ABSTRACT
Sociologist Samuel Heilman has written that the Jewish funeral, in creating a separation between the dead and the living, 'seeks to reflect the Jewish people's fundamental realization that, although they die and feel the precariousness of their existence, they also continue and survive, that they have lost one connection but remain bonded to others'. Jewish funeral and mourning practices reflecting this mood have been transmitted mimetically from one generation to another and have been written down, as well, in sacred texts, commentaries, and handbooks for clergy, members of burial societies, and laypeople. One example of an ancient funeral ritual no longer practiced is reinternment, most characteristic of Israel in the first through third centuries CE. An example of a Jewish mourning practice that is thought to be of ancient origin even though it is not is the recitation of the prayer called the Kaddish. Funerals are held in synagogues, gravesites, and commercial funeral chapels.
