I never expected it to feel so Jewish.
Six months ago to the day, I lost my Grandpa Mort. He was an amazing man who lived to 98, largely in good health, and who kept kindness and a positive attitude despite the many physical and emotional challenges of old age. I told him for years before his death that he was one of my role models, and sad as I am to no longer have him as a source of in-person inspiration, my primary feeling is gratitude for having had him in my life for nearly four decades.
My grandfather was Jewish, but members of his family have long chosen cremation over burial. This is not a traditional practice, and has fallen into further disuse in many Jewish communities since the horror of forced, mass cremation during the Holocaust. But, for the Cohens of San Francisco, cremation was a practice for generations, and he wanted the same. I didn’t know how I felt about that. I just knew that it mattered to him.
When I arrived in California for his memorial in January, my grandpa’s ashes were sitting in a box on a bookshelf in my parents’ den. I instinctually hugged the box, holding what was left of my grandfather close, telling him in death as I had so often in life that I loved him.
Two days later, I sat with my Dad, sisters, uncles, aunt and cousins on a small sailboat cutting its way across the bay. My grandpa had always loved being on the water. His wish, he’d told my dad and his brothers, was to have his ashes scattered at sea.
It was a stunningly beautiful morning, with bright blue skies and gentle winds, and in some ways the trip seemed like a joy ride. In some ways, I guess it was. My cousins and sisters and I laughed at sea lions sunning themselves on the dock, chatted about the houses built into the cliffs, and enjoyed just being together for the first time since my cousin’s wedding almost three years ago. We passed beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and from the Bay into the ocean, and the captain brought the boat over to a small cove.
With the engine off, and the quiet waves lapping against the sides of the boat, the tone shifted. It was time.
As the family rabbi, I chanted El Malei Rachamim, the traditional memorial prayer, and led the Mourner’s Kaddish. Then every relative took turns placing some of my grandfather’s ashes into the water. I had thought that we would just pour from the box, but instead the first person used their palm to cradle a handful and release them into the waves, and we all followed suit. When it was my turn, I looked into the box— the mix of dark ashes and flecks of white bone that were what remained of my grandfather’s body— and I took a handful and watched him through my tears slowly dissipate into the depths. As each of us silently witnessed one another saying goodbye, I thought of the many funerals I’ve officiated and the practice of covering the casket with earth, each family member and friend placing shovelfuls of dirt into the grave. This felt like that exactly. The collective farewell. The direct, physical involvement in guiding our loved ones to their resting place.
Judaism has always been about simplicity when it comes to death. A washed body in a white shroud. A plain pine box. No embalming. No open casket. Just a reflection of a basic truth: we come from and return to dust. Cremation is another way of getting at that truth.
I will never be able to visit my grandfather’s grave. There will be no unveiling of the headstone, no descendants inheriting records of where he was buried. In that sense, I suppose, there is loss. And, religiously speaking, there is the notion that the body must be kept whole so that when the dead are resurrected they will be able to live once more. But I don’t believe in that form of resurrection, and neither did my grandfather. What I do believe in is another traditional Jewish tenet: that the memories of the dead are blessings to the living.
When we returned to shore, I washed my hands thoroughly, just as I would after leaving a cemetery. And I was surprised and grateful to feel like I had just left a cemetery.
Whenever I visit California, and see the Golden Gate Bridge, and take a ferry across the Bay, I will think of my grandfather. I will be blessed by knowing that what remains of his body dwells in these waters, and that whatever remains of his spirit dwells in the city he loved so much.
In the very beginning of creation, God’s spirit hovers above the depths of the primordial waters. Now, my Grandpa Mort is within those depths. What could be more Jewish than that?
