Rabbloggin'

Today I buried an 89 year old woman. Small funeral on a cold, blank chapel at the Hebrew Cemetery. A son and a daughter, four relatives in total . A little bunch of “others” sitting way in the back of the chapel at the Hebrew Cemetery, almost removed from the others. Most of the locals from my congregation didn’t know much about her. Just a name for a few of the elderly. Sometimes a name and some facts. I prayed for a soul inside a body I never got to see. Just a wooden box. I buried a wooden box. I prayed 2,000 year old psalms in the original Hebrew and English with some strange tune that came out of my throat but I had never heard before. Some sort of Jazz among the lonely graves. The tombstones with symbols of stars of David, and Menorahs, Priestly Blessings Hands, all carved with beautiful Hebrew characters. Names in ancient Yiddish, other tombstones with empty slates, for partners still waiting for the next journey together.
I bury an unknown.  I wash my hands at the entrance. I stare at the tidy, lonely names. I think of the beautiful millenary traditions carved in simple symbols on a rock. With tiny rocks on top. The jewish version of bringing flowers to your dead. They last more. More perennial. Like the soul of your loved one. Flowers die in mere weeks.
I see the name of God called many times in the burial prayers as the Rock. The Judge. And our actions, little rocks, pebbles that fall on top of that Cosmic Scale, our actions trumping reactions into our surroundings. All our actions. All our words. All our thoughts. karmic poodles in a vast ocean we call Reality.
And there goes one more. Another dust and ashes ADAM has lost the anima that put it all together as an individual today. Back into the ground. I pray to the God that counts every star in the Universe and simultaneously takes account of every human heart that my soul does not become mechanic in the coping of the harshness of mortality, but at the same time teach me not to fall in despair if I open my soul too much into empathy.
There is a Jewish way for when you are born, and there is a Jewish way for when you die. 99.99% of Jews I know try to not mess up with these two, the extremes. I hope I can make what happens in between, from the tip of semen to the food for worms we all come from and become, something truly meaningful, truly beautiful and truly everlasting.