Parshas Chayei Sarah - Nichum Aveilim and The Hebrew Free Burial Association

Before anything else, yesterday was Veterans Day. I'd like to take a moment of visually represented silence not only in honor and memory of all the brave individuals who died defending the freedoms that I take for granted daily but also for their families and loved ones who never cease to suffer because of those incredible sacrifices. 

As my late mentor and Rebbe R' Ari Fuld HY"M (1) once told me, when a Jewish soldier dies in the Israeli army their seat always remains empty at their family's Shabbat table. That pain is no less for American families. Please join me for a moment of silence. 

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Thank you. 

The process of grieving for loved ones is long, necessary, and painful. It takes a while to wrap one's mind around the fact that they'll never speak to a beloved parent or mentor in this world again, and it's a challenging enough process in the "best" of circumstances. But what do we do when, on top of that pain, the surviving family doesn't have the money to pay for a proper burial or other end-of-life expenses? 

Dying in the United States is extremely expensive. According to Yahoo finance, even in Mississippi, the cheapest state to die in, all average end of life medical costs and funeral expenses total nearly $20,000. The National Median of an adult funeral in 2019 was over $7500, and this at a time when the average American household has less than $9000 in savings.

This is a serious problem. 

In this week's Parshah, there are several encounters with death. First, Avraham purchased a burial plot from Efron to bury his wife Sarah. (2) Later Avraham also died and God and Rivkah comforted Yitzchak. The Bahag and Yere'im saw in that act of consolation a Torah obligation to comfort mourners, one of a handful of Mitzvos that God Godself performs in Sefer Bereishis. (3) Finally, at the end of the Parshah, Yishmael also died and was "gathered into his people."

Later, in Devarim 21:23, the Torah is more explicit about the obligation to bury the dead. Fascinatingly, that Mitzvah (4) was given in the context of burying a criminal who had been executed. The message is clear: all human beings, even criminals and other miscreants at the bottom of the social hierarchy, have infinite dignity that can not be erased by any action they take or choice they make. Every person, even after death and certainly in life, deserves to be treated with the greatest respect and esteem warranted by no other reason than their being a child of God. We ought to remember that more. 

What do families do, however, when they can't afford to bury a loved one? What do we do as a community when people die without any family members or friends to bury them? The Halakhah is very clear: even a Kohen Gadol on his way to perform the Yom Kippur service in the Beis haMikdash who encounters a dead body is obligated to put everything else on hold to make sure that body is buried with the proper dignity and respect, even if that means he becomes ritually impure and is unable to perform the Yom Kippur service. Every single Jewish person is obligated to make sure that all are buried with the dignity, respect, and esteem that every person with the divine spark within them demands. This obligation takes Halakhic precedence over almost all other Mitzvos. 

One organization that helps with this holy work is The Hebrew Free Burial Association. They assist families who can't afford to pay for the increasingly expensive costs of burial, and they bury those who die without living friends or relatives available to bury them. 

This week I've donated to The Hebrew Free Burial Association. Not only do I recommend you do so as well, but I challenge you to think for a moment about your own mortality, your infinite dignity, and that of every other human being. 

How different would our world be if instead of seeing our differences, we saw instead that infinite dignity latent within all of us? I wonder...

Notes:

(1) The more common acronym is HY"D, haShem Yikom Damo (May God avenge his blood). I prefer HY"M, haShem Yishmor Mishpachto (May God protect his family) as a more positive and life-affirming expression of those emotions. 

(2) According to Bereishis 23:14-16, Avraham paid 400 shekels for the plot of land. While it's very hard to establish exactly what the going rate for such a plot of land would have been at that time, we find Yirmiyahu purchasing a field for 17 shekels in Yirmiyahu 32:9. We also find King Omri purchasing an entire mountain city in I Melakhim 16:24 for 6000 shekels. 

Also of interest, the entire Louisiana Purchase cost the American government just $15 million in 1803, less than $350 million in 2020. That would have been less than a nickel per acre in 1803 and less than a dollar per acre in 2020. 

(3) For example, God acts as a matchmaker between Adam and Chavah (Bereishis 2:18-22) and visits Avraham when sick (Bereishis 18:1)

(4) Or, more accurately, Mitzvos: there's a positive Mitzvah to bury the dead as well as a negative Mitzvah to not leave the body unburied overnight. See Chinukh Mitzvos 536 and 537, Rambam Aseh 231 and Lo sa'Aseh 66, Smag Aseh 104 and Lo sa'Aseh 197, Smak Simanim 48 and 69, Bahag Aseh 34 and Lo sa'Aseh 204, and Yere'im Simanim 154 and 384. 

(5) This week I also got to interview R' Elchonon Zohr, the main Rabbinic Advisor for The Hebrew Free Burial Association and internationally sought-after authority on all things related to Jewish burial. You can watch that interview here.