THE JEWISH PRACTICE OF EARLY BURIAL.

R. J. Wunderbar, in his standard work on “Biblisch-talmudische Medicin,” Riga and Leipzig, 1850-60, gives, in pp. 5-15 of the concluding section (Abtheil. 4, Bd. ii.), the following summary of the origin of the peculiar Jewish practice of burying the corpse within a few hours of death:—

In the Levitical law (Num. xix. 11-22) every dead body was an unclean thing, including those dead in the tent and on the battlefield. Touching a corpse involved purification and separation for seven days. This ordinance is supposed to have had a sanitary motive, having probably originated with cases of infectious disease. There is only one Biblical ordinance as to early burial, and that is indubitably restricted to persons executed for crime: Deut. xxi. 22, 23, “And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day (for he that is hanged is accursed of God), that thy land be not defiled which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”This statutory limit to the exposure of the bodies of malefactors was the most convenient way of checking the practice, common in other countries, of leaving corpses of criminals to hang upon the gibbet until they rotted, or were consumed by birds of prey. Its motive was to prevent, by the promptest measure, an indefinite degree of neglect in altogether special cases.

There is nothing else in the Bible concerning early burial; on the contrary, the patriarchal practice, in the case of eminent persons, seems to have been to keep the body for a considerable time above ground, after the manner of Egypt. Prior to the Babylonian exile there is not a trace of the later practice of speedy burial. The post-Talmudic custom had arisen entirely from a misunderstanding. It is true that the Talmud enjoins that corpses—according to circumstances—be kept unburied not longer than one day; but it also permits them to lie above ground for days, so that elaborate funeral preparations might be made, or time given for mourners to arrive from a distance. Lastly, the Talmud relates the burial of one apparently dead who revived and lived for twenty-five years, and begat five children; whereupon a rabbinical ordinance was made that the corpse (which would have been laid in a vault or in a tomb above ground) should be visited diligently until three days after death. (The references to the Talmud are: Semachoth 8; Moedkaton 1, 6; Sabbat 151, 152; Sanhedrin 46a.)

Wunderbar admits that there had been cases of premature burial among the Jews, but he asserts their extreme rarity, and doubts the authenticity of most of the traditional or historical cases in general.

In Jewish circles in Germany towards the end of last century there was much controversy as to the inexpediency of the practice of early burial. In the “Berlinische Monatschrift” for April, 1787, p. 329, (cited by Marcus Herz, “Ueber die frÜhe Beerdigung der Juden,” Berlin, 1788, p. 6,) there is printed a letter from Moses Mendelssohn to the Jews of Mecklenburg, in which he advises them to keep their dead unburied for three days. “I know well,” he adds, “that you will not follow my advice; for the might of custom is great. Nay, I shall perhaps appear to you as a heretic on account of my counsel. All the same, I have freed my conscience from guilt.”

The above-cited essay by Dr. Marcus Herz, of Berlin, arguing against the Jewish practice, called forth a reply by Dr. Marx, of Hanover, who was of opinion that the burial might safely proceed after the body had been left on the bed for three hours, and had then been pronounced lifeless by the medical attendant, according to the practice in that part of the country. To that Dr. Herz rejoined, in a second edition, that the medical attendant was no better judge than an ordinary man, inasmuch as all experimental tests were fallacious, and decomposition the only sure sign. He cites the following statement by an experienced Jewish physician, Dr. Hirschberg, of KÖnigsberg (from the Jewish periodical, “Sammler,” vol. ii., p. 153):—“I have practised medicine for forty years, and have always grieved over the practice amongst us of too hasty burial of the dead—on the day of decease. It happened once in my practice that a woman lay for dead three days and then awoke and revived. At first I would not allow the body to be moved from the bed, but the undertaker’s men violently resisted me, taking up the body and laying it on the ground. According to their custom, they would have buried it the same day, had I not earnestly called out to them: ‘Beware lest you do lay her in the ground this day! She is still alive, and the blame will be on you.’ I had her covered with warm, woollen clothes; on the following morning some signs of life were manifest; she lay still, and gradually awoke out of her death-slumber.”

Herz declared, as Wunderbar did subsequently, that the passages in the Talmud on which the Jewish custom was based had been misinterpreted; and he specially accused the rabbis Jacob Emden, of Altona, and Ezechel, of Prague, of rabbinical subtilty on the one hand, and of a fallacious dependence upon scientific signs of death on the other.

At the World’s Medical Congress (Division of Eclectic Medicine), held in Chicago, June 3, 1893, the following resolution was proposed by Dr. John V. Stevens, and adopted:—

“Whereas we believe that many persons in the past, in the condition simulating death from various causes, have been buried alive; therefore,

“Resolved—That it should be the duty of all Governments to pass laws prohibiting the burial of bodies without positive proofs of death; that the nature of these proofs should be taught in all schools and printed in all newspapers throughout the world.”