I recently had a sudden need to know who buried my mother.  Not the gravediggers, not even the rabbi. Rather I wanted to know who were the last women to see my mother as they prepared her for burial. How did they react when my mother’s 42 year-old body arrived? Did the women on-duty pay attention to the vertical scar along my mother’s belly, a classic marker of  the caesarean section that brought me to life?  And when I die, will anyone notice that my children were also born by caesarean, my low transverse scar hidden and largely faded?

So I contacted the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha – they could not have been kinder, but there was no record of the women on duty that day, more than 45 years ago.

Members of the Chevra Kadisha are schooled in the centuries-old tradition of tahara: ritually washing the body, cleaning the body and dressing the deceased in the tachrichim; the shrouds that all men and women [with slight variations] are dressed in for their burial.

The men and women of your local Chevra Kadisha toil every day of the year [except on Shabbat] without expectations for glory or reward. You probably don’t even know who they are. However, on one day a year in the Jewish calendar – the 7th of Adar [corresponding to the 24th February in 2026]  their work is acknowledged publicly, often with a communal dinner.  According to tradition, the 7th Adar is the anniversary of the birth of Moses and his death, having been buried by God in a place that remains unknown to this day. Poignantly, in Israel on the 7th Adar, there is a ceremony at the National Memorial Hall for Israel’s Fallen Forces on Har Herzl for those soldiers whose resting place is unknown.

In some places, the Chevra is a secret cloaked in a mystery, and certainly in the UK, women are not encouraged to talk about their work on the Chevra. It seems to be very different in the USA where there are some large umbrella organisations supporting a range of communities and those within the Orthodox community that offer halachic guidelines, educational resources and on-going training. In Israel it is largely a state-run service – death and taxes are quite literally intertwined – and since October 7th 2023,  there has been a heightened awareness, appreciation and sensitivity to the important work of the Chevra Kadisha.

The death business is booming: death cafes, death doulas, deathbots, organ donation, active end-of-life planning are all discussed in the wider society. In Mexico, the Day of the Dead, a public holiday dedicated to honoring deceased loved ones, has become a popular tourist activity while in Japan, the Obon Festival is a major, summer holiday honouring ancestral spirits with dances, lantern-lighting, and family reunions that attracts many visitors.

Some of these trends are increasingly replicated in the Jewish community. Death cafes, offering an open forum and a ‘safe space’ to discuss anything related to death and grieving have popped up in Jewish communities and arguably taken on more importance since October 7th. Core offers women an online peer-support space and targeted training while there is a growing number of death doulas in the Jewish community using their expertise to facilitate difficult conversations from a Jewish perspective between the dying person and their family, navigate the health system or be a calming presence at a fraught time. There don’t seem to be as many opportunities for men to engage in these support services, but some of them have found a way to monetize saying Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, which is a business for life.

Deathbots draw on a person’s ‘digital remains’  such as emails and voice notes, to create AI-powered digital avatars of deceased individuals. Steven Spielberg’s pioneering support of the USC Shoah Foundation and its Dimensions in Testimony programme attests to the power of the digital afterlife. While deathbots may be comforting, they could be considered a stumbling block to the grieving process, denying the mourners the capacity to adjust to their loss.  But perhaps that’s no different to the yeshiva where the voices of the dead are brought into the study hall, and considered still relevant, centuries since they were recorded in the Talmud.

Organ donation has been facilitated by modern medicine, and Jews seem to love donating their kidneys; Israeli based Matnat Chaim (Gift of Life) recently celebrated its 2,000th donation and in the UK, the National Health Service has worked closely with the Jewish community to enable organ donation within halachic guidelines.

In Israel, soldiers are writing their ethical wills before they depart for battle – we have read too many desperately heartbreaking letters that young soldiers left sealed, only for their families to open them under the worst of circumstances. There were many moving stories of the parents of deceased soldiers donating their child’s organs when possible.

End-of-life planning is increasingly discussed in public spaces. Will-writing is encouraged- both of one’s assets, but also of one’s values and principles in a complementary ethical will. Leaving clear instructions regarding medical treatment and the type of funeral is crucial, as is the list of passwords to all your electronic devices so that family members can actually access these wishes.

In the US, Rabbi Shlomo Brody leads Ematai whose mission is to inspire and educate Jewish individuals & families to honor their values and preferences for aging and end-of-life with Jewish wisdom and halacha.  Embracing the zeitgeist of supporting advanced Jewish learning for women, Ematai established a new programme for 16 Orthodox women to engage in advanced Torah study in end-of-life care.

Traditionally, Jews formally remember their loved ones on the annual anniversary of their death [Ashkenazim refer to the yahrzeit and Sephardim to the nachalah or azkara]: some may light a candle, visit the grave, say prayers and/or bring the family together to share memories. These seem like fairly innocuous and low-tech traditions.

But will our own Jewish traditions change in the digital world? Professor Michael Cholbi, the author of Grief: A Philosophical Guide posits,

We have created monuments and memorials, preserved locks of hair, reread letters. Now the question is: does AI have anything to add?  

While Israeli gumption has created innovative hi-tech medical solutions to improve patients’ quality of life, address mental health issues and complex trauma, it seems to have bypassed hi-tech solutions to manage the after-life.

Perhaps the hi-tech titans understand that they cannot compete with the Chevra Kadisha: no robot can replace the hands that caress the deceased with care, no piece of coding can generate the reverence that Chevra members have for their task and no financial incentives  can match the intangible rewards due to its members. It’s a business model that defies disruption. The Chevra Kadisha is simply here for life.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)