ABSTRACT
The burial of the body should take place as soon as possible. No burial is allowed to take place on Sabbath or the Day of Atonement, and in contemporary practice it is considered unacceptable for it to take place on the first and last days of pilgrim festivals. After the members of the burial society have taken care of the body, they prepare it for burial; it is washed and dressed in a white linen shroud. The corpse is then placed in a coffin or on a bier before the funeral service. Traditional Jews only permit the use of a plain wooden coffin, with no metal handles or ornaments. The deceased is then borne to the grave face upwards; adult males are buried wearing their prayer shawl – one of the fringes having been removed or marred so as to render the prayer shawl unfit. In some Eastern communities, the dead person’s tefillin are also buried with him. A marker should be placed on a newly filled grave, and a tombstone should be erected and unveiled as soon as permissible (either at the end of the thirty-day mourning period in Israel, or after eleven months have elapsed in the diaspora). A limb severed or amputated from a person who is still alive should also be buried – this is true also of bodies on which autopsies or dissections have been carried out.
