(no subject)
Jul. 9th, 2013 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThis story makes me crack the fuck up. I think that's a good thing. I think it is good that we can laugh about this now:
My great-aunt passed away last summer. She was the youngest of my grandfather's sisters, the only one born in America, and she was the last of that generation to die. She was buried in New Jersey, not far from where I work.
None of her children live near there anymore. My father and uncle got calls from their cousin, her son, asking if, when they did the tombstone unveiling, everyone could go to one of their houses afterward for lunch.
My father was mildly irked by this request, because it felt like an imposition. Our usual family custom is to go out to a restaurant for the post-unveiling lunch, or at worst the direct family members arranging the unveiling hosts. But there aren't too many kosher restaurants in the direct vicinity of the cemetery, and none of my father's cousins live close enough either. So my father was a little offput, but he was going to agree to it, because it's really not that unreasonable a favor to do for a family member, but he checked with his brother first.
My uncle didn't really have a problem with it either, but his wife did, but he was embarrassed to tell my father what the reason was.
Remember when I wrote about how we did the unveiling for my grandmother two and a half years after the event? And afterward we went out for lunch on Long Island? My aunt is superstitious and she remembers that my grandmother could at times be a vindictive woman. And she worries that in Shamayim, my grandmother will see that her husband's sister got an on-time unveiling and to make matters worse, her children threw a party in their home to honor her, when my grandmother got a delayed unveiling and no big home party.
My father told my uncle "Accepting that superstitions are irrational and have no basis in reality, that is about as logical a superstition as I have ever heard." We all agree that IF my grandmother could affect things from beyond the grave, she would probably be pretty angry about this one.
So my aunt's preferred solution was that we make the lunch after the unveiling a dual party for my great-aunt and my grandmother, even though a)we had an unveiling for my grandmother last month and b)the lunch after the unveiling is NOT A PARTY. It's a pretty solemn, complicated occasion where you reflect on your grief. Making it in honor of my grandmother also would just mess with all of that.
My aunt's solution is not going to happen. I think probably what's going to happen is that my father and uncle will kind of awkwardly hint that maybe they should do the lunch at a restaurant, and if pressed, my mother and father will end up hosting.
Whee family.
My great-aunt passed away last summer. She was the youngest of my grandfather's sisters, the only one born in America, and she was the last of that generation to die. She was buried in New Jersey, not far from where I work.
None of her children live near there anymore. My father and uncle got calls from their cousin, her son, asking if, when they did the tombstone unveiling, everyone could go to one of their houses afterward for lunch.
My father was mildly irked by this request, because it felt like an imposition. Our usual family custom is to go out to a restaurant for the post-unveiling lunch, or at worst the direct family members arranging the unveiling hosts. But there aren't too many kosher restaurants in the direct vicinity of the cemetery, and none of my father's cousins live close enough either. So my father was a little offput, but he was going to agree to it, because it's really not that unreasonable a favor to do for a family member, but he checked with his brother first.
My uncle didn't really have a problem with it either, but his wife did, but he was embarrassed to tell my father what the reason was.
Remember when I wrote about how we did the unveiling for my grandmother two and a half years after the event? And afterward we went out for lunch on Long Island? My aunt is superstitious and she remembers that my grandmother could at times be a vindictive woman. And she worries that in Shamayim, my grandmother will see that her husband's sister got an on-time unveiling and to make matters worse, her children threw a party in their home to honor her, when my grandmother got a delayed unveiling and no big home party.
My father told my uncle "Accepting that superstitions are irrational and have no basis in reality, that is about as logical a superstition as I have ever heard." We all agree that IF my grandmother could affect things from beyond the grave, she would probably be pretty angry about this one.
So my aunt's preferred solution was that we make the lunch after the unveiling a dual party for my great-aunt and my grandmother, even though a)we had an unveiling for my grandmother last month and b)the lunch after the unveiling is NOT A PARTY. It's a pretty solemn, complicated occasion where you reflect on your grief. Making it in honor of my grandmother also would just mess with all of that.
My aunt's solution is not going to happen. I think probably what's going to happen is that my father and uncle will kind of awkwardly hint that maybe they should do the lunch at a restaurant, and if pressed, my mother and father will end up hosting.
Whee family.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 04:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 06:18 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereavement_in_Judaism#Matzevah_.28Unveiling_of_the_tombstone.29
Has some information. So there is no real religious requirement to do it, and customs vary fairly widely in the specifics, the timing, and the meaning of the ritual. In my community, it is a reasonably important family event, but it is not often a communal event the way the funeral might be.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-10 04:08 am (UTC)Matthew
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-10 05:02 am (UTC)Jewish eschatology does not work the same as Christian eschatology, but obviously Jews have eschatology. Ani Ma'amin be'emunah shlemah b'viat hamashiach, from Maimonides. Or maybe even more significantly, Baruch atah hashem, mechaye hametim in the daily Shemoneh Esrei.
Jewish eschatology mostly centers around that concept of the End of Days, that there will come a time when the Messiah will come and redeem Israel. And in various versions this is connected to a resurrection of the dead or an Olam Habah, a world to come that is pretty analogous to Christian heaven in that it's not exactly clear what it will be except that it will be all good things.
But any concept closer to the Christian Heaven or Hell comes from the sort of obvious unanswered question raised by this theory: If Olam Habah is a period of time, and it has not yet come, what do the souls, the neshamot of the deceased who are destined to go to Olam Habah when the Messiah brings about the redemption, do in the meantime? So this line of questioning brings us to the conception of Shamayim that I alluded to fairly roughly.
Shamayim as conceived in the Bible is the spiritual realm in contrast to Ha'aretz as the physical realm. Mostly that means it's the home of the Malachim in the Bible, I think. But various later thinkers have conceptualized various ideas about what happens to the souls of the deceased, where in some purely spiritual realm they dwell until they can be reunited with their bodies in Olam Habah. Mostly I think we would say that this spiritual existence is more closely related to the Christian purgatory than to Heaven- a middle place shy of heaven for souls still hoping to be regarded more highly by God than they could be based on their deeds on Earth alone. Jewish superstition holds that the living descendants of a dead person can elevate their neshama through mitzvot performed on their behalf. This is connected to the custom of mourners reciting Kaddish, a prayer sanctifying God's name.
Um... Most of this is stuff I've picked up intuitively on the margins of things I've read. In its fashion, it is very important to Jewish practice, but it's not something we spend a lot of time talking about in a direct way, and if you were to conduct a systematic study you'd find a lot more contradiction than consistency. Some of it is superstition. Some of it is syncretized from Christian or Muslim worship practices or beliefs. Some of it comes from Midrash and probably isn't meant to be taken literally.
But to answer the question I think you're asking, I don't think it is clear that there is a single traditional Jewish answer to the question of whether my grandmother aleha shalom's spirit can interface with this world, but there are certainly traditions that are compatible with an affirmative answer to that question.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-10 10:15 pm (UTC)This is actually really similar to Catholic teachings, that there is some sort of preJudgment Heaven which may or may not be distinct from the later postSecond Comimg and Judgment Heaven. At some point each soul in Purgatory finishes their punishment there and moves to the Heaven.
I think the mention of prayers (specifically) for the dead in one of the books of Maccabees is what Catholicism uses to justify a belief in Purgatory--a state from which one can be relieved, rather than Hell. Almost all Protestants (maybe not Anglicans/Episcopalians) reject the books of Maccabees as noncanonical (mostly because, I believe the Jews did, partly because it exists only in the Septuagint, with no Hebrew original?), so there's no Biblical support for Purgatory.