by Elaine Durbach
NJJN Staff Writer

August 4, 2009

Pushing past their own qualms to perform what many consider one of Judaism’s kindest and most sacred mitzvot, local women are members of a society dedicated to preparing the dead for burial.

The Mercer Community Women’s Chevre has about 20 members, most of them congregants of Beth El Synagogue, the Conservative synagogue in East Windsor.

They perform the ancient rites of tahara, the ritual cleaning and preparation of the body of a person who has just died.

Their focus is narrower than that of a hevra kadisha, a burial committee that in some communities also looks after funeral and mourning arrangements. But they provide a service they say more and more Jews lack at their passing and is making something of a revival in recent years.

Formed in 2008, the group is always looking for new members and will be holding a workshop in October for potential volunteers.

Three members of the group — Laurie Dinerstein-Kurs and Gloria Golbert, both of East Windsor, and Susan Schwirck, who lives in Monroe Township — recently met with NJ Jewish News.

“When I was first asked to join a group like this, I didn’t think it was something I could handle,” Golbert said. She was living in Denver at the time, a few years before moving to New Jersey. “Then our rabbi mentioned that this is absolutely the biggest mitzva you can do, because there is no honor and no glory, and the person you’re doing it for can’t thank you. That made me want to do it.”

When she came to live in East Windsor, she readily responded to Dinerstein-Kurs’ invitation to join the group. Dinerstein-Kurs, a chaplain with the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Mercer County, started doing tahara 25 years ago.

She said some people come to it for the wrong reasons, either feeling pressured or to face down their fears. “They don’t last,” Dinerstein-Kurs said. Those who remain come out of a desire to bring dignity and comfort at a time often fraught with trauma.

“Some saw their own loved ones handled badly, and they don’t want others treated that way,” Schwirck said, “or they saw it done well and that inspired them.”

Schwirck was drawn by a deepening connection to Judaism that included becoming bat mitzva at 60.

Golbert said it gives her “great comfort to think that when my time comes, I will be handled like this, with such respect and compassion.”

Honor and Comfort

Chevre members work as a team, with no fewer than two people and usually four, at a funeral home or in a private home.

Men generally work with deceased men, women with women. In the absence of available male volunteers, women can perform the mitzva on a male corpse, but men may never work with a woman’s body.

To the accompaniment of a series of prayers and according to a very precise method, they clean the body, and then run gallons of clean water over it. The body is gently dried and covered with a shroud. Throughout the process, only one area at a time is exposed. “That way their modesty is totally respected,” Dinerstein-Kurs explained.

After the cleaning, the shomrim, or guards, take over, fulfilling a requirement that a body never be left alone before burial.

The Mercer group is part of Kavod v’Nichum, Honor and Comfort, a national group formed about nine years ago, whose aim is to revive a tradition that had largely dwindled by the mid-1900s, particularly among non-Orthodox communities.

The three Mercer women acknowledged that some are squeamish about the ritual and its arcane customs, such as one requiring that the process be carried out in silence.

But each has gotten beyond the sense of taboo and even found it yields a profound personal benefit: It has removed any dread of death they might have had.

“It’s a just a natural part of life,” Dinerstein-Kurs said, and the others nodded, smiling.

Those interested in learning more can contact Dinerstein-Kurs at 609-443-1844.

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