June 2009

The Director - Features

The Green Tradition

It could be said that many of the edicts of the green burial movement today are adaptations of age-old Jewish funerals in a modern-day world.

“Take Good Care of the Earth.” This was the sticker that found its way onto the bumpers of many of the cars my friends and I drove in college. But I’d be less than honest if I did not admit that even though the message was subtle, 40 years ago, my friends and I were unaware of the environmental challenges that would confront our generation in the 21st century.

I can, however, state with pride the passion I now see daily from my three adult children and their significant others as they confront the effects on the earth of generations whose indifference to their careless and clueless treatment of the world we inhabit have brought us where we are today. With the current political climate and an economic crisis unseen since the Great Depression, it’s impossible to watch the news, read the paper or surf the Net without being confronted with talk of cleaning up the environment and teaching and learning “green.”

When I entered funeral service in 1974, the two big issues confronting the profession at the time had come about as a result of Jessica Mitford’s book, The American Way of Death. The book slammed the funeral industry’s excesses of overpriced products and services, many of which the author deemed unnecessary. The second issue was the challenge to the sacred “traditional funeral,” which included embalming, a day or two of visitation, elaborate metal or wood caskets, concrete burial vaults, flowers adorning chapels and churches, and an almost certain ground burial. There was a growing acceptance of cremation as an alternative to ground burial, sometimes with a service taking place at a funeral home but often with a memorial service instead and arrangements handled by family and friends absent the funeral director.

Environmentalists spoke of the wasted land occupied by the dead and their cemetery plots but gave little consideration to the toxic chemicals released in the cremation process. It was asked how long it would be before land no longer existed for ground burial and what was our plan B, if indeed there even was an alternative plan.

At a recent meeting attended by funeral directors, the speaker, who holds a Ph.D. in ecology, stated that when the concept starts with burning anything, the environment will soon become the loser. He then spoke of the concept of “green burial” or “natural burial.” What is green burial? Simple and natural, according to www.greenburials.org. “Green burial, or natural burial, ensures that the burial site remains as natural as possible in all respects,” says the Website. “Interment is done in a biodegradable casket, a shroud or favorite blanket. No embalming fluid, no concrete vaults.”

As a Jewish funeral director and member of the Jewish Funeral Directors of America (JFDA), I can imagine the previous paragraph included, with slight variations, on every JFDA member”s Website nationwide. The terms “Jewish burial,” “green burial” and “natural burial” are synonymous  - they essentially all mean the same thing. A favorite blanket might accompany a shroud but not replace it, and concrete vaults are often a cemetery requirement. What’s notable is not that organizations like the Green Burial Council are relatively new but that the sages of Judaism adopted these practices thousands of years ago.

A prayer recited at a Jewish burial – “And thus we give back to the earth that which was of the earth” – was not written with the environment in mind. It was so practical and sound in its roots that it has stood the test of time – some 2,000 to 3,000 years! Although there is a commonly misunderstood fact that a plain pine box is a requirement, there is nothing written about any type of box or container to be used in a Jewish burial. It could be said that many of the edicts found in the green burial movement today are the adaptations of Jewish funerals in a modern-day world. In Israel today, the body, or “Met” is brought to the cemetery in a container, removed and buried in the ground, with friends, family and the community completing the task of burial. No casket, no vault, only a shroud. 

As the funeral industry may debate between green burials and cremations as it relates to the environment, JFDA members can sit this debate out, knowing that the sages of our tradition were not only scholars of their time but in their wisdom were thousands of years ahead of their time as “protectors of the earth.” Their wisdom of “we come from the earth as so to the earth we shall return” is not a convenient environmental debate but what Tevye famously declared in Fiddler on the Roof: “TRADITION, TRADITION!”

This article was prepared for The Jewish Funeral Directors of America, of which Techner is a member.