Jewish Cemetery Refuses To Bury Infant, Gives Body Of 4-Day-Old Infant To Parents In Cardboard Box

ed note (Tony)…What can I say folks? This is the year 2015. ‘Can you just imagine’ what it was like 2000 years ago, when Jesus was trying his best to END Judaism and its twisted way of thinking?

Orthodox-Jewish Controlled Cemetery Refuses To Bury Infant, Gives Body Of 4-Day-Old Boy To Parents In Cardboard Box
Shmarya Rosenberg •

The official state-funded haredi-controlled hevra kadisha (burial society) at a prominent Jerusalem cemetery refused to bury an infant and unceremoniously handed the baby boy’s body to his family in a cardboard box, the baby’s family reportedly claims.

According to a report in the Times of Israel that is based on a Hebrew-language report by Walla! News, the baby was born more than a month premature and died at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem Friday, four days after birth.

The burials of infants like this are supposed be arranged between hospitals and cemeteries and follow halakha (Orthodox Jewish law). But the baby’s father, Joseph Bornstein, reportedly told Walla! News that he and his wife wanted very much to handle the burial arrangements themselves. So after the hospital gave him his son’s body, Bornstein took it to the hevra kadisha at Sanhedria Cemetery in Jerusalem. But it refused to allow him to bury his son because halakha considers a baby who dies in its first month of life (and who was premature) as stillborn. Parents of such babies are not allowed under halakha to participate in their baby’s burial and are also customarily not told where the baby has been buried. The baby’s grave is usually completely unmarked, as well.

Bornstein negotiated with the hevra kadisha and says he reached a compromise with it: he and his wife would be told the location of their son’s grave, but would not attend his funeral.

But Bornstein says the next day the hevra kadisha reneged on the deal and told him come in and pick up his son’s body.

“He was in a cardboard box just sitting on a bench in office — I couldn’t believe it. So I took it to the car and turned on my air conditioning to try and keep the body cold while we figured out what to do,” Bornstein reportedly said.

Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, the chairman of ZAKA, a voluntary emergency response and rescue service he founded years ago while he was still closely associated with the vehemently anti-Zionist haredi umbrella organization Edah Haredit (he’s now an overt Zionist although still haredi in most other ways, including dress), intervened on the parents’ behalf and was able to arrange to have the baby buried today in the cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

“With a little more humanity, this story could have ended much differently. While the burial society acted in accordance with the halakha, their approach lacked compassion, and the father, who was emotionally distressed, should have been treated differently,” Meshi-Zahav reportedly said.

“It’s completely shocking to me that burial is monopolized by the hevra kadisha, which takes advantage of people during difficult times in a manner that is completely unacceptable. They treated the body of my son as if it were a dead cat,” Bornstein told Walla! News.

Sefardi haredi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Shlomo Amar was Israel’s immediate past Sefardi chief rabbi and, while by no means liberal then or now, was upset by how the Bornstein’s had been treated. He called the incident “completely unnecessary” and urged Israel’s Religious Affairs Ministry and the hevra kadisha to make sure such behavior was not repeated. “There is a special kind of sensitivity that should accompany the funeral and burial process,” an upset Amar said.

The hevra kadisha responded to the outcry over the incident by noting it is bound by regulations set down by the Religious Affairs Ministry and were therefore unable to bury the baby in compliance with the family’s wishes.

But last August, after strong public pressure the Health and Justice ministries established a joint committee that included representatives of the Religious Affairs Ministry. Tasked with drafting new funeral and burial guidelines for infants, the committee decided that parents of infants who died within 30 days of birth would be allowed to choose how those babies are buried. The committee also decided that hevra kadishas must allow parents of those infants who want to attend the funeral and/or mark the burial plot to do so. In fact, under the committee’s rulings, families that wish to have a civil burial ceremony (rather than a religious one) can do so.

But while the new regulations were supposed to be binding on all hevra kadishas across the country, in practice they are not.

Several haredi-controlled hevra kadishas complained that the new regulations violate halakha (Orthodox Jewish law), and they were granted exemptions by government that allow them to ignore them. One of the hevra kadishas granted that exemption is the one located at the Sanhedria Cemetery that sent the Bornstein’s baby home in a cardboard box.