Funerals make me uncomfortable. Unlike most people, I attend dozens of them every year. As a rabbi, performing funerals is one of my responsibilities. Yet, despite my familiarity, each one is still a difficult rendezvous with grief and a painful reminder of my own mortality.
Remarkably, an uplifting spiritual feeling pulses underneath all the grief and pain. I was unable to put my finger on what exactly this feeling was until I went to the smallest funeral of my career.
The graveside service for “Leah” was attended by five people: two cousins of the deceased, along with myself, the cantor, and the funeral director.
Leah’s story was not that unusual. She and a cousin were the sole survivors of a family wiped out in the Holocaust. Leah’s concentration camp experiences left her scarred and shattered. She was no longer functional, and her cousin (and her cousin’s children) provided for her care. Leah lived the last 50 years of her life as a broken person, unable to fulfil the potential of her youth.
A rabbi’s job at a funeral such as this is a bit complicated. Jewish law requires that a eulogy praise the deceased. That’s the easy part. Jewish law also requires that the eulogy tell the truth. The problem I faced at Leah’s funeral was: what sort of honest praise could I give about someone who lived most of her adult life as a broken person?
For my eulogy, I referred to a talmudic lesson. The Talmud writes that one must honour a Torah scholar who, due to infirmity, has forgotten his learning. The Talmud explains that there were two sets of tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. The first set was broken by Moses after the sin of Golden Calf and later replaced by a second set.
Remarkably, both the broken and unbroken tablets were given equal honour and placed together in the Ark of the Covenant. The Talmud concludes that just like the broken tablets, a Torah scholar who has forgotten his knowledge still deserves to be honoured as a scholar.
Leah’s life was a story of broken tablets. It was filled with potential until it was shattered during the Holocaust. In my eulogy, I explained that people such as Leah deserved our honour, just like the broken tablets.
At Leah’s graveside, I learned what the essence of a funeral is. Beyond the grief and pain, there is something deeply spiritual as well. By showing honour and dignity to each and every person, even if their lives were only broken tablets, we declare that every person is important, every person is holy, and that every person is created in God’s image.
As much as I hate funerals, I find this feeling to be uplifting.
