Answering the Call
How preparing a corpse for burial helped me overcome my fear
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
When the call came, early on a Sunday morning, my first impulse was to pretend I was sick. I couldn’t remember why I had agreed to serve as a backup member of the chevra kadisha—something that, a few months earlier, I had never even heard of.
In the Orthodox community, a burial cleansing called a taharah allows a person to meet their maker with the utmost dignity. I am not Orthodox, but I sometimes attend events at my local Chabad house, where I first learned about the chevra kadisha—a group of volunteers who take on this sacred responsibility. Performing a taharah is considered one of the greatest kindnesses—an act done entirely for the sake of the other. I watched a short training video in which four women gently demonstrated the ceremony using a mannequin. The ritual seemed beautiful and profound—in theory. And then I got the call.
But I had made a commitment, so I pulled myself together, and was the first to arrive at the mortuary. Waiting in the parking lot, pulse racing, I wondered if I could really do this. Would I faint? I’d been fortunate never to bury a close loved one. I’d never even been inside a mortuary chapel, and admit I was curious.
Once the other two women arrived, a young man in jeans and a t-shirt ushered us into a back entrance, through a storage room, and through a door to a refrigerated room. On either side of a narrow aisle were metal bunk beds, stacked four high. Instead of mattresses were eight bodies, wrapped in black plastic, covered except for a single exposed toe. As in the movies, the toe bore a tag. I looked away, and fixed my eyes on the door ahead.
Our group that day included the wife of a rabbi from another Chabad house, as well as a woman I recognized from local events. The rabbi’s wife took the lead and opened the refrigerator door. On a steel table lay a woman’s body, stretched out and uncovered. The rabbi’s wife shook her head and hurried off to find a sheet. A taharah demands reverence: the body must be covered whenever possible. But seeing the woman’s pale form, so vulnerable and still, steadied me. Instead of recoiling, I was—to my surprise—fascinated by the miracle of the human body.
The taharah is performed in near-silence. I copied the others, slipping a paper surgical gown over my street clothes and pulling on plastic gloves. As the newest member, I’d been assigned a simple role, which required little direct contact with the body: holding the hose. I turned on the water. It was freezing, and my instinct was to adjust the temperature, to make her more comfortable. Then I remembered that the body before me could no longer perceive hot or cold.
With the hose, I rinsed as the other women gently uncovered and wiped parts of her body. I looked closely at our ward. She’d been tall, slim, with short red hair and, I imagined, a friendly smile. Before me was someone’s mother, bubbe, friend. I hoped she’d had a meaningful life.
Because we were only three, I was soon asked to help turn, dry, and dress her. But I didn’t mind. By then, she was no longer a corpse to me. She was someone I could help—a blessing.
The term taharah derives from the prayer that’s recited as a full bucket of water is poured over the body. As the rabbi’s wife let the water wash over the woman, we spoke the blessing together. With that, she was ready for the next life. Tradition asks that we silently request forgiveness for anything we might have done imperfectly during the ritual, so I held her hand and offered my best.
The work was more physically taxing than I’d anticipated: the human body is surprisingly heavy, unyielding. Dressing her in a muslin shirt and drawstring pants, and lowering her into the modest wooden coffin, left my back aching. I placed a shard of earthenware over each eye, a symbol of human frailty. Then the rabbi’s wife tucked a pouch of earth from Israel into the casket, and set the lid.
The coffin is closed not with nails but with small pegs, tapped in by a fellow Jew. Somehow, that honor fell to me. As I secured the dowels, I felt an unexpected pride—not only in what I’d accomplished, but in a people who have preserved this practice through centuries, through strife and turmoil, and who will carry it into the future.
The ritual complete, we retraced our steps, past the other bodies, and back to our own lives. But I am left with a feeling of gratitude. Gratitude for the woman who, without knowing it, had allowed me to perform a mitzvah. Gratitude for the other women of the chevra kadisha, who carried me with their quiet strength. And gratitude for a religion that insists on kindness, dignity, and humanity—even in death.
Gina Pfeffer-Mulligan is the author of two historical novels as well as the bestselling nonfiction book, Dear Friend: Letters of Encouragement, Humor & Love for Women with Breast Cancer. Her short fiction has appeared in Paper Brigade and Stories on Stage, while her current Jewish novel is on submission with her agent. She is also the founder of Girls Love Mail, a national charity that has sent over 280,000 handwritten letters to women with breast cancer. Her work has been featured by NBC, People, Oprah Magazine, and more.
Instagram: @ginalmulligan
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
 | A guest post by
|
Beautifully described.💗 Much naches. Pride is often strange/negatively perceived, but I firmly believe a completely appropriate emotion in this instance.
For my Chevra Kadisha's first Zoom tahara (certainly an entirely different story), one of the women noted that as strange as all this was we really needed to mark the moment. How do we mark new moments? Shechechianu. That itself felt odd, as it's usually for joyous new or periodic occasions. But it felt right & it felt beautiful. So relieved we can perform these rights with our own eyes & hands again.
Thank you for writing this, and for what you are doing.