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Call us, any hour
Call at any hour, and before you agree to anything. We will help with the funeral home, the chevra kadisha, a kosher casket, the rabbi, a minyan and meals — and with the decisions in between. There is nothing to arrange first, nothing to fill in, and no membership. If you would rather not talk yet, someone can simply make the calls for you.
Lifecycles
What to do in the first hours, what not to agree to yet, and what happens next. If you are reading this today, the phone number above is the only part you need right now.
Take it in this order. Nothing else is urgent.
If the death happened at home, call 911, or hospice if they are involved, so that the death can be formally pronounced. In a hospital or a care facility this is handled for you.
Call us: 408-910-2034. Day or night. You do not need to know anything before you call, and you do not have to be composed on the phone.
Call a Jewish funeral home. Most families here use Sinai Memorial Chapel — 877-895-0359, sinaichapel.org. If you would rather we made this call, say so and we will.
Then stop. Sit down. Eat something. The next decisions are ours to help with, and they will keep for an hour.
Not because any of it is forbidden to discuss, but because these are the things that are hard to undo, and they are usually asked about in the first conversation with a funeral director, when nobody is at their most clear-headed. If any of them comes up, it is entirely reasonable to say: I need to check that first.
Jewish burial happens fast. Where it can be done, the same day or the next; the Torah treats leaving a body unburied overnight as a wrong done to the person. The delays that are permitted are the ones that serve the person’s honour: waiting for a child to fly in from the other side of the world, obtaining a proper grave, or a Shabbat or festival that intervenes.
Families sometimes find this hard, because it leaves so little time. It is also, in practice, one of the kindest arrangements in Jewish life. There is no fortnight of limbo. The community is mobilised in hours rather than weeks. And the mourning has a beginning, which is what lets it also have a shape.
Embalming works against burial rather than towards it. A Jewish funeral returns a body to the earth; a preservative process, and the invasive procedure that delivers it, is not part of that. The same reasoning rules out cosmetic preparation and viewings. There is no open casket at a Jewish funeral.
The chevra kadisha — the holy society — is a group of volunteers who prepare the body for burial. It is one of the least visible and most respected roles in Jewish life, because it is a kindness that can never be repaid by the person who receives it.
They perform the taharah: a careful washing and then a ritual purification, done in silence and with the body kept covered throughout. They dress the person in tachrichim, plain white linen shrouds with no pockets, identical for everyone — a rabbi and a stranger are buried in the same garments. A man is often buried in his tallit, with one of its fringes cut. Before they finish, they ask the person’s forgiveness for any indignity they may have caused in handling them.
From the moment of death until burial, a shomer stays with the body, reciting Psalms. Nobody is left alone.
The chevra kadisha here works with Sinai Memorial Chapel. Reach it through us on 408-910-2034 and we will connect you.
Between the death and the burial, the seven closest relatives — father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, spouse — are in a state called aninut. It is not the same as mourning, and it has an unusual quality: almost everything is lifted from you.
An onen does not put on tefillin, does not say the formal prayers, and does not say Kaddish yet. They are not expected to receive visitors, host anyone, or be comforted — condolences properly begin after the burial, not before. The single obligation is to see the person buried.
This is deliberate and it is worth understanding, because families often feel they should be doing more. Jewish law is telling you, in these particular hours, to do nothing but this. Let other people bring food. Let other people answer the phone. Sleep if you can.
It is short and it is plain, usually half an hour. Before it begins, the mourners perform keriah: a tear made in a garment — on the left side, over the heart, for a parent; on the right for anyone else — and a blessing said that acknowledges God as the true Judge. It is the oldest gesture of grief there is, and it is meant to be done to real clothing.
Then eulogies, a memorial prayer, and the procession to the grave. And then the part that people are not warned about and remember for the rest of their lives: the family fills the grave. Not a symbolic spoonful — the community takes turns with the shovel until the grave is full. The shovel is set down between people rather than handed on, so that grief is not passed from hand to hand.
It is the hardest thing you will do that day. Nearly everyone says afterwards that they were glad they did it. If you truly cannot, nobody will make you, and nobody will look.
Kaddish is said at the graveside — the first time. The community forms two lines and the mourners walk between them, and everybody says the same sentence: May the Omnipresent comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. There is nothing else to say and nothing else is needed. Hands are washed on leaving the cemetery.
Then the family goes home, and shiva begins with a meal that somebody else has cooked.
What if they died in another state, or abroad? It is handled all the time. Call us; the funeral home will manage the transfer and there are ways to keep it quick.
What if there is no money? Say so. Jewish communities have buried their poor with the same dignity as everyone else for two thousand years, and this one is not going to be the exception. It will be handled discreetly.
What if we are not sure they were Jewish, or there is a complication in the family? Call and describe it. These situations are common and none of them are shocking.
What if we have not been to a synagogue in forty years? Then it has been forty years. Call.
Call us, at any hour, on 408-910-2034. If the death happened at home you will also need to call 911 or hospice so the death can be pronounced; a hospital or care facility handles that itself. After that, nothing needs to be decided in the next ten minutes, and you do not have to make any of these calls alone.
Because Jewish law treats burial as a debt owed to the person who has died, and one that should not be left outstanding. The Torah requires burial without delay, and the traditional practice is burial within a day where that is possible. Delay is permitted where it serves the honour of the person — waiting for immediate family to fly in, obtaining a proper grave, or because Shabbat or a festival intervenes.
A Jewish burial returns the body to the earth as it is. Embalming is an invasive procedure that works against that, and both embalming and cosmetic preparation are avoided. There is no open casket and no viewing: the tradition holds that a person should be remembered as they lived, and that the dead cannot consent to being looked at.
A burial society: volunteers who prepare the body for burial. They perform the taharah, a ritual washing and purification, and dress the person in tachrichim — plain white linen shrouds, identical for everyone, with no pockets. They work in silence, they ask the person’s forgiveness for any indignity, and they are not paid for it. From death until burial, a shomer stays with the body and recites Psalms so that the person is never left alone.
The period between the death and the burial. The immediate relatives — parent, child, sibling, spouse — are called onenim, and are released from positive commandments: no tefillin, no formal prayers, no Kaddish yet. The one obligation is arranging the burial. This is deliberate. Judaism does not ask anything of you in these particular hours except to bury your dead, and it does not ask you to host anyone or to be comforted yet.
Plain wood, made so that it will return to the earth, and traditionally with no metal in it at all. There is no hierarchy of caskets and nothing to upgrade to: the tradition is emphatic that rich and poor are buried the same way, precisely so that no family is put in the position of demonstrating love through expenditure at the worst moment of its life.
Jewish practice does not use flowers at a funeral or a shiva house. If people ask what they can do, the answer is tzedakah given in the person’s memory, and food brought to the house.
The seven days: what happens, and what visitors should do.
Sheloshim, Kaddish, the stone, and the yahrzeit.
If your family is weighing that question, this page is for you.
Where and how to say it, including help finding ten people.
If you have already agreed to something on this page that Jewish practice would have done differently — a cremation, an embalming, a viewing — nothing is over and nobody here will reproach you. Call anyway. Much of it can still be adjusted, and the parts that cannot are not held against anyone. Every Jew is a member here, without exception and without conditions. 408-910-2034.