Digging deep: Diaspora Jews are still flying loved ones to Israel for burial
With flights curtailed, more paperwork and special coffins for virus victims, it’s no longer easy to transport relatives to be laid to rest in Holy Land. But it is still possible
Raphael Ahren is a former diplomatic correspondent at The Times of Israel.
On March 25, London resident Leon Simons, 88, started feeling unwell. He was unable to get up from his chair, so he and his wife Deborah were taken to the hospital. Neither was showing any symptoms of the coronavirus, but as a matter of standard practice they were tested for the disease and found to have contracted it.
After two days in the hospital, Leon was feeling better. But as they were about to be released, he suddenly had trouble breathing and was taken to intensive care, where he passed away a few hours later.
Simons wanted to be buried in Israel. Some 20 years ago, he had bought a burial plot at the Eretz Hachaim Cemetery near Beit Shemesh, through the United Synagogue, a union of British Orthodox communities that owns a section there.
“He had made arrangements with them. They knew what was to be done,” his son Michael, a Jerusalem resident who has lived in Israel since 1988, recalled this week. “The whole thing should have been very smooth — except that it happened during this particular time.”
The UK requires a special death certificate before a body can be flown out of the country. But there are also many additional restrictions on transporting someone who died from an infectious disease. For its part, the Israeli Health Ministry requires that people who died from COVID-19 be buried in special body bags, which weren’t available to the chevra kadisha (Jewish burial society) in London at the time, Simons said.
To make things worse, all commercial airlines had stopped flying from the UK to Israel, as a consequence of the unprecedented global turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“At first it wasn’t clear at all that it could be done,” Michael Simons said. “No one said it wasn’t a good idea to try and do it. But the rabbi said it might not be possible.”
But eventually, it all worked out. The United Synagogue professional dealing with burials — who happens to be a travel agent — helped deal with the required paperwork and booked a spot for Simons’s body on a cargo flight to Ben Gurion Airport.
Four days after he had succumbed to COVID-19, his final wish was fulfilled. His son Michael and some cousins and friends, all wearing face masks, watched on from several meters away as local chevra kadisha staff lowered his body into the grave and covered it with soil from the Land of Israel.
“It took days of intensive activity from many different people,” Michael said. “A lot of people went out of their way to make this possible.”
Why do it?
The Simonses are not the only ones who faced difficulties in the unique situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic when trying arrange a Holy Land burial for loved ones who passed away abroad. Indeed, many had to freeze their plans to bring their relatives to Israel for burial, instead arranging a temporary burial; some may abandon them altogether.
From the start of February 2020 until late April, 353 bodies (100 Israeli citizens and 253 foreigners) were brought to Israel from abroad for burial, many of them on specially arranged flights, and some making several stopovers on the way when no direct flights to Tel Aviv were available. (Last year, approximately 1,500 Jews were flown to Israel for burial.)
Of those 353 people whose bodies were flown to Israel since the beginning of the pandemic, 55 (10 Israelis and 45 foreigners) had COVID-19, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat told The Times of Israel on Thursday. Most of the burials were of Jews from the US, Canada, France, Britain and elsewhere who were not Israeli citizens but whose last wish was to be laid to rest in the Holy Land.
As opposed to Turkey, the Palestinian Authority and others, Israel does not collect data about expats who died from the coronavirus abroad.
מטוס מנהלים פרטי (N91JS) שנחת בצהרים בנמל התעופה בן גוריון הביא איתו גופות מלונדון. גם בטיסות המטען של ישראייר מלונדון הגיעו הבוקר גופות. בישראייר מסרו כי "חלק מהנפטרים מתו מקורונה. כל הגופות קבלו אישורים והובלות לפי הנחיות משרד הבריאות". pic.twitter.com/f6sk8txhQQ
— איתי בלומנטל Itay Blumental (@ItayBlumental) April 13, 2020
There are many reasons why Diaspora Jews want to be buried in Israel: Some believe that the dead will rise at the end of days and want to be closer to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem when it is rebuilt in the Messianic age. Others simply want their graves to be near family members who have moved to Israel.
And even though burial plots in Israel are not cheap (between $10,000-30,000, depending on the location, plus fees), there can be financial reasons. In France, for example, family members have to renew the lease of their loved ones’ burial plots every 30 years or risk them being exhumed and moved to a less desirable location.
These motives have not changed in the face of the current public health crisis. But since global air traffic has almost completed halted since the pandemic broke out, it has become more difficult, and in some cases almost impossible, to transport coffins to Israel.
“People are still doing it. But the number of people doing it has dramatically dropped, strictly because of transportation complications,” said Los Angeles-based Rabbi Benjy Spiro of Chesed Shel Emes, an Orthodox organization assisting Jews with burying their relatives. Most airlines have stopped flying to Israel, and those that still do are hesitant to carry bodies due to the coronavirus, he said. Israel’s national carrier, El Al, on Friday announced that it was willing to carry the bodies of COVID-19 victims from New York to Tel Aviv.)
Temporary solutions
Chesed Shel Emes, which has been operating for 40 years, owns a large cemetery in Woodridge, New York, where it usually lays to rest Jews who have no family members to take care of them or don’t have the financial means to pay for a funeral.
Amid the pandemic outbreak, the organization has temporarily buried some 70 people whose relatives want to bring them to Israel but are currently unable to. Jewish religious law recognizes a concept of burying someone al tnai, which allows them to be exhumed and relocated at a later stage.
“I don’t believe in reality that all 70 will end up going, because there’s a cost and some people might just want to settle and be done with it,” Spiro said. Jewish law requires certain mourning rituals to be repeated if a body is exhumed and moved after an initial burial, even if it was done al tnai.
Private service
Meanwhile, a small number of very wealthy or prominent families are chartering private jets to bring their deceased to a final resting place in Israel.
Earlier this month, Chesed Shel Emes organized a private flight from Westchester County Airport, north of New York City, to Ben Gurion carrying the bodies of four people who died from COVID-19. They included Rabbi Yosef Kalish, who was known as the Amshinover Rebbe; Rabbi David Olewski, who headed the Talmud academy of the Gerer, or Gur, Hasidic sect and who, while on a respirator, said his last wish was to be buried in Israel; and a 62-year-old well-known member of Jerusalem’s Ultra-Orthodox community who had traveled to the US to raise funds.
In ordinary times, bringing a coffin on an El Al flight from North America to Ben Gurion Airport costs about $3,000 (about NIS 10,000). To arrange a private jet from New York to Israel, mourners have to spend more than $200,000 (about NIS 710,000), Spiro said, which is why his organization is currently trying to charter a large plane that can carry many bodies, hoping to make it more affordable for relatives to send their loved ones to Israel.
The enormous cost involved in transporting dead bodies to Israel has led some to deride organizations dealing with this as a money-making “industry.”
But Simons, who paid about NIS 20,000 for the various bureaucratic and logistic efforts made to bring his father from London to Beit Shemesh, didn’t feel he was exploited. “The feeling I got was that the people involved were doing this for the sake of doing a good deed as much as anything else,” he said.
