Big Change

The funeral service worker in me can't help but be interested in this story.

Israel's first commercial crematorium has begun operation, in defiance of Jewish taboos on burning human bodies.

The first person cremated was described by the media as a 66-year-old non-Jewish Latvian immigrant.

The director of the Aley Shalechet (Autumn Leaves) funeral home said he gave people "the chance to choose how they want to part from this world".

Cremation is also frowned on as a reminder of the Holocaust, but burial space is getting scarcer.

Many Israelis have been forced to pay extra to secure graves in preferred cemeteries, even though the government subsidises burial societies.

"Ultimately, it is a matter of economy as much as anything," said the Aley Shalechet director, Alon Nativ.

"Freedom of choice applies to cost as well."

The article goes on to say that the location of the crematorium is a guarded secret, which means that the situation is probably much closer to the American system of cremation than the European one. European land is terribly expensive, so cremation is pretty much a requirement, though some burials still occur. I think the current cremation rate in the United Kingdom is about eighty percent, if not higher. The funerals often take place at the crematorium itself, or at least conclude there in the same way that a church service often has a conclusion at the cemetery.

I found this tidbit at the end of the article particularly interesting.

The only previous cremation in Israel was of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, in 1962.

"Cremating Eichmann was, in a sense, the Jewish people's revenge for the fact that six million Jews were not brought to a Jewish burial as a consequence largely of this man[.]"

It seems that there's a longstanding tradition among many cultures to give an enemy unbefitting funeral rites. This case in particular is pretty fascinating to me.