Rabbah Gila Caine: New Edmonton cemetery – on purity and danger? 

By Rabbah Gila Caine

(AJNews) – We mostly retell the story of Chanukah as a celebration of purity and purification when our sacred space was defiled after which it was cleansed, and for eight days Darkness was pierced by the Light of virginal oil. This deep myth of purification offers us a measure of strength at times when reality is suffocating.  And though Chanukah is an awesome festival, we should be careful when building the core of our spiritual thinking or practice around it because striving for purity is, in itself, dangerous.

In a sense, Chanukah is important to North American Jewry exactly because it contains the tension between the idea of an eternal “untainted Judaism” and the timeless reality of fertile cultural encounters between Jews and our neighbours.

The hot topic now in Edmonton’s Jewish community is the question of designating an interfaith / non-sectarian plot at the new Jewish cemetery, and of course this is cause for anguish on all sides and many heightened emotions. The question of Halacha keeps coming up, and I’m happy to set time and discuss Reform/Liberal Responsa (answers to questions of Halachah) on the subject with those who are interested. The questions of who might Jews be buried next to, and who is the Jewish community responsible to bury, have been a fascinating discussion for the past two millennia and are not new.

Reading Responsa is very often a moving experience because through it you enter the lives of real people going through real life situations, in sometimes very distant times and places.

The beauty of Responsa is it’s never a dry theoretical discussion, it’s never “pure” but rather molded from the murkiness of life and from the reality of human pain, compassion, fear and confusion. Unlike the book of Maccabees where we read the story of Chanukah, Responsa isn’t a myth with good guys and evil villains, rather real people trying their best to maintain a society at once responsive to people’s needs, and responsible to tradition.

Jewish Edmonton is asking itself whether our Jewish dead will be contaminated if a non-Jew is buried in the same cemetery beside their beloved Jewish partner. Will our sacred ground be violated? And as a result of that, will Jews assimilate and disappear?

Jews have asked themselves these huge questions for many generations because whether on the macro or micro level, we’ve always been a minority group situated within larger, sometimes crushing, civilizations and we needed to maintain our identity and community boundaries.

And then I open the Talmud and read this:

“One sustains poor gentiles along with poor Jews, and one visits sick gentiles along with sick Jews, and one buries dead gentiles along with dead Jews. All this is done on account of the ways of peace” (Talmud Bavli, Gittin 61a) 

This ancient text knows how to hold two sanctities together: On the one hand, we are Jews with our distinct culture and history, religion and community and not leaves floating around in the wind. On the other hand we don’t live behind closed walls or up a tower. We live within society and are part of that society, and even in those ancient times – some Jews had non-Jewish spouses or relatives or friends.

In our case, in the case of a non-Jewish partner, who has tied their lives to a Jew they love, built a Jewish home together, often raised Jewish children and participated in the life of our community – it would be an unholy act, an aveirah (spiritual and religious transgression) to leave them outside the fence at their death.

I don’t know if by the time this goes to print Edmonton’s Chevra Kadisha will have decided on this question. It might be yes and it might be no, for sure some people will be hurt and perhaps even angry by their answer, and we’ll all have to live with it for the coming years.

Chanukah promotes a mythos of purity but the historical reality was that of cultural syncretism. Rabbinic Judaism in its many shapes and forms carries within it strong undercurrents of all the social interaction Jews had with Hellenism, Roman culture and the many other people’s we’ve been connected to throughout the generations. The way we think and build ritual, even some traditions around Chanukah, are testament to the complicated and fruitful impact of our engagement with wider society.

Society isn’t an abstract thing, it’s the sum of our relationships with the people around us, and true sanctity resides in the way we weave these relationships.

Happy Chanukah.

Rabbah Gila Caine is the spiritual leader and Rabbah at Temple Beth Ora, Edmonton’s Reform Jewish Congregation.