5784.4 – Splitting Cremated Ashes for Burial in Two Places

5784.4

Splitting Cremated Ashes for Burial in Two Places

Sh’eilah

Is it permissible to split ashes for Jewish burial? A congregant’s late wife was cremated and buried in a Jewish cemetery in one city. He is now in a committed relationship with a woman whose late husband is buried in a Jewish cemetery in another city, and she has a plot there as well. When he dies, he plans to be cremated and have a single funeral service where he currently lives, but wonders about the possibility of his ashes being buried in plots in both cemeteries. (Rabbi Stephanie Alexander, Charleston, and Rabbi Brad Bloom, Hilton Head)

T’shuvah

One could say that there are reasons to say yes to this request. It would resolve a question on which the tradition has no unanimous view, i.e., whether a person should be buried with their first spouse or their second.[1] With no compelling reason for preferring one or the other, it is certain that some people in that situation must make a choice that may lead to sadness and even hard feelings among the surviving family members. Allowing the individual to split their cremated remains cuts the Gordian knot and solves that which earlier generations could not solve. And since we allow cremation and the burial of ashes, why should we not endorse this idea?

As Reform Jews, moreover, we recognize that while inground or cave burial has long been the Jewish norm, there is no explicit prohibition of cremation in either the Bible or the Talmud. Reflecting that reality, in 1891 the CCAR undertook a thorough examination of the acceptability of cremation as a Jewish practice, and in 1893 adopted a resolution simply stating that if a rabbi is asked to officiate at a cremation “we ought not to refuse on the plea that cremation is anti-Jewish or irreligious.”[2]

However, consenting to cremation and consenting to all methods of disposition of an individual’s ashes are two very different matters. In the societies within which we Jews constitute a small minority, individuals opt for an ever-increasing array of options for disposing of or using the ashes as memorials to their loved ones. Rather than burying them, people may scatter them in a beautiful natural setting or in a location especially meaningful to the deceased. They may keep the ashes in an urn on the mantel or incorporate them into jewelry or artwork.[3] They may divide up the ashes and give a portion to each surviving family member to do with as they choose. All of these and more are increasingly popular.

We Jews, by contrast, remain stubbornly countercultural in our insistence on honoring our dead by returning them to the earth in the most natural possible state, interfering as little as possible with the body of the human being created in the divine image. For that reason, we Reform Jews have consistently treated cremated ashes just as we treat a body: “Ashes of a cremation should be treated with respect as human remains. They may be interred in our cemeteries, subject to the rules of the cemetery.”[4] In all of our responsa on cremation and questions of k’vod hamet (the honor of the dead), we have treated the ashes of the deceased as if they were the deceased’s body insofar as is possible. Thus, we perform taharah for a body that is to be cremated just as for one that will be buried.[5] We may place a tallit (without its tzitzit) on a body that will be cremated, just as on one that will be buried.[6] We do not inter a person’s ashes in the cornerstone of a synagogue (or any building), just as we would not inter a body there.[7] We do not allow one set of ashes either to remain unburied or to be dug up in order to be mingled with their spouse’s ashes when the latter dies, just as we do not leave a person unburied or open a casket to put a second body in it.[8]

Our response to the question before us, therefore, is in keeping with our own precedents. Given that we treat cremated remains with the same ritual and respect we accord the body itself, we can no more countenance splitting ashes to bury them in two places than we could countenance splitting a body to bury it in two places.

If a person’s remains cannot simultaneously be in two places, what alternatives remain other than the classic choice? While there is precedent for setting up a stone in the absence of a body, that practice is generally limited to memorializing individuals whose bodies cannot be recovered.[9] On one other occasion,[10] we advised against setting up two stones for one individual; that, however, was a question about two stones in the same cemetery, in two family plots in close proximity, for the purpose of keeping peace between the families. (Significantly, that was also a question about burial of ashes, and no one raised the possibility of burying ashes in both locations.) However, the individual in this case should be buried with one spouse; language can be added to the other spouse’s stone memorializing their marriage.

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

  1. Yekutiel Yehudah Greenwald, Kol Bo al Avelut (NY: Philip Feldheim, 1973), 188. ↑
  2. American ReformResponsa #100, “Cremation from the Jewish Standpoint.” https://www.ccarnet.org/ccar-responsa/arr-341–348/. ↑
  3. At this time, there is a trend of wearing a small part of the ashes on a hand or around the neck in a piece of custom jewelry. Some have the ashes compressed into an artificial diamond and wear it as a jewel. Some encase the ashes in acrylic or glass as a visible element in a piece of art. ↑
  4. Ibid., addendum. ↑
  5. 5776.1, “Taharah When the Family Chooses Cremation,” https://www.ccarnet.org/ccar-responsa/57761/. ↑
  6. MRR #47, “Tallit for the Dead and Cremation,” https://www.ccarnet.org/ccar-responsa/mrr-269-274/. ↑
  7. RRT #34, “Ashes of Cremation in a Temple Cornerstone,” https://www.ccarnet.org/ccar-responsa/rrt-167-169/. ↑
  8. NARR #191, “Ashes of a Couple in a Single Urn,” https://www.ccarnet.org/ccar-responsa/narr-304-305/. ↑
  9. ARR #112, “Tombstone in the Absence of a Body (Cenotaph),” https://www.ccarnet.org/ccar-responsa/arr-362-365/. ↑
  10. CARR #120, “Name of the Deceased on Two Tombstones,” https://www.ccarnet.org/ccar-responsa/carr-180-181/. ↑

 

Please note that while the responsa shared here are part of the historical record, they do not necessarily reflect current CCAR policy or approach.

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