What is the Jewish View on Cremation?

By Tzvi Freeman

Question:

What is the Jewish view on cremation?

Answer:

Cremation has always been looked upon with horror by every sector of Jewish thought. The body is sacred, because it is the "temple of the soul" and because it is the medium by which we do goodness in this world.

Belief in the resurrection of the dead is counted by Maimonides as the thirteenth of the Thirteen Principles of the Faith. There is no rabbinic authority who does not consider this to be a fundamental belief. The Mishnah declares denial of this principle to be heresy. The reason is quite apparent: As Jews, we believe there is purpose to life, purpose to this world, purpose to the act of Creation. Therefore, anything that is used towards that purpose has a permanence -- and a sanctity.

Six million of our people were denied proper burial, most of them cremated. Should we willfully continue that which our enemies began?

19 Comments Posted

By Tzvi Freeman More articles... |

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman heads Chabad.org's Ask The Rabbi team, and is a senior member of the Chabad.org editorial team. He is the author of a number of highly original renditions of Kabbalah and Chassidic teaching, including the universally acclaimed "Bringing Heaven Down to Earth." To order Tzvi's books click here.

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Reader Comments
Latest Comments:

Posted: June 1, 2008

For Elia

You need to read the note directly above yours. It's not a stereotyped tit-for-tat response from Above. It's simply a natural consequence: If a person rejects the possibility of a world to come from his heart and soul, then how can his/her soul belong there?

The person you describe, however, is demonstrating a belief in the value of good deeds without reward in this world. It would seem that this is a person who believes somehow in eternity.

Posted By Tzvi Freeman (author)

Posted: May 31, 2008

Cremation

What about a person who donates her organs to save lives, donates her skin for burn victims who would otherwise die, believes in resurrection, and her body is cremated? Surely G-d would allow resurrection, considering the fact that the person would have possibly saved a life by her good deed. I can't imagine that all those non-Jews who have been cremated won't be resurrected, even if they believe they will, just because their bodies were not buried. Surely G-d's mercy would make exceptions and overrule man's rules however godly. And because G-d's mind is unknowable, do we really know for sure what He would do in the above mentioned case? Hmmm.

Posted By Elia Harris, Shailer Park, QLD, Australia
via chabadbrisbane.com

Posted: May 10, 2008

To Anonymous in la verne, la

If a person who asks to be cremated because he refuses to believe in resurrection of the dead, then, the rabbis of the Talmud note, he will be denied resurrection. As noted above by RCB, however, if a person was cremated due to some other circumstance, this does not apply. It would seem that the same exception would apply to those who never gave thought to resurrection, or to whom the concept was never properly explained.
May we all merit to soon be reunited with one another in the final redemption.

Posted By Tzvi Freeman (author)