GO IN PEACE, REST IN PEACE

Demonstrating the Jewish burial ritual "Tahara."

Tahara, the Jewish ritual of burial, is the emphasis this week from our Life of Meaning text.
The Jewish community attempts to bury their deceased within 24 hours, if possible. So, there is no embalming necessary. A Holy Committee of Jewish volunteers, males in the case of a deceased male, females in the death of a female, perform the rite of sending one off from this world to the next one.

Tahara is described as being analogous to a three-act play.
There is cleansing, there is purification, there is dressing.

Cleansing:
"In the Cleansing, we remove all the bandages and anything extraneous on the body."

Purification:
"Purification is a cascade of 24 quarts of water poured by the entire team in a continuous flow."
"It's as if we were washing away all the suffering of the last periods of their life."
They pray, "she is pure, she is pure, she is pure."

Dressing in the Shroud:
"The shrouds are fashioned after the garments that the high priest wore in the Temple on Yom Kippur, and they're white."
"Everybody, rich, poor, religious, non-religious" are dressed the same.
" (The shroud) is a sense of protectiveness as the person enters the world to come."

Walter Morton for Terra Incognita