Burial

Jewish burial law starts from a verse in Deuteronomy about not leaving an executed body hanging overnight, and generalises it into a requirement that the dead be buried without delay, in practice within a day where that is possible. Delay is understood as a wrong done to the dead person, not an inconvenience to the family.

The preparation is carried out by a chevra kadisha, a burial society whose members are volunteers and unpaid. The body is washed in a prescribed sequence, water is poured over it, it is dressed in tachrichim, plain white linen garments without pockets, and it is not embalmed and not displayed. The garments are identical for everyone. Rabbinic sources record this as a deliberate reform, adopted because funeral expense had become competitive and families were abandoning their dead rather than face the cost, and it is one of the clearest cases in any tradition of a ritual rule introduced for a stated social reason and then kept.

The work is described within the tradition as the kindness that cannot be repaid, since the recipient can do nothing in return.

Cremation is traditionally forbidden. The reasoning given is that the body was made in the divine image and is not the family's to destroy, that burial returns it to the earth as Genesis says, and that the resurrection of the dead is a doctrine about bodies. After the Nazi crematoria the objection acquired a force that no theological argument could have given it, and it is now held across the spectrum, including by many Jews who hold nothing else on that list. Reform Judaism permits cremation and a growing minority of Reform and secular Jews choose it, which has produced a quiet and rarely public disagreement.

Orthodox Christianity arrives at burial from a different direction. The body is not a container the person has vacated. It is part of the person, it will be raised, and it is treated in the interim as belonging to someone rather than as remains. Cremation is refused on that ground and the refusal has held. Greece legalised cremation in 2006 against the objection of its church, and the country's first crematorium opened only in 2019.

Muslim burial is fast, plain and specific about position, and each of those features is argued for.

Speed: burial the same day where it is possible, on the reasoning that hastening the righteous to their reward is a kindness and delaying is not. Autopsy and legal process are accommodated where the law requires them, and jurists have written at length about how much delay is acceptable and why.

Preparation: the body is washed, usually three times or more, by people of the same sex, and wrapped in a shroud of undyed cloth, three sheets for a man and five for a woman in the most widespread practice. A man who dies in the state of pilgrim consecration is buried in the garments he was already wearing. The martyr is not washed at all, and is buried in the clothes he died in, blood included, which is a striking exception and is meant to be.

The prayer: salat al-janazah is said standing throughout, with no bowing and no prostration. It is a communal obligation, which means that if enough of the community performs it the obligation is discharged for all, and if none does, all are at fault.

The grave: the body is laid on its right side with the face turned toward Mecca, the same direction faced in prayer, so that the orientation of a Muslim life is preserved after it. In many countries the body is placed directly in the earth without a coffin, with a niche cut into the side of the grave or slabs laid over the body to keep the soil off it. Where local law requires a coffin, one is used, and this has been a recurring point of negotiation for Muslim communities in Europe and North America along with the requirement for same-day burial and the objection to embalming. Several jurisdictions grant exemptions.

Graves are traditionally kept low and unmarked or nearly so. Elaborate tombs are discouraged in the sources and are nonetheless common, which is one of the many places where legal opinion and popular practice have coexisted without either giving way.