mourner's Kaddish became ubiquitous after the Crusades. Or that Mourner's Kaddish started to punctuate sections of the service by the 1500s)
3. The class of people who could best benefit from this book are Jewish people who have lost contact with their observance. (Which is probably 85% in the United States.)
4. I would have to say that the book expatiated just a *bit* too much. 234 pages could have been more properly 150.
Of the book:
8 Chapters plus one introduction and conclusion:
1. Gosses/ petira
2. Onen
3. Tahara
4. Leveiya
5. Shivah
6. Shloshim/Kaddish
7. Twelve months/ yahrzeit
8. Beit Olam/Yizkor
234 pages of prose
Average chapter≈23.1 pps
There is a glossary at the end.
The book is heavily sourced--503 citations over 234 pages of prose. (≈2.1/page).
Verdict: Recommended at the price point of $3.
Vocabulary:
Kutonet
Mitznefet
Avnet
Ephod
Sovev
Gosess
Kelicha
moral will (p.85)
threnody
trice
hypnoia
propinquity
mitron
aron (coffin)
liminal
Proverb:
"Birth is the messenger of death." (p.72)
"Q: What should man do that he may live? A: He should bring himself to death." (p.232)