Meit Mitzvah: Our Communal Responsibility To Ensure The Burial For Those With No One To Bury Them

Without someone to arrange and pay for a Jewish burial, an alarming number of people in the Jewish community are cremated, and do not receive any kind of funeral. Jewish burial traditions originate with our biblical ancestors. Together we will learn about meit mitzvah (duty to the dead) and chesed shel emet (the ultimate act of kindness), the little known and deep holy work of caring for those at the margins after they leave this world. Each participant will leave this class with knowledge and practical tools to bring awareness of meit mitzvah to their communities. . . . Amy Koplow is the recently retired Executive Director of Hebrew Free Burial Association [HFBA] in New York. For 25 years, Amy worked to ensure that every Jew, regardless of financial means or religious affiliation, receives a dignified, traditional Jewish funeral and burial.Since its inception in the 1880’s, HFBA has buried over 65,000 indigent Jews. They have ranged in age from newborn to the elderly, and they may meet their ends in a hospital, nursing home, lonely apartment or even on the street. Amy now works as a consultant to HFBA and other Jewish communities who need guidance on how to operationalize the work of meit mitzvah. Rabbi Rachel Tali Kaplan works as the Director of Student Life at Hebrew College and previously worked as the rabbi and chaplain at Hebrew SeniorLife Hospice. She and her partner, who she met through her hospice work, are writing a book to help spread the word about the helpful and important resources that hospice has to offer. Amy and Rachel have been friends for over twenty years and love collaborating to bring more chesed and mitzvot into the world.