Understanding Kavod HaMet
Taught by: Rabbi Jamie Weisbach
Dates & Time:
Wednesdays, January 24th, 31st, February 7th, 14th
12:00-1:00 p.m. Eastern / 9:00-10:00 a.m Pacific
Location:
Zoom
Cost:
$96 (sliding scale pricing information below)
About the Workshop:
In the Chevra Kadisha community, the phrase "kavod hamet", honor for the dead, is our foundational principle, and yet we often neglect to articulate what exactly we mean by this. Is it a general principle, or is it defined by specific norms? Does it vary from person to person? How do we know when it has been violated, especially when different people have different intuitions about what honor looks like?
In this class, we will try to build a more rigorous understanding of kavod hamet by looking into the categories of halakhah, law, around the desecration of a deceased body or "anti-kavod hamet"—the ways we are not allowed to treat dead bodies, including delaying burial, benefitting from a body, desecrating a body, and speaking in front of it.
Through understanding the actions our tradition has categorized as negating kavod hamet, we will try to build up a positive definition of what kavod hamet is, and develop a vocabulary that will enable us to communicate better about kavod hamet in our Chevrei Kadisha.
No background in text study is necessary and everything will be offered in translation.
Taught by Rabbi Jamie Weisbach:
Rabbi Jamie Weisbach (he/him) received Rabbinic Ordination in June 2023 through Hadar's advanced Kollel, and currently serves as a Rabbinic Fellow at Hunter College Hillel and as an Educator for the Trans Halakhah Project's Teshuvah writing collective. Jamie studied English, Theater and Religion at Bowdoin College and has studied Torah, Gemara, and Halakhah at The Conservative Yeshiva, SVARA, Drisha, and Hadar. A Chicago native, Jamie now lives in upper Manhattan with his husband, Amram; their two cats, Perle and Herschel; and an ever-growing collection of books.