100 years of our ‘holy association’
YOSSI ARON
THE opening lines of this week’s parshah, Chayyei Sarah, deal with our patriarch Abraham’s first formal acquisition of land in Canaan. The land was Me’arat Hamachpelah in Hebron, intended initially for burial of his wife Sarah, but also destined to be a burial place for generations.
Because of its association with Hebron, “the city of the fathers”, this Shabbat will see thousands spend Shabbat in that city, which has an ancient Jewish heritage, but where Jewish life was abruptly ended by the pogroms of 1929, only to restart on an uncertain basis after the events of 1967.
But for Australian Jews there is another relevance of this theme of the parshah.
The fact that the first piece of land acquired by Abraham as an immigrant to a new land was for the purpose of burial presaged a reality repeated so often throughout the history of the Jewish Diaspora.
Here, in faraway Australia, mortality rates in the 1800s meant that new arrivals very soon needed a place to bury their dead. In cities across Australia, arrangements for interment were the first matters to be dealt with by communal pioneers.
In October 1841, the first action of Melbourne’s newly formed Jewish Congregational Society (the forerunner of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation) was the authorisation of “purchase money for half-an-acre of land” to be consecrated for burial purposes.
And, following the congregational model they knew from “back home” in England, for many decades congregations would see burial arrangements as among their key responsibilities.
Over time, however, responsibility for this area of communal life was separated from the shuls. By the early 20th century, each major city experienced the formation of an independent burial society -— a “Chevra Kadisha”.
The term, which literally means “holy association”, is applied worldwide to an organisation that arranges Jewish burials, ensuring that a corpse is guarded and interred according to traditional Jewish rites and customs.
October 2009 marked the centenary of the establishment of the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha. Under the impetus of a few very Orthodox individuals of the community and a number of then recently arrived Eastern European immigrants, a society was formed with the express intention of arranging taharah (the ritual preparation of a body) as well as “watching” the body of the deceased in advance of funerals carried out by a local undertaker, who advertised use of a “simple hearse” modelled on that “used for Jewish funerals in London”.
Burials following taharah arranged by the Chevra took place in consecrated sections of cemeteries across Melbourne allocated to particular congregations, including those in Carlton and Fawkner, the Springvale Necropolis, and the smaller suburban cemeteries (St Kilda and Brighton). Metaher houses (places in which the dead are prepared for burial) in those cemeteries were built with the assistance of various donors; that in Fawkner was sponsored by famed early Melbourne philanthropist Joseph Kronheimer, who received a silver key to it on the occasion of its 1911 consecration.
Burials were also carried out from time to time in the cemeteries of certain rural centres that once had significant Jewish populations, but where Jewish life had been declining.
The 1930s was a decade of substantial change in the composition and religious outlook of the Melbourne Jewish community. There was a desire to expand the role of the Chevra from simply preparation of the deceased for burial, to actually facilitating the funeral itself.
However, to do so, the Chevra needed to have its own premises. In 1939, Chevra trustee and activist Efraim Yoffa donated a property adjoining the famed Stone shul in Carlton, itself associated with long-term president of the Chevra, Hirsch de Vahl Stone. A parlour was constructed, which meant an end to reliance on non-Jewish undertakers.
However, it was to be another two decades before the Chevra took the final step of actually providing cemetery facilities to the community. After the Adass Israel Congregation showed that it was possible to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles facing those seeking separate communal cemetery facilities, the Chevra Kadisha was finally able to consecrate its own cemetery in Springvale.
And, of course, as that facility approached capacity, a new cemetery was recently opened in Lyndhurst on the outskirts of Melbourne.
We wish every mourner that they may never again know pain, but pending the messianic advent it is incumbent on Jews everywhere to make honourable provision for those who pass on. In every community, the Chevra Kadisha carries out this holy task. And the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha is to be congratulated on reaching its centenary year.
Yossi Aron is The AJN’s religious affairs editor.
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