How does Judaism treat cremated human remains?

By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

CHULA VISTA, California — An old former congregant and friend of mine (who happens to be a Cohen) recently lost his father, and he asked me the following question. Is a Jewish Priest’s ritual purity compromised by coming into contact with ashes of a cremated person?

Your question could also be parsed in a philosophical way: Do the ashes of a cremated person retain a residue of a person’s humanity? In practical terms, are we obligated to the ashes, or do we regard the ashes as being bereft of anything considered “human”?

The Mishnah in Ohalot 2:2 discusses this intriguing question. Here is the text:

The ash of burned people—

A     R. Eliezer says, “Its measure is a quarter-qab.” (1 log = 0.506 lit.)

B     And Sages declare the ashes ritually clean.

The commentaries state this only applies if the body is completely cremated; however, if the body is partially cremated, then even the Sages concur the cremated body conveys ritual impurity.  The Halacha follows the view of the Sages.  Although there is no legal obligation to bury the ashes in a cemetery—in the event someone died in a fire—nevertheless, a number of halachic authorities rule that it is considered meritorious to bury the ashes in a Jewish cemetery (cf. Gesher HaHayim 16:8:5).

R. Isaac Klein rules:

• A great number of authorities forbid the burial   of ashes in a Jewish cemetery because this would encourage the practice of   cremation (see Dudaei Hasadeh, sec. 16; Mahazeh Avraham,   vol. 2, Y.D. 38; and Lerner, Hayyei Olam). Others permit it and even permit a service at the burial (Rules of the Burial   Society of the United Synagogue of London, quoted in Rabinowicz, A   Guide to Life, p. 29; see also Rabbi Eliyahu ben Amozegh, Ya’aneh   Vaeish). The Law Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly has ruled that   cremation is not permitted. When it is done by the family in disregard of   Jewish practice, a rabbi may officiate only at the service in the funeral   parlor; the ashes may be buried in a Jewish cemetery and appropriate prayers   may be said, but not by a rabbi, lest his participation be interpreted as approval (Rabbinical Assembly Proceedings, 1939, p. 156; Law   Committee Archives). [1]

Not all halachic scholars agree on this issue, and most Orthodox cemeteries will deny the burial of cremated ashes  for the reasons mentioned above. Conservative Jewish cemetery boards  tend to be more lenient on this issue and this has been my personal position as well.

Over this past week, the question regarding the charred remains of the 9/11 victims came up in the news. According to a new Pentagon report, the government sent the remains of several of the bodies that were gathered from the Shanksville crash to a local bio-medical waste disposal contractor. The contractor later incinerated the remains and used the bodies as landfill. Apparently, this has been the practice of the military for quite some time.

Using people’s bodies for landfill is not much better than what the Nazis did with the Jews in the concentration camps. For example, a woman named Isle Koch was the superintendent of the Nazi concentration camps Buchenwald (from 1937 to 1941) and Majdanek (from 1941 to 1943). As a consummate sadist, Koch took great pride in the lamp shades she made from the skin of Jewish inmates whom she had killed if they had distinctive looking tattoos. In case you did not know, the Nazis also cooked the flesh of Jews in order to separate the fat out and made soap from their bodies. The “Beast of Buchenwald” was one of the first prominent Nazis to be tried by the US military for her crimes against humanity.

According to the Jewish philosopher Emanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida, human existence always leaves what’s called a “trace,” of a person. On the one hand, the trace signifies the absence of that person’s presence, but it  also paradoxically preserves a residue of the person’s existence that still remains present.

From their philosophical observation, we may deduce an important ethical principle—one which has profound halachic implications. When dealing with the human remains of a cremated person, the little “trace,” of that person’s humanity does not disappear into a state of oblivion. So long as even the smallest fragment of that person remains, one needs to treat that “trace” with ethical sensitivity. Hence, what we have here is what Derrida calls, “the metaphysics of pure presence,” which I would argue, commands us to treat life with value and with respect.  In simple terms, the human being can never be reduced to an impersonal object, for even the “trace” bears witness to the invisible transcendence of the Other.