Rona Ramon’s cremation request roils rabbis
Some Orthodox religious leaders offer to arrange Jewish burial in defiance of her last wishes; others say there’s no room for intervention or judgment
Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
Orthodox rabbis urged the family of the late Rona Ramon, widow of astronaut Ilan Ramon, not to comply with her final wish that her remains be cremated, citing Jewish law, which forbids the practice.
Before her death, Rona Ramon left instructions that no funeral be held for her and that her body be cremated, in order to spare her children from having to bury another family member.
The 54-year-old, who became a symbol of healing after tragedy, died on Monday after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. She is survived by her parents and three children Tal, Yiftah and Noa, and was predeceased by her husband Ilan, who died on the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003, and son Asaf, a pilot killed in a training accident in 2009.
Ramon’s coffin was placed at the Peres Center for Peace and Understanding in Jaffa on Wednesday for a public farewell between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. A private memorial service was held later on Wednesday afternoon. It was not immediately clear whether her remains had been cremated as of Thursday, and her children did not respond to the public call by religious leaders not to abide by her instructions.
In a letter to the surviving Ramon children on Wednesday, Rabbi Yehuda Deri, the chief rabbi of the southern city of Beersheba, implored them to arrange a traditional burial.
“I was shocked to hear this morning that the deceased, with her trademark nobility, asked not to bring her body to burial, but rather to cremate her remains to avoid another funeral and unnecessary suffering to the family members,” he wrote.
Deri, who said he was speaking on behalf of other rabbis as well, offered to arrange a modest funeral for the family.
“When I heard that she asked to be cremated so as not to upset her family members with another funeral, I didn’t sleep all night,” Deri told the Hadashot television network. “I decided to act. She didn’t request her remains be cremated for ideological reasons, in which case I would not have intervened.”
“Therefore, I decided to intervene here and ask the family members to conduct a modest, small funeral, even in the middle of the night and without them present for the sake of her memory and so that her children and grandchildren will have a grave and tombstone to flock to,” he said. “A woman like this, who worked on behalf of the Jewish people, deserves to be buried. This is not coming from a place of coercion — that is not my way — only out of the love of Israel.”
Rabbi Yuval Cherlow of the Modern Orthodox community, a founder of the Tzohar rabbinical organization, also cautiously waded into the issue, calling Rona Ramon’s intentions to shield her loved ones from pain “noble” but misguided.
“Something is flawed in this decision,” he wrote in a Facebook post, which did not name Ramon, even as it outlined details of her case.
“We are not the ones who are burdening and hurting [others]. It is not born of our desire that it [tragedy] came upon us. It happened to us. And therefore, it is an integral part of life, which transforms a person who helped others their entire lives into one who needs support; a person who comforted people their whole lives into the source of bereavement; a person who didn’t want a thing from anyone to someone who needs others.”
“This is a fact of life, and it wouldn’t be right to deny it. It would be right to accept it,” Cherlow wrote.
Others, including Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a prominent religious Zionist leader and rabbi of Beit El, said it wasn’t a matter for rabbis to decide.
“What is it to us if we weren’t asked about it?” he told the Kikar Hashabbat website on Wednesday.
“Rona Ramon did not ask that her body be cremated out of defiance but rather to protect her children,” said Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, the head of the ultra-Orthodox-run Zaka organization that collects the remains of car accident, terror attack, and other victims for Jewish burial.
“When you face a woman like this, there is no halachic [Jewish legal] argument [to counter her request],” he told local radio on Wednesday. “One must know how to judge each case individually, and certainly not to judge her, but rather open up a Shulhan Aruch [the main compendium of Jewish law].”
The Ramon family said it would observe the traditional shiva mourning period at the Peres Center on Thursday, Sunday and Monday from 10 am to 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.