ISRAEL/JERUSALEM: FIRST COMMERCIAL CREMATION HELD IN ISRAEL CHALLENGING JEWISH LAW AND ETHICS WHICH OPPOSES IT
Record ID:
400268
ISRAEL/JERUSALEM: FIRST COMMERCIAL CREMATION HELD IN ISRAEL CHALLENGING JEWISH LAW AND ETHICS WHICH OPPOSES IT
- Title: ISRAEL/JERUSALEM: FIRST COMMERCIAL CREMATION HELD IN ISRAEL CHALLENGING JEWISH LAW AND ETHICS WHICH OPPOSES IT
- Date: 8th June 2005
- Summary: (BN09) UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, ISRAEL (JUNE 9, 2005) (REUTERS) 1. CREMATORIUM WORKERS PLACING CARDBOARD COFFIN INTO INCINERATOR 0.29 2. CLOSE-UP OF COFFIN IN FRONT OF FLAMES /DOORS CLOSING 0.47 3. (SOUNDBITE) (English) ALON NATIV, DIRECTOR OF ALEI SHALECHET (AUTUMN LEAVES) MORTUARY SAYING: "We brought the machine to Israel in mid-March. We fi
- Embargoed: 23rd June 2005 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: UNDICLOSED LOCATION, ISRAEL / JERUSALEM
- City:
- Country: Israel
- Reuters ID: LVA4NUO8YHWQS7HSNO82IYZEAW8N
- Story Text: First Israeli cremation skirts post-Holocaust taboo.
Hidden behind an orange grove, Israel's first commercial
crematorium went to work on Thursday (June 9) in
a quiet challenge to taboos against burning bodies in a
Jewish state where memories of the Holocaust run deep.
The deceased, described in the press as a 66-year-old
Latvian immigrant, was not Jewish. But the entrepreneur who
performed his cremation called it a breakthrough bid to
loosen an Orthodox rabbinical monopoly on life-cycle events
in Israel.
"We brought the machine to Israel in mid-March. We
finished assembling it only during this week. This week we
will do three cremations. It's hard to forecast and to say
it will be this and this percentage, but we hope that we
will have our niche market and succeed with it," Alon
Nativ, director of Alei Shalechet (Autumn Leaves) mortuary,
told Reuters.
Despite going directly against a Jewish law that
cremation is a desecration of the body, Nativ's idea of a
crematorium has grown from just a theoretical idea to a
reality.
"When we asked about the cremation that we are
intending to do during this week ... it was a theoretical
question. It was: 'OK, we are talking about it. We are
going to do it, but this is a theory'. But today we are
doing the practice. We are actually doing it. It's a fact.
How it will develop forward, I don't know," Nativ said.
Citing the biblical precept of "dust you are, and to
dust shall you return", strict Jewish law insists burial is
the only legitimate way to dispose of human remains.
Mystics believe the dead will be resurrected if at least
one of their bones is intact -- an option that incineration
does not leave.
While such arguments may not sway many secular
Israelis, another concern is that crematoria raise images
of the ovens used by the Nazis to get rid of the bodies of
massacred Jews.
The only previous cremation in Israel was of Nazi war
criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was abducted from Argentina,
tried and executed in 1962. His ashes were scattered at sea.
"Jewish law opposes cremation. It's a violation of the
Biblical verse: 'From dust to dust you shall return'. But
in addition it is considered within the category of
desecration of the body, in other words the body which is
the covering of the instrument which encases the soul
during a person's life, thereby it takes on its own value,
its own holiness, and to cremate the body is considered a
desecration of that holiness," explained Orthodox
intellectual Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum.
"The social taboos that are traditionally adhered to
cremation in Israeli society has been the consciousness of
the Holocaust, that cremation is a reminder of the
crematoria and that what I said before, the final indignity
that was rendered to Jews killed in the death camps. It's
instructive that the only person ever cremated until now in
Israel was Adolf Eichmann which was in a sense the Jewish
people's revenge for the fact that six million Jews were
not brought to a Jewish burial as a consequence largely of
this man and therefore that the final response to him was
that a failure to provide him with a burial," he added.
Some Israelis consider such sensitivity overblown.
"The Nazis didn't just burn Jews, they buried them as
well," Yosef Lapid, a Holocaust survivor and leader of the
secularist Shinui party, said in reference to the mass
graves of World War Two. "Should we therefore ban burial
too?"
Nativ agrees with this point of view, defending his
crematorium, saying: "I don't want to offend anyone, but I
believe that if you think about it logically, it's not
offending more than getting rent from the Germans or buying
a BMW or purchasing any other German product, or burying
people, because the Germans buried a lot of people."
Alei Shalechet's Web site is replete with scriptural
references suggesting that cremation was an accepted
practice for Jews, commoners and kings both, in ancient
times.
Still, the exact location of the imported, barn-sized
incinerator, outside the central town of Hadera, is a
closely guarded secret. The mortuary invented a Hebrew
euphemism for the machine -- Ofra -- from the words for
"dust" and "splendour".
Nativ argued that, with non-Orthodox Jews abroad
already increasingly opting for cremation, the trend would
reach Israel.
Alei Shalechat offers the basic procedure for 8,500
shekels ($1,930), with pricier extras such as
ash-scattering wakes. In a departure from Jewish tradition
that discourages discussing death, clients are urged to
sign themselves up well in advance.
"There is considerable interest," Nativ said, adding
that he sees a large potential market among immigrants from
the former Soviet Union, many of whom are not Jewish under
Orthodox law.
"I will apologise because I don't want to offend
anyone, but I think that it's a reasonable solution for
people who wants to have it. It's a reasonable solution for
the country that saves a lot of ground. It's reasonable for
the environment, so I think it's an acceptable solution and
it's done all over the world," Nativ said.
For now, Alei Shalechet faces stiff competition from
the government-subsidised burial societies. But with
available land depleted in the tiny country, many Israelis
have been forced to pay surchages to secure graves in their
preferred cemeteries.
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