OzTorah

Q. Is there any issue with placing flowers on Jewish graves?

A. Some Jewish cemeteries allow flowers on graves but most discourage or prohibit them. It is not so much a matter of law as of custom.

There are certainly ancient precedents for flowers or spices on dead bodies, but this was probably for the sake of a pleasant smell. Talmudic sources record the placing of myrtle twigs on bodies; halachic works even permit the myrtles to be cut on the second day of a festival. However, because idolaters often placed flowers or incense on a grave, Jews deemed this to be chukkat ha-goy, a gentile practice, and discouraged its emulation amongst Jewish communities.

The Jewish usage came to be simplicity and equality in all aspects of a funeral, especially in the choice of shrouds (before the current usage developed, shrouds were often made of dyed material and in the case of wealthy people they were sometimes very elaborate). Theological principles were applied to the non-use of flowers, e.g. Isaiah 40:7-8 was quoted: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God is eternal”.

At Masonic funerals there is a custom to throw a sprig of acacia onto the coffin as a token of resurrection. Jewish Freemasons follow this custom without comment though it may have emerged from Christian thinking. The Jewish condonation of the practice is probably for public relations reasons, though if a rabbinic authority were asked the answer would be likely to be negative. A negative attitude would probably also be adopted in relation to planting flowers or shrubs on graves because it is forbidden to derive any benefit from the earth of a grave.

Coming back to flowers on graves, there is an additional practical problem in that in places where floral tributes are placed on graves it is unpleasant to visit the cemetery after a few days and see dried-up or smelly remains of flowers which no-one has cleared away. If one wants to spend money to honour the deceased, rather than paying for flowers it seems better to support a cause that works for the welfare of the living.

Those who want to show that they have been to the grave would be well advised to follow the common Jewish practice to place a stone on a grave as a mark of respect and to show that the deceased has been remembered, even though this custom possibly arose in ancient times when graves were topped with cairns and there was a danger of the stones being scattered by vandals or the wind.

As Z’man Mattan Toratenu, “The Time of the Giving of our Torah”, Shavu’ot celebrates Revelation – a key concept in Judaism but, as an American rabbi once said, it is “like socialism, a tabooed word, truly beautiful in significance, but poorly understood”.

What a lovely story it was when we were children. Vast crowds of people camped at the foot of a mountain, majestic displays of thunder and lightning, a voice booming from the heavens… the drama and excitement were almost unbearable.

But then scientific man came onto the scene of history. It could never have happened, he sneered. The whole thing was imagined, he snorted. Voices don’t really boom from heaven, or even from mountain tops. It’s all a fairy story.

Yes, there is a message about not killing, stealing or committing adultery. But it emerged out of human experience. People needed it, and so it came to be. Vox populi, vox dei.

That of course is putting the objections to Revelation rather crudely. The historians of religion use more sophisticated language. What they talk about is spiritual feeling, emotional inspiration and similar jargon.

It all boils down to the same result: Revelation in the traditional sense is simply unbelievable.

The traditionalist is unmoved. Why should the story not have happened? Does God need to explain every step He takes? Even if He did explain it, is there any guarantee that finite man would completely understand?

If man understood everything about God and His ways, then the roles would never be the same again. Man would be God and God would be man. As the medieval theologians put it, lu yedativ heyitiv, “If I knew Him, I would be Him”.

Do I even need to know it all for certain? Is it not enough to know that by an act of grace, God bursts upon human history and communicates on whatever level to prophets and to ordinary people alike? I surely do not need to tame the Divine to such an extent that I can inspect its details under the microscope of scientific analysis or historical method.

There are things I am never going to know about God, but they do not prevent me from knowing He is there and that His word is precious.

Alone among Biblically-ordained festivals Shavu’ot has no specified date.

Every other yom-tov is listed with its month and day of the month, but not Shavu’ot. It has to be worked out from Lev. 23:4: “From the day after the day of rest you shall count fifty days”; Shavu’ot is the fiftieth day.

The Pharisees and Sadducees had a long drawn-out difference of opinion concerning the phrase, “the day after the day of rest”.

Was it a Sunday, i.e. the day after the first Shabbat of Pesach, as the Sadducees (like the later Karaites) believed, or, as the Pharisees held (supported by the Septuagint), the second day of Pesach, since a yom-tov is also a day of rest?

The sages followed the second view, which means that Shavu’ot works out as the 6th of Sivan (and also, in the Diaspora, the 7th).

For the Sadducees, Shavu’ot would have a different date each year. The Falashas of Ethiopia had yet another view and they counted the 50 days from the day of rest at the end of Pesach, i.e. the 7th day of the festival.

A further difference between Shavu’ot and the other pilgrim festivals of Pesach and Sukkot is that, Biblically, the others last seven days, whilst Shavu’ot is only one day (two days outside of Israel).

The explanation given by Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik is that there is a completeness about Pesach and Sukkot, symbolised by the fact that each lasts a full week (more than a week in the Diaspora).

Shavu’ot is the unfinished symphony of Judaism, the incomplete festival.

Rav Soloveitchik argues that God shortened Shavu’ot in order to show that human beings have to complete God’s work of creation by applying the teachings of the Torah, given on Shavu’ot, to the task of making the world complete and perfect.

Rashi wants to know why. He says that God needed to know.

In a modern context we would say that such information is important for the government, to assist them to calculate how many soldiers they can raise in time of war, and to allow them to work out what health, education and other facilities the population might require.

The top priority in God’s mind, says Rashi, is rather different. Because of God’s love for the Israelites, Rashi explains, He counts them on a regular basis.

Every individual is precious. Every individual counts. Nobody is a nobody. If a person feels depressed, alienated and insignificant, God says, “But in My eyes you are a jewel. To Me you matter. My world cannot continue without you.”

Somebody once said, “Idiots must be important to God – otherwise why did He create so many of them?”

The Torah point of view is that no-one is without virtues and value. No-one is written off as far as God is concerned.

The Mishnah makes it quite clear: “Man is duty-bound to say, ‘For my sake was the world created’” (Sanh. 37a). God decided that there was a task which only I, or only you, or only anyone, can carry out. He needs us in His world to carry out that task. When we feel down in the dumps, we have to remember that.

It would do us all good to read Chapter 3 of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, “Who is Man?” (1965).

Note that Heschel does not ask, “What is man?” That would imply that man is a thing, a pawn, a conglomerate. His question is “Who is Man?” Man is unique, precious, sacred.

God numbers His creatures and savours every one.

The statistics don’t seem logical: “All the male Levites… were 22,000” (Num. 3:39).

In a people numbering 600,000 – and that may be without women and children, who would have brought the total up to two million or more – how could there be so few Levites?

We can ignore for the moment the fact that elsewhere in the chapter the Levites add up to a further three hundred; in our verse the Torah may simply be giving us a round figure.

Nachmanides links this verse with the opening chapter of Sh’mot which says that the more the Egyptians oppressed the Israelites, the more the Israelites increased. The Levites, however, were not enslaved, and their numbers increased much more slowly.

This is of course a chapter in the long history of Jewish demography which inevitably has to take account of the influence of outside factors on the growth and decline of Jewish population figures.

Looked at from the point of view of today’s Jewish world the effect of internal factors must also be considered.

There is the major – external – problem of the losses caused by the Holocaust.

There is the – external – problem of the effect of urban living, which tends to reduce the number of children born to a family.

There are the internal influences of assimilation and outmarriage, and the positive response of orthodox Jewish couples who believe so passionately in Judaism that they are determined to build up the Jewish population.