Purifying the Dead

Tahara (purification) is the ritual washing and preparation of a body for burial, carried out by the chevra kadisha, the holy society of volunteers who attend to the dead. The body is washed with care and in a fixed order, ritually purified with water, dried, and dressed in plain white shrouds (tachrichim) identical for rich and poor, then placed in a simple coffin; a man is often wrapped in his prayer shawl.

Throughout, the body is handled with marked gentleness and modesty, kept covered, and never left face down, and the attendants ask its forgiveness for any indignity; some communities perform the washing in near silence, others while reciting verses. The work is regarded as among the highest acts of kindness precisely because the dead can never repay it. Its provision by an unpaid communal society, offering every member the same plain burial, expresses a deliberate equality in death that Jewish tradition has long guarded.