5784.1
Photographic Images on Tombstones
Sh’eilah
My congregation has recently re-established its cemetery committee and we have been working on formulating policies. The question has come up about just what is permitted on tombstones in the way of images or pictures. It was mentioned that there is a Russian practice of having images of the deceased on the tombstone, and that at least some Russian Jews have brought the practice with them to the US. We don’t currently have any Russian Jews in the congregation, but we want to be as inclusive as possible in our policies. (Rabbi Renni Altman, Vassar Temple, Poughkeepsie, NY)
T’shuvah
This sh’eilah[1] is about halachah and minhag (custom) and the relationship between them. It is not enough to consider what the halachah says with regard to photographic images on tombstones. There is also the question of the variation in practice among different Jewish communities. We Jews are deeply attached to customs that have little grounding in law; how should we reconcile commitments to very different customs? To what extent should a congregation with an established minhag be open to other minhagim, and under what circumstances?
I. Halachah: tombstones and imagery
Although the Torah’s first mention of a burial practice is Abraham purchasing the cave of Machpelah in order to bury his wife Sarah, the Torah also references the practice of burying the dead in the earth and erecting a marker, both to mark the location and to remember the person buried there. This ritual is first recorded at the death of the matriarch Rachel: “Thus Rachel died. She was buried on the road to Ephrath—now Bethlehem. Over her grave Jacob set up a pillar (matzeivah); it is the pillar at Rachel’s grave to this day (Genesis 35:19–20).” The term matzeivah, from the root for “standing in place,” is the classic Hebrew term still in use for grave markers today.
The Jews of the Land of Israel practiced both cave burial and earth burial from ancient times well into the first millennium. Archaeological findings attest to elaborate inscriptions on the sarcophagi or grave markers of those who could afford them, although some early rabbis expressed strong sentiment against such elaborate displays.[2] For example, R. Shimon ben Gamliel said: “one does not erect nefashot [grave markers] to the righteous, for their words are their memorial”[3], a sentiment repeated by Maimonides even as he describes what had become the norm by his time:
They dig pits in the earth and make a burial chamber in the side of the pit and bury him in it face up. Then they replace the earth and the stones (avanim) upon him. And they should bury him in a wooden coffin. And those that accompany him say to him, “Go in peace,” as it is said, “You shall go to your fathers in peace (Genesis 15:15).” And they mark off the entire cemetery [so that kohanim will not accidentally tread on graves] and they build a marker (nefesh) on the grave. But we do not build markers on the graves of the righteous, for their words are their memorials.[4]
What is inscribed on the matzeivah varies widely. In many traditional Jewish communities in the United States, it is still the custom to raise up a large marker that contains “an elaborate tribute to the virtues of the occupant of the grave,” as Rabbi Isaac Klein described it.[5] In other communities, markers are more modest, smaller and lower to the ground. They often include the name of the deceased in English and Hebrew, the dates of birth and death, perhaps a symbol indicating that the deceased claimed descent from priestly (hands in prayer) or Levitical (ewer from Temple service) lineage, and sometimes a line of prose or poetry describing positive traits of the deceased.
While many rabbinic authorities praised simplicity, the people did not always agree. As the Encyclopedia Judaica states:
A desire for originality allied to an emphasis on tradition is characteristic of the tombstones in Jewish cemeteries. Here the anonymous Jewish craftsman succeeded perhaps better than in most other fields of art in establishing an individual style. There are few branches of Jewish art which are distinguished by such richness of decoration, and by such a variety of symbolism, as tombstone art. Thus a study of Jewish tombstones is a rich source of material for the study of Jewish art from ancient times to the present. The artistic and traditional development of the tombstone and of its individual style is based on two factors: (a) the desire for perpetuation; (b) artistic expression and the participation of the various branches of the plastic arts in its creation. Hence the great value of the tombstone not only lies in the study of epitaphs, but also in its ornamentation.[6]
It further notes that early modern Ashkenazi headstones were often quite elaborate, with carvings indicating not only kohein or levi status, but also praiseworthy qualities (a pair of lit candles for a pious woman), an individual’s name (e.g., a deer for someone named Naftali Hirsch), or even their trade (e.g., scissors for a barber). The artistry went beyond even these.
All the religious and philosophical ideas connected with death, the phenomenon of death itself, man’s mortality, his ways on earth and his relationship with God and eternity, were given artistic expression in stone. Sometimes death was depicted as a flickering flame, as a shipwrecked vessel, an overturned and extinguished lamp, or a flock without a shepherd. The fear of death was sometimes symbolized by fledglings nestling under their mother’s wing. Heraldic designs were also used on tombstones, particularly in Eastern Europe. They took the form of a pair of lions, deer or even sea-horses holding the crowns of the Torah. Other animals also appeared occasionally, such as bears, hares, squirrels and ravens—the raven being the harbinger of disaster.[7]
Nevertheless, there were limits to what sort of images were acceptable. In the Shulchan Aruch (1575), R. Yosef Karo likened imagery to idolatry and prohibited certain images, especially human ones, on tombstones.
It is prohibited to form figures of the Divine heavenly realm such as the four faces (of the prophetic vision) together and similarly the figures of ofanim, and seraphim, and the ministering angels. And similarly [this prohibition includes] the figure of a human being itself (i.e., in its entirety). . . When was this stated? When they are images that protrude (such as three-dimensional images). However, flat or engraved images like those woven onto a garment or those formed on a wall with dyes (murals) are permitted. The form of the sun, moon and stars are prohibited whether they protrude or are flat or engraved. But if they are for the purposes of learning—to understand and to teach all are permitted, even protruding [images].
Isserles: And there are those that permit these figures if they are publicly owned[8] as then there is no suspicion about their use.[9]
Thus Karo prohibits protruding human figures, but not two-dimensional ones or engraved ones, while Isserles opens a possible door to them. Nevertheless, the authors of the encyclopedia article point out, Ashkenazic tombstones rarely, if ever, included human figures at all.
The question of what sorts of images were permitted on Jewish grave markers became a matter of controversy in the nineteenth century as acculturated Jews in western and central Europe adopted the aesthetics of the societies among whom they lived. This in turn aroused the ire of Rabbi Moses Sofer (1762–1839) of Pressburg (Bratislava), known as the Chatam Sofer, a leading voice in the defense of traditional values and practices. Asked about a Jewish tombstone with a “protruding human figure” on it,[10] he castigated the practice as unacceptable. Even though, he acknowledged, the Shulchan Aruch allowed such practices in public, nevertheless, he stated, it was “an unseemly thing.” Furthermore, people come to graves to pray, and it would be improper to pray in front of a human image. If they could not persuade the family to remove it, or to deface it, no one should pray at that grave. Finally, it is problematic, he argued, because it is a gentile custom.[11] They are accustomed to putting the image they worship on all of their structures; we should not appear to imitate them by putting a human image on a grave.
Rabbi Naftali Brawer, a contemporary Orthodox rabbi, surmises that the Chatam Sofer would not have approved even of photos on tombstones. “He does not…refer to pictures (it would have been paintings in his time as photography didn’t really exist before the 1830s)… [but] it is more than likely that his opposition would extend to photos as well. Rabbi Sofer was a harsh critic of Jewish acculturation to non-Jewish modern trends and this, more than anything, may have driven his reaction to this modish practice.”[12]
In this instance, as in many others, the Chatam Sofer’s complete resistance to any perceived imitation of gentile ways led to the emergence of a more restrictive view of what “tradition” regarded as acceptable. Thus, a certain Rabbi Menachem Posner feels free, in a responsum on a Chabad website, to cite his responsum as categorical proof that one may not put a photograph on a tombstone: “So, what about a photograph: would Rabbi Sofer have allowed it? While the issue of a graven image may not apply, the issue of placing a human image in a place of worship most certainly would. And for this reason, it is not Jewish practice to have photos placed on headstones [emphasis added].”[13]
However, the modern Orthodox authority Rabbi Yekutiel Yehudah Greenwald of Columbus took issue with the Chatam Sofer’s restrictive attitude toward imagery specifically in regard to photographs, in his masterwork Kol Bo Al Aveilut (Comprehensive Guide to Mourning), [14] choosing instead to rely strictly on the Shulchan Aruch. He emphasizes that only protruding images are prohibited, not photographs or similar two-dimensional images. Referring to the nineteenth-century fashion of adorning a headstone with the portrait of the deceased person printed on paper and placed under glass, he rules: “There is no prohibition except for a full three-dimensional form. All the more so in cases like this where it is not sunk in or three-dimensional but merely painted, [it is permissible] according to the Tosafot.”[15] His only restriction is that the image should not have legs, i.e., should not be a complete human image. Greenwald further cites a precedent from none other than Rabbi Abraham Sofer (1815–1871), the son of the Chatam Sofer, approving for synagogue use a Shiviti[16] with a portrait of Sir Moses Montefiore. The younger Sofer stated that there was no prohibition unless the image included a full likeness of the person. Greenwald then adds the proviso that in a synagogue, the image should be “above the height of a man, so that it would not be looked upon at the time of t’filah” and take one’s thoughts away from prayer (and not because it might be construed as idolatry).
Greenwald notes additionally that the Maharam Schick (R. Moses b. Joseph Schick, 1807–1879), a student of the Chatam Sofer, prohibited images on tombstones, but refuses to extrapolate from there to a ban on photographs:
I saw that [an unidentified rabbi] prohibited placing images on tombstones on the strength of what Maharam Schick wrote (YD 120): ‘It is certainly incumbent upon us to preserve every Jewish custom, including the custom not to permit placing images of the dead on tombstones.’ But in fact, Maharam Schick only prohibited protruding images there, and with regard to photographs, he did not say anything explicit, either in the question or in the response, and we cannot assume what was in his heart. Therefore we find no grounds anywhere to prohibit photographs, and therefore we must not spark conflicts by claiming such a prohibition comes from Maharam Schick.[17]
From this discussion it is clear that a photograph or other two-dimensional image of the deceased’s face and upper body (or, for that matter, an incised image) on a tombstone is not a violation of halachah. It is not a prohibited three-dimensional protruding image, nor a prohibited complete human image, nor is it possibly going to be mistaken for an idolatrous image. And if it conforms to those three requirements, it cannot ipso facto be regarded as a prohibited imitation of gentile customs. There is, therefore, no objection in halachah to photographs on tombstones.
II. Minhag (custom) and acculturation
Why, then, has this question arisen? It is because of the power of minhag. As we are often reminded by the halachic literature itself, Minhag Yisrael Torah hu, “Jewish custom has the force of law.”[18] American Jews have generally not placed photos on tombstones because it was not the normative custom of the great wave of immigrants who arrived between 1881–1924. We also note that American Jews generally do not include floral wreaths at funerals, regarding it as a “gentile practice;”[19] but anyone who has seen a Jewish funeral in Israel knows that it is commonly done there.
Similarly, there are Jews for whom photos on tombstones is a normative custom, and in recent years they have immigrated to the US in larger and larger numbers. Russian, Georgian, and Bukharan Jews whose families lived in the Soviet Union commonly erect elaborate tombstones with photographs of the deceased, following the custom of their place of origin. In 2013, the Forward published a story on the proliferation of photos on elaborate tombstones of Jews at Brooklyn’s Washington Cemetery. Author Josh Nathan-Kazis dated the origin of the practice to the 1950s when the Bukharan Jews were still living in central Asia. “‘All over the Soviet Union the cemeteries have pictures on the headstones. It’s a totally Soviet thing,’ said Leonard Petlakh, executive director of the Kings Bay Y in Brooklyn, in response to a reporter’s question.”[20] Significantly, however, after that article appeared, Jewish Heritage Europe published large, detailed photos of several such gravestones in Sharhorod, Ukraine, noting that the practice actually predates the Soviet era: “Starting in the latter part of the 19th century, long before laser technology came in, it was common practice in many countries to attach enamel photographs of the deceased on headstones.”[21] Such depictions of the faces of the deceased are also well-attested among Jews in central Europe, including Prague’s newer Jewish cemetery in the Vinohrady neighborhood.[22] These examples make it clear that this question is not a matter of halachah, but of minhag hamakom, “local custom.”
During the great wave of immigration to the US, Jews from different locations in the Old World often organized synagogues around shared liturgical practices, which reflected either ideological or geographical commonalities.[23] However, after the Second World War, as native-born American Jews moved out of the immigrant neighborhoods, those older identifying customs lost their significance, especially in Conservative and Reform synagogues.
To be sure, people tend to like doing things “as we always have done them,” even if it is not strictly accurate. It does not take more than a generation or two to establish a practice that is seen as “the way we have always done it here.”[24] That can be especially true for anything involving death or burial, matters about which people are often surprisingly conservative. But given the absence of halachic basis for prohibiting photographs, and the reality that it is strictly a matter of custom (and perhaps personal taste), it behooves us to be flexible. The photos themselves may be a practice that will disappear as the newest immigrants nativize. As Leonard Petlakh observed regarding the practice: “We’re all products of the culture. It will not be definitely there in the next generation.”[25]
III. Conclusion
Sometime ago, this committee was asked about the propriety of adding a QR code to a tombstone, a practice that allows others to access more detailed information about the deceased than what can be included on a tombstone. In our affirmative response, we cited Rabbi Greenwald’s comments on the changing nature of tombstone inscriptions: “The story [Yekutiel Greenwald] tells is of a minhag that has developed over the centuries in accordance with changing tastes. Each Jewish community in each generation has determined its own standards for what is proper and improper to inscribe upon a tombstone.”[26]
We conclude that the same holds true for photographs or incised images on tombstones, within the halachic parameters of representation of human images. Prohibitions of such images have no foundation in halachah, but only in minhag hamakom. In this particular case we encourage the community to be inclusive with regard to the customs of fellow Jews.
Rabbi Carey Brown
Rabbi Phil Cohen
Rabbi Joan S. Friedman, chair
Rabbi Ben Gurin
Rabbi Suzie Jacobson
Rabbi Audrey Korotkin
Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
Rabbi Brian Stoller
Rabbi Micah Streiffer
Rabbi David Vaisberg
Rabbi Michael Walden
Rabbi Dvora Weisberg
Rabbi Jeremy Weisblatt
- Credit for the primary work on this responsum goes to Rabbi Audrey Korotkin. ↑
- For a fuller account of the evolution of Jewish practice with regard to grave markers see Ze’ev Yeivin and David Davidovitch, “Tombs and Tombstones,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007), Vol. 20, 32-37. Gale eBooks, https://link.gale.com/ apps/doc/CX2587519939/GVRL?u=ohlnk162&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=87fc487a (accessed January 8, 2024). ↑
- B’reishit Rabbah 82:10; Jerusalem Talmud, Shekalim 2:7, 47a. ↑
- Yad H. Evel 4:4. ↑
- Isaac Klein, A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1979), 296. ↑
- “Tombs and Tombstones,” 35. ↑
- “Tombs and Tombstones,” 37. ↑
- A Jew who would set up such an image in private would immediately be suspected of doing so for worship, i.e., of following Christian or other non-Jewish practices. But that suspicion would not apply to someone who erects an image in public. ↑
- Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Dei-ah 141:4. ↑
- Sh’eilot U’Tshuvot, Chatam Sofer 6:4. ↑
- The Torah passage You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan where I am taking you; nor shall you observe their laws (Leviticus 18:3) is understood by the tradition as a negative commandment, prohibiting imitating gentile ways, especially in religious practice. ↑
- https://www.thejc.com/judaism/all/can-i-incorporate-a-photograph-into-a-gravestone-1.519170. ↑
- “Can We Put a Photo on the Tombstone?” https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1222460/jewish/Can-We-Put-a-Photo-on-the-Tombstone.htm. ↑
- Yekutiel Yehuda Greenwald (1889–1955), Kol Bo al Aveilut (New York: Philip Feldheim, Inc., 1973 [original publication 1947–1952]), 380, n. 1. ↑
- Tosafot to Bavli Yoma 54a, in which the rabbis discussed the fact that when the Temple stood, the people were shown the k’ruvim joined together on the Holy Ark as long as they were already inserted into their containers and thus posed no risk of worshiping idols. He also offers multiple prooftexts here from the Rashban, and the Maharam of Prague that also forbid only full three-dimensional forms. ↑
- A Shiviti is a plaque or marker inscribed with Psalm 16:8, I set (Shiviti) Adonai before my eyes at all times, hung in a synagogue or home to mark the eastern wall. ↑
- Greenwald, Kol Bo, 380, n. 1. ↑
- Magen Avraham 307:16 and many other sources. ↑
- As Isaac Klein writes: “The use of flowers at funerals—myrtles, to be exact—is mentioned in the Talmud (Babylonian Talmud, B’rachot. 53a, Bava Kama 16b; Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 526:4), but is discouraged in current practice, both from a desire to keep funerals simple and in opposition to the introduction of alien and pagan customs.” Klein, Guide, 280. ↑
- Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Ornate Gravestones Tell Stories of Soviet Lives,” Forward, January 20, 2013. Accessed online at https://forward.com/news/169454/ornate-gravestones-tell-stories-of-soviet-lives/ on May 28, 2023.The custom is also found in Iran. In May 2023, in western Iran, officials ordered the removal of a gravestone depicting the image of a woman without a hijab, deemed inappropriate as well as illegal. According to one journalistic account: “Last year, Iran started policing the compulsory Islamic dress code–or hijab–on tombstones in the country’s largest cemetery, located in the southern part of the capital Tehran. The cemetery removed scores of gravestones which had pictures of deceased women without veils.” The director of the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, Saeed Ghazanfari, had stated that the procedure will continue in the future ‘in accordance with the opinion of [religious] scholars until all the gravestones with such pictures are removed.’” See https://www.iranintl.com/en/202304297680. ↑
- https://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/2013/01/20/portraits-on-jewish-gravestones-laser-and-photo/.Accessed May 28, 2023. ↑
- Seen by Rabbi Joan Friedman when she was living in Prague in 1988. ↑
- For example, many US cities had or still have synagogues named Anshei Sfard. This does not mean that the founders were Sephardic Jews, but that they used the Sephardic rite favored by the Chasidim. Note also the “First Roumanian-American Congregation” established on the Lower East Side in 1860 and the “Meserich Synagogue” founded there in 1888 by immigrants from that Polish city. There are many more such examples. ↑
- Rabbi Audrey Korotkin observes, for example, that at Mount Sinai Cemetery in Altoona, Pennsylvania, families have typically erected large headstones with last names on them and, after death, dedicated a small footstone that sits flat and low to the ground with the deceased’s English and Hebrew names and dates of birth and death, and community members expect that others will conform to that model. ↑
- “Ornate Gravestones,” Forward. ↑
- 5773.4: Quick Response Codes Embedded in Tombstone, https://www.ccarnet.org/ccar-responsa/qr-codes-embedded-tombstone/. ↑