This is a Parasha devoted to subjects having to do with Chevra Kadisha. Yaakov passes away and is handled with great honor, and Yosef is at least prepared so that he can receive honor as his body is preserved until the time comes to leave Egypt.
Several weeks ago, I spoke at the dedication ceremony for a new memorial space, The Memory Garden, at Eternal Home Cemetery in Colma. The space is dedicated to the families of those who have lost a baby during the prenatal phase. As you know, we bury such babies when possible even after a few months, and two Bay Area women got the idea of endowing a space with that type of loss in mind. They thought it would give families who experience fertility challenges of this kind more of a focus for their visiting and their mourning.
When they came up with this idea 10 years ago, Debbie Findling and Abby Porth went around to many rabbis, and I was among them. We stayed in touch somewhat since then, and they, along with Sinai Memorial Chapel, asked me to speak at the dedication. I wanted to share with you what I said that day as it relates to something essential in the Parasha and to the theme of Chevra Kadisha.
There were many rabbis there that day, so when I spoke the first thing I did was acknowledge their presence. I wasn’t sure why I was speaking, but I did recall that when I first met with Debbie I shared with her something from R’ Moshe Feinstein, ztz’l, so it was R’ Moshe, and not I, who was speaking. I told her that it was my custom to share a specific responsa from R’ Moshe with women whom I knew had lost a pregnancy. R’ Moshe was asked in the 70s by a young man about a miscarriage his mother had suffered. The boy wanted to know the status of the fetus. R’ Moshe answered that we follow the opinion of Ravina in the Gemora in Sanhedrin that a fetus has a Neshama, a soul, from the time of implantation in the uterus. Therefore, R’ Moshe said, the fetus participates in life and will also experience Tehiyas HaMeisim (the resurrection of the dead) and Olam Haba, the next world. The boy will therefore someday “meet” his brother or sister, among the righteous. Thus, R’ Moshe.
What does that mean for the Chevra Kadisha? Well, it underscores a point of which they must always be mindful: Their work is always with the repository of the soul.
At the end of this week’s Parasha, we not only end the Parasha but the book. The last words of the book are that Yosef was placed in an Aron in Mitzrayim. This is the second case of death and burial and mourning in the Parasha, but that word did not occur before. Yaakov was perhaps in an Aron when he was taken to Eretz Yisrael, but it was not mentioned.
The word “Aron” is significant. If you ask an Israeli, what is an Aron, they will say it is a cabinet or a locker. In Shemot, the word will be used for the box into which the tablets will be placed in the Mishkan. That too is an Aron. And if the word means “box,” then we have the relationship between the two. But there is more to tease out of this word. If you ask an Israeli to identify the root of the word Aron, they are usually puzzled. We always look for a verb in these situations but there is no verb L’aren, or L’Aron. What is the root? Someone pointed out at the Chevra Kadisha dinner of the South Bay that he thought the word was connected to Oren, which I thought was pretty clever. After all, in English we often refer to it as a pine box, so that would be interesting.
But puns aside, the word Aron can be parsed. We know what it means when there is a Vav - Nun Sofit at the end of a word. It is a suffix which denotes that something is diminutive. A Chalon, a window, is a small opening. My favorite is Ishon, which means small person. But we use it to mean the pupil of the eye because if one looks into the pupil of someone’s eye, they see a reflection of themself, in miniature.
So Aron means a small light. Which makes sense in terms of the tablets of the Torah, which we call Oraita, or light. The Aron contains the tablets because it is a small light. But that also means a person in an Aron is referred to as a small light.
One can see that the book of Bereishit has come full circle. It began with the creation of light and now it ends with Yosef, the embodiment of a small light. The process has been one of discovering that all of us partake of that great light in Bereishit in a small way. And the process continues next week, when Moshe Rabenu is born and the room is filled with light.
This underscores that the job of the Chevra Kadisha is weighty indeed. They are carrying that Aron and its small light to its final resting place. This is great work not just in showing honor for the person, who was sometimes a member of the community. It also has to do with knowing that one is dealing with that small light, even if it is someone we never met. Working with the Chevra Kadisha is holy work, and anyone who is interested should contact me.
From the time the seed implants until 120 years, the Neshama exists, and it deserves proper respect and honor.
