Berakhot 18

Today’s text is focused on our relationship with the dead. It reminds us what life was like before we had funeral homes that took care of all the details of dealing with the dead. Our modern conveniences have been designed to protect us from many of the hardships of coping with the dead (and the living). Today’s passage also addresses one of the great mysteries of life: is the dead with us? Do they have a consciousness? Can we communicate with them? Do they know what we are doing here on earth? There is a lot of debate in today’s passage about what the dead know. On the one hand the argument is that the dead know nothing, but what about the reference to the soul: “Only in his flesh does he feel pain, in his soul does he mourn.” If there is an afterlife (as discussed in previous readings), and the soul can mourn, is the dead somehow with us on earth? Or do they only know of their own pain, but not that of others as some of the text suggests?

I have been thinking a lot about this reading. If the dead are so embodied that they are asking for eye-shadow and a comb, what does it mean if we are cremated and are not buried with a body? Does cremation preclude us from having an afterlife?