.תני רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומר אין עושין נפשות לצדיקים דבריהם הן הן זכרונן
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel taught:
We do not need to make monuments for the righteous—
their words serve as their memorial. (Talmud Yerushalmi, Shekalim 11a)
Like many of us, I’m grieved by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg זצ''ל (the memory of a righteous person is a blessing) on Erev Rosh Hashanah. She was everything people are saying about her: an icon of justice and equality, a shatterer of glass ceilings, and a role model for all Americans. And like others, I gape at the transparent hypocrisy and ethical hollowness of the GOP seeking to fill her seat six weeks before the election: We remember Merrick Garland.
For Jewish Americans in particular, her stature was enormous. Which is why the decisions around her funeral are burial are so unfortunate and saddening.
As has been widely reported, Justice Ginsberg* will receive national honors, with public viewings and opportunities for admirers to pay their respects. First her body will lie “in repose” at the U.S. Supreme Court, and subsequently it will lie “in state” in at the Capitol building. Amazingly, she will be the first woman in American history to lie in state. Second, the funeral and burial will be held after Yom Kippur—more than ten days after her death.
These national rites are intended to honor her in a manner befitting her stature, to be sure.
But these secular honors contravene Jewish tradition and values, and that’s a shame—especially for a person who carried her Judaism as proudly and confidently as Justice Ginsberg.
Two Jewish laws in particular are in play here. First, Judaism rejects “viewing” the deceased. Second, Judaism urges that a body should be buried as quickly as is feasible. Each of these traditions are rooted in two thousand years of practice.
The overarching principle for these laws is the idea of k’vod ha-met, which literally means “the honor/dignity accorded to a dead body.” In Judaism, the body is considered a holy container that once held a person’s spirit. After death, that container is washed and purified with love and respect. And it is to be lovingly returned to the earth from which it came.
But that container is not the person who died. “Viewing” is not the Jewish way of showing honor or respect. We maintain that kavod—honor and dignity—means that people don’t view you when you have no control over your appearance. Kabbalah refers to the countenance of a dead person as a mareh litusha, or “a hammered image,” a grotesque distortion of the human being, made in the Image of G-d.
We bury quickly for the same reason: that Divine Image should be restored to the earth as promptly as is feasible. Sometimes there is a delay, when we honor a person by making appropriate arrangements for a Jewish burial, but Jewish law emphasizes that praise and honor require a quick burial (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 357:1-2).
But here’s what troubles me the most: Those who justify these violations of Jewish tradition by saying, “Yes, but she was important.” I’ve seen that argument in print—and even from rabbis. Yet the glory and beauty of Jewish burial practices is precisely this: we are all important, and we are all equal, in death.
A short excerpt from the Talmud’s laws of burial should make this principle clear:
At first, they would uncover [for “viewing!!”] the faces of the deceased rich people, but they would cover the faces of decease poor people, because the faces of the poor were often blackened by famine. The Sages established that every cadaver’s face should be covered—for the honor of poor people.
At first, deceased rich people were carried out for burial on an elaborate bier, and deceased poor people were carried out on a plain bier. The Sages established that every cadaver should be taken out on a plain bier—for the honor of poor people. (Talmud, Mo’ed Katan 27a-b)
And most striking of all:
At first, burying the dead was more difficult for relatives than the death of a loved one itself (because of the great expense of funerals)! It got so bad that relatives would sometimes abandon the corpse and run away. Then Rabban Gamliel came and set some of his own honor aside, and instructed that he should be buried in plain linen garments. And the people adopted this practice after him, that the dead should be buried in plain linen garments.
Rav Pappa said: And now, everyone (!!) follows the practice of burying the dead in rough, cloth garments that cost only a zuz. (Ibid.)
All the Jewish funeral symbols—pocketless shrouds; a plain pine casket; no viewing; a speedy burial—emphasize humility and the idea that we are all equal in death. They even teach us about economic justice: there is no “rich” and “poor” when it comes to facing the Angel of Death.
Surely Justice Ginsberg, whose legacy is so bound up with the principle of equality, would have appreciated these extraordinary and powerful ideals.
I fear that when rabbis say, “Yes, but we make an exception for her—she was important,” they are not only denying these ideals; they are setting a bad precedent for the future. What happens when some super-wealthy financier dies and the rabbi is told, “Look, he was important, so we’re going to have a viewing, an extravagant casket, and bury him in a $10,000 suit”? Or some big donor says, “Rabbi, you have to make an exception to Jewish custom for my mother; she was important”? It’s a dangerous precedent—precisely what Rabban Gamliel was trying to save the Jewish community from so long ago.
It is a sublime religious ideal that even in death, we can still teach our family, friends, and students, by dying according the ideals that we lived by.
I concede there are more important issues to focus on right now, like stopping Mitch McConnell’s hypocritical crusade to fill her seat before the election. But imagine how rousing it would be to Jewish people—including all those young girls whom Justice Ginsberg so inspired!—if they said, “We appreciate the state honors, but she lived and died as a Jew, and we will honor her according to Jewish values.”
Justice Ginsberg taught and inspired us in so many ways with her life. I’m saddened that she did not choose to teach and inspire us in her death.
* I’ll refer to her as Justice Ginsberg in this essay. Out of deep respect, I’ll avoid calling her “RBG”, even though I appreciate her iconic status to liberals everywhere, who affectionately say “RBG speaks for me” and humorously call her “Notorious R.B.G.” And I won’t call her “Ruth,” as if I knew her personally. While she did have a public image that made people feel affectionate towards her, there is a casual sexism in referring to her by her first name or nickname, while similar men would be afforded the respect of title and surname.