‘We act with respect for a body that housed a soul’
Participants report on the Women’s Chevra Kadisha leadership conference in Iselin
Anna Chosak of West Orange is a graphic designer. She’s also a member of the Garden State Chevra Kadisha. This voluntary “holy society” — that’s the literal translation from Aramaic — prepares bodies for burial according to Jewish law and tradition.
“My father was a homicide detective, and I always heard his crazy stories and was taken to funerals, so death was never a big scary thing to me,” Ms. Chosak said. “It was part of life.
“Most people are uncomfortable with death, but I never was. My Chabad rabbi asked me about three years ago if I’d be interested in joining the Chevra Kadisha. He knew I wasn’t squeamish. It’s not a mitzvah that everyone can do and I think if you can, it’s a great opportunity to do an important chesed,” an act of kindness.
Ms. Chosak was one of more than 100 women burial society volunteers from across the country who recently attended the inaugural Women’s Chevra Kadisha leadership conference in Iselin. It was co-hosted by the Orthodox Union and the National Association of Chevra Kadisha.
Attendees had the opportunity to share knowledge and best practices, address the emotional and physical challenges of their work, and explore solutions for volunteer recruitment, trauma resilience, and outreach.
Rabbi Elchonon Zohn of Queens, a world-renowned halachic expert in caring for the bodies of the dead, founded NASCK about 25 years ago to offer Jewish burial societies education and practical guidance on performing the ritual called “tahara” — the Hebrew word that means “purity.”
Though some details of a tahara vary according to local customs, the basic ritual involves two to four Chevra Kadisha members — men for male cadavers, women for female cadavers — working in the prep room of the funeral home. A tahara is performed at the request of the family.
Wearing protective gowns, gloves, and masks, the volunteers gently cleanse the body of any foreign residues, such as dirt, blood, or nail polish. Then they pour three consecutive buckets of water on the body from head to toe, dry it, and finally dress it in shrouds and place it in the coffin, usually along with some soil from Israel. They recite psalms or other prayers, using the name of the person who’s just died. After closing the coffin, the volunteers stand around it and silently ask the departed soul to forgive any unintentional disrespect or indignity.
OU Director of Torah and Halacha Initiatives Rabbi Ezra Sarna noted that members of Jewish burial societies perform this act of ultimate kindness quietly, under the radar of the community. For many of them, he said, “a byproduct of this discreet and sensitive work is a lack of recognition or real support.”
One of the conference’s key objectives, therefore, was to give the volunteers an opportunity to meet and bond with other women who share a deep understanding of what they do. “Our goal was to uplift and inspire, and to give participants a sense of renewed energy and purpose as they continue their holy work,” Rabbi Sarna said.
“Although they devote significant time and energy to this chesed, they often lack opportunities to discuss and exchange insights with others,” Rabbi Zohn added.
A member of the Passaic-Clifton Chevra Kadisha, who prefers to remain anonymous, said that the conference “was a day of community and inspiration, an opportunity to experience a connectedness that we don’t often get to feel, given the private nature of our work. Being in a room with others who understand was a real spiritual uplift.”
Ms. Chosak said she was moved by OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Moshe Hauer’s remarks about the sanctity and spiritual power inherent in caring for a deceased Jew, an act considered the ultimate chesed because it cannot be reciprocated.
However, she equally appreciated presentations on practical matters. “It was well rounded, touching on the psychological and spiritual components of the work and also the physical,” she said.
“One of the most important sessions focused on how to safely do the work physically, for example engaging the core muscles when turning and lifting a body, because it’s really important to save your back,” Ms. Chosak continued.
“There was also a speech about taking care of yourself; making sure you’re in a good place emotionally and giving yourself a break when you need it and understanding that’s normal.”
Also on a practical level, she was pleased to discover that her Chevra Kadisha could obtain certain supplies at a deep discount from NASCK. Danya Miller of the Jewish Sacred Society Chevra Kadisha of Chicago demonstrated a technique for removing gel nail polish — typically a job for a professional salon — highlighting the nuanced care sometimes required in a tahara.
A session titled “From Recruitment to Retirement and Everything in Between” tackled sensitive and often unspoken aspects of Chevra Kadisha operations: how to recruit new members, support aging volunteers, and navigate delicate situations when someone is not, or is no longer, capable of doing a tahara.
NASCK Director of Outreach Yael Davidowitz talked about community outreach and proactive education. This includes not only explaining Chevra Kadisha rituals to Jews of all ages — which helps demystify and destigmatize death — but also trying to counter a trend toward cremation. Although cremation is taboo in Jewish tradition, as many as half of American Jews today choose burning over burial.
Ms. Davidowitz heads Project Last Kindness, an initiative whose mission is to “raise awareness and understanding of the beauty, value, and significance of traditional Jewish burial and afterlife care.”
Ms. Chosak, who did not grow up Jewish, said she feels that “the Jewish way of dealing with death is more respectful and more practical. The fact that we revere the body by treating it with respect and burying it in the ground quickly shows we respect the soul even after it has left the body.”
She said the Chevra Kadisha members feel that the person’s soul is present, “observing how we are taking care of the body it lived in. That’s why we ask forgiveness; we express that we did our best to treat the body with as much respect as we could.”
She recommended that anyone who may be interested in doing this work should ask his or her local Chevra Kadisha to observe a tahara and then “see how you react and if you want to join a team.”
The Passaic-Clifton volunteer said that when she was a child, she overheard her grandfather telling someone that he’d risked his life during World War II to go out at night and bury people who had died during the day.
“I didn’t actually know anything about what the Chevra Kadisha does, but a little voice inside me said, ‘I’m going to do that someday,’” she said.
“That’s the reason I joined. But I stay because in a world that is often shallow, loud, and confusing, the tahara room feels like a silent, sacred space. It’s a place where we members of the chevra recognize our truest selves — the selves that connect with our spirituality and our higher purpose as people and as Jews.
“In tending to someone for whom the journey of life is over, we are reminded of what we want to achieve while we still can. We remember that we too are souls housed temporarily in our bodies. As we hold her, bathe her, dress her, and pray for her, we immerse ourselves in the deep kindness of the Jews, our eternal love for one another, our desire to help each other.”
She said that she would describe Judaism’s attitude toward handling the deceased in one word: “reverent.”
“Members of the Chevra Kadisha have a deep awareness that death is not an end but a beginning for the soul’s next stage,” she said. “We act with respect for a body that housed a soul, and for a soul that came from God and is returning to God. We treat everyone with exactly the same dignity, kindness, and love because every person we encounter is one of God’s most precious children.
“And we know that one day some other group of women will do the same for us.”
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