5784.3
Burial of a Person in a Pet Cemetery
Sh’eilah
A congregant is considering having their ashes buried in a pet cemetery. They have no family burial plot and their children are unlikely ever to return here to visit a grave. The pet cemetery allows human cremains and burial of ashes and is less expensive there than in a human cemetery. Other family members still alive might also choose to have their cremains buried in the same plot. Would this be acceptable from a Jewish perspective? If so, would it be necessary to consecrate the grave as a Jewish cemetery? (Rabbi Caroline Sim, Lynbrook, NY)
T’shuvah
Before we respond to the central question here of burying human remains in a pet cemetery, we will address a number of issues raised implicitly or explicitly by the question, in order to show that they are not relevant.
1. Cremation: We do not encourage cremation and have expressed a strong preference for inground burial as wholly in keeping with Jewish tradition. Nevertheless, the CCAR resolved in 1893 that rabbis should not refuse to officiate at cremations.[1] We further encourage the burial of cremains in our cemeteries.[2]
2. What constitutes a “Jewish” cemetery? A Jewish cemetery is land that a Jewish community has bought and designated for the purpose of burying its dead, marked off as such by a wall or fence. If the Jewish cemetery is a subsection of a larger non-Jewish cemetery, there should be either a distance of at least 8 cubits (about 12’7”) between the Jewish graves and the non-Jewish graves, or 4 cubits with a partition of at least 4 cubits (6’3”),[3] in order to demarcate where the Jewish cemetery is. There is very little halachic basis for the existence of a communal cemetery. It appears to have evolved as a matter of necessity, perhaps as a consequence of Jews settling in locations in the Diaspora where caves suitable for burial were uncommon and catacomb burials impossible.[4] Some Jewish communities hold some sort of ceremony to mark the establishment of a new cemetery, but this is a custom and not a halachic requirement.[5] Nevertheless, the cemetery is to be treated with the utmost respect, out of respect for the dead.[6]
3. Must a Jew be buried in a Jewish cemetery? Strictly speaking, the answer is no, because any plot of land that a Jew purchases for their burial is by definition a Jewish burial ground.[7] However, burial in the communal cemetery has long been the preferred practice. While this may have initially been the result of the impossibility of burial in private caves or catacombs, it has long since come to be seen as a value in and of itself—a Jew remaining among their fellow Jews in both life and death. It is not impossible that a Jewish family could opt to be buried on their own land, but it would be highly unusual and is not something we encourage.[8] Zoning laws also prevent this in most places.
It is possible to bury a Jew in a non-Jewish cemetery by creating the requisite partition (see above). This committee consented in 1985, for example, to the burial in the local non-denominational cemetery of members of a Jewish family in an isolated rural community. In that situation, however, the children were committed to staying in that community and wanted their parents’ graves nearby.[9]
4. Jews buried next to non-Jews: Jews have historically felt a powerful need for our own communal cemetery, reflecting norms that were so ingrained that they required no halachic mandate. The question of burying Jews together with non-Jews is largely a modern question, the result of the emergence of “non-denominational” public cemeteries in the modern era, and of the possibility of marriage across or outside of religious boundaries.[10] Prior to the modern era, why would a non-Jew have chosen burial in a Jewish cemetery in a historical context where interreligious families were an impossibility? A Jew who chose to be buried outside a Jewish cemetery would only have done so as an indication of their desire to separate from the community.
The imperative of maintaining an exclusively Jewish cemetery rests on the rather slim reed of a Talmudic reference to not burying the righteous next to the wicked.[11] When burial of non-Jewish spouses or other family members became a question in the Reform context, the answer was generally a permissive one. In Rabbi Solomon Freehof’s words: “If a man owns a lot in our cemetery and he wishes his Gentile spouse or their children buried in his lot, we should not object…. The Jewish owner’s lot is to be considered b’toch shelo (his property) and he does not object to his Gentile relative being buried near where he himself will be buried.”[12]
In response to this individual’s request, we thus acknowledge that: 1) the individual may choose to be cremated; 2) any plot this person owns and uses for their burial is their own Jewish burial ground; 3) there is no requirement that a Jew be buried in a Jewish cemetery, though Jewish graves in a non-Jewish cemetery should be distinguished as such as prescribed by halachah; 4) as liberal Jews, we do not require other people buried among us to be Jews. However, none of that addresses the central question here, which is whether a Jew may choose to be buried in a “pet cemetery.”
The question before us
There is no explicit prohibition in halachah against burying humans in pet cemeteries because no question like this ever arose. “Pets”—and all the more so pet cemeteries—are a mostly recent phenomenon of prosperous societies that can afford to feed and care for animals that serve as companions. We have twice been asked about burial of pet animals in our cemeteries: once in the 1960s and again in 2013. In both instances the answer was negative. In the latter responsum, Rabbi Mark Washofsky wrote:
Our opposition to cemetery burial for dogs and other animals is not based upon any sort of contempt for them, but upon the fact that there exists in Jewish ritual practice a clear and indelible distinction between animals and human beings. This distinction is real and relevant for us today…. It also explains why, although we may consider our pets as “part of the family,” they are not members of our religious community. It is precisely because we are capable of affectionate relationships with animals that we need explicitly to insist upon this distinction: for all our love for our animals, we do not count them in the minyan, we do not put their names on the Kaddish list, and we do not bury them in cemeteries consecrated for the interment of human beings.
We find that this distinction matters also in the case before us. Burial of a human body or of ashes should be in a place designated exclusively for human beings, reflecting the unique dignity of humans created in the divine image. Perhaps the individual and their immediate family requesting burial in a pet cemetery do not share this sensibility right now, but who is to say what children and grandchildren may feel in the future?
Furthermore, in this case, the desire to be buried in a pet cemetery is not even motivated by attachment to a pet animal. The reasons given by the shoelet are that the individual either cannot or does not want to spend the money for interment in a Jewish cemetery, because their family will not care to visit the gravesite, and that burial in a pet cemetery is less expensive.
Halachically, the obligation to purchase a grave falls on the individual themself or on their heirs. Talmud asserts: “One who says, ‘If I die, do not bury me out of the funds of my estate’— we do not heed him. It is not his right to enrich his sons and throw himself on the community [as a charity case].”[13] The Shulchan Aruch states:
One who gave instructions that [when he dies] he should not be buried at the expense of his estate, is not to be obeyed. Rather, they collect from his heirs [for] all his burial needs, even against their will; and likewise [for] all that is customarily done for [other] members of his family, and even [for] the stone that is placed on his grave, provided that they inherited money from their father.[14]
If the family is, in fact, so impoverished that they cannot afford burial in a Jewish cemetery, then it is the community’s obligation to undertake the burial costs. If, however, the family’s motivation is simply to save money on something that does not matter to them, they are flying in the face of long-standing Jewish law, practice, custom, and values.
It is deeply saddening that a person who chooses to be a member of a synagogue would nevertheless be so alienated from family and Jewish communal life that they choose to be buried among other people’s household pets. We realize that many Jews are alienated from traditional communal norms. We also acknowledge that some of our communal norms themselves are also not fixed in stone but have changed and will continue to change. As Reform Jews we are open to new forms and iterations of our values. But we find no positive expression of Jewish values in this request, and much that is negative.
If the individual persists in their decision to be buried in a pet cemetery, we strongly urge the rabbi not to officiate. Rabbinic officiation in this instance would be a classic example of marit ayin—doing something that is technically permitted, but in such a manner or context as to lead others to think that something prohibited is actually acceptable.
CCAR Responsa Committee
Rabbi Carey Brown
Rabbi Phil Cohen
Rabbi Joan S. Friedman, chair
Rabbi Ben Gurin
Rabbi Suzie Jacobson
Rabbi Audrey Korotkin
Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi
Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
Rabbi Brian Stoller
Rabbi Micah Streiffer
Rabbi David Vaisberg
Rabbi Michael Walden
Rabbi Dvora Weisberg
Rabbi Jeremy Weisblatt
- American Reform Responsa #100, “Cremation from the Jewish Standpoint.” ↑
- Rabbi Mark Washofsky, Jewish Living, 196. ↑
- Yekutiel Yehudah Greenwald, Kol Bo Al Aveilut (NY: Philip Feldheim, 1973), 163. A cubit is estimated to be 48 centimeters. Adin Steinsaltz, The Talmud: A Reference Guide (NY: Random House, 1989), 283. ↑
- See ARR #99, “Non-Jewish Burial in a Jewish Cemetery,” for a thorough survey of the halachah. See also CARR #97, “Non-Jewish Burials.” For a survey of Jewish burial practices in the period of the Mishnah, see Steven Fine, “Death, Burial, and Afterlife,” in Catherine Heszer, editor, The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine (NY: Oxford University Press, 2010), 440-462. ↑
- Greenwald, Kol Bo, 163ff. ↑
- BT M’gillah 29a: “The Sages taught: In a cemetery one does not act with frivolity. One does not graze animals in them, or run a water channel through them, or gather the grasses in it [for animal fodder].” ↑
- ARR #99. ↑
- See Contemporary American Reform Responsa #103: “Burial in the Garden.” ↑
- CARR #105 “Burial in a Christian Cemetery.” ↑
- There have been exceptions, but the very fact that they can be individually documented reflects how exceptional the circumstances were in each instance. See the 1919 responsum by Gotthard Deutsch included in ARR #98, “Burial of Non-Jewish Wives in Jewish Cemeteries,” American Reform Responsa 325–331, especially
328–329. ↑
- BT Sanhedrin 47a; Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Dei-ah 362:4. ↑
- ARR #99. ↑
- BT K’tubot 48a. ↑
- Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Dei-ah 348:2. ↑