How Religion Makes Death Even Harder

Judaism has rules for everything --rules to tell you what to eat, what to wear, who you can fuck and when and how to grieve. But it is the rules and restrictions around death and dying, especially when they must be obeyed along with the countless regulations about the Sabbath, which continue to amaze me.

Death and Shabbat

It gets really confusing when someone you love DIES on the Sabbath and your entire family is Orthodox. This happened with my mother.

She was admitted to Sloan-Kettering Cancer Hospital in NYC where it was determined that her breast cancer has metastasized throughout her body and that any treatments at this point would allow her to live for an extra week or two. But she'd be in constant pain, and eventually the cancer in her lungs would make it impossible for her to breathe.

My father, sisters and I made the decision to start a morphine drip and let her die peacefully.

When I arrived back at the hospital early Saturday morning. All my sisters were already there. They stayed at a hotel in the local area so they could walk to and from the hospital.

I was told that my mother had taken a dramatic turn the previous night, which was a Friday, and she died during the night. I was pissed. They knew that she'd taken a turn for the worse the night before. They knew this and were able to be by her bedside. I ended up going home to look after my son, who was being shielded from this for the time being. A phone call would have been nice.

Nobody told me

Someone could have called me to tell me that my mother was living her final moments and given me the option to be with her.

But no. My family had to observe the Sabbath. Which meant that they could not make any phone calls. They actually expected me to accept this as an excuse as to why nobody called me. I didn't. I never forgot how they didn't allow me those last moments with my mother because of their self-imposed rules.

At some point, that Saturday, my sister E. mentioned that J, her husband, was home with her son and he was not aware that my mother passed away during the night. E. desperately wanted to communicate this to him but her religion forbade it. She couldn't just call on the phone and speak with her husband; that would violate the Sabbath restrictions.

Tricks to get around the rules: the shabbos goy

Instead an elaborate ruse was instituted in order to circumvent the rules which they created for themselves.

See, these rules do not apply to anyone who is not Jewish. My husband, at the time, was a non-Jew. Even though I am an outspoken atheist, my family and other Jews still consider me Jewish (against my will). In their system of rules, you cannot knowingly ask another Jew to violate any of the Sabbath rules. Hence the use of the shabbos goy --a non-Jew who does work for a Jew on the Sabbath.

In this situation, my (now-)former husband (Lou) was to serve as the shabbos goy. E. asked to speak to him alone. This enabled her to communicate with him what she needed him to do without having someone Jewish hear her plan to violate the Sabbath rules.

E. told him the phone number and had him dial the phone, an example of "work" that is forbidden to do on the Sabbath. Once the answering machine picked up, Lou and E. pretended to be engrossed in a conversation regarding funeral arrangements.

Hopefully, E.'s husband would be near the answering machine when it picked up and could be privy to what all of us already knew, that my mother had died.

This is legitimate in their rulebook because the phone call was made by a non-Jew and the conversation would be "overheard" and taking place on the answering machine. Thus, no Jews can be guilty of violating the Sabbath.

Staying clean

Jews also have many rules regarding death and how NOT to be contaminated by the "unclean" status of a dead person.

After my mother died, she was still lying in the hospital room. One of my brothers-in-law, a Rabbi, stood guard at my mother's body until she was moved to the morgue.

Then there were shifts of people who were to stand guard over her body until she could be buried. These people, usually family members, were to say the traditional Mourner's Prayer and make sure that her soul was not stolen by an evil entity (Jews don't acknowledge a devil, but an "evil eye") before she could be buried.

Keeping her soul from being stolen

What the fuck? Can you imagine that? What would it look like if my mother's soul was stolen? How would I know? How do you chase down and catch a non-existent entity, like a soul, and stop the thieves, who are also presumably invisible? Oy vey.

Anyway, when my mother was still in the hospital room before she was moved to the morgue, we were given the opportunity to spend whatever time we needed with her.

My sister E. was visibly shaken. She took me aside and asked me if I have been in the room to see Mom since she died. I had, and I encouraged her to do the same. She told me that there are strict rules regarding touching a dead person.

I could see an inner struggle within her. Her religion told her it was forbidden to touch a dead person because that would render her unclean (whatever that meant). But she knew that this would be her last opportunity to touch or talk to our mother before she was put in the ground.

I tried to muster up some sympathy for her and her predicament. But as far as I was concerned, these rules are bullshit and were made up by a control freak tribal leader during ancient times. I told E. that if she really wanted to hug Mom and tell her goodbye, this was the time to do it. I said that if she didn't she might regret passing up this opportunity.

I don't know what she ended up doing but I know that her religion placed an additional burden upon her and the grieving process.

Death is hard enough. For religion to complicate it with extra burdens of ritual, prohibitions and guilt...is unconscionable and morally repugnant.