The Cost of Dying

When my father died ten years ago my neighbor, a rabbi, advised me on the wording of his headstone. Make sure to inscribe that your father was not just buried in The Land of Israel but he lived here also. This friend agreed with many of our Sages that to be buried in the Holy Land is a positive action but to live here is a basic commandment. My father deserved praise for having done so.

In our Torah portion this past Shabbat we finished reading the book of Bereishit, Genesis, and learned that our forefather Yaakov requested not to be buried in Egypt. We’re taught he made this entreaty for several reasons. His coming down to that land came with blessings and he didn’t want the Egyptians to make his grave into an idol of sorts. From prophecy he knew that the country would eventually be stricken with ten plagues, including lice, and he desired that his body remain vermin free. He was also aware that at the time of the resurrection of the dead Jewish souls would reach the Holy Land only through the suffering of underground migrations and he wanted to be painlessly, so to speak, in the front row of the Final Redemption. Finally, he needed his descendants to remember The Holy Land and never think their destiny lay in Egypt.

How true the third and fourth considerations are for today. That's the reason so many Jews have their bodies brought to Israel for burial. We’re living in a time when, thankfully, Israel is a sovereign Jewish country and we’ve been blessed with the convenience of air travel. All it takes is money to be buried in The Holy Land.

And it takes a lot of money, unless one is already living here as an Israeli citizen. I know because of my father. The cost of his funeral was zero. There was no charge for preparation of the body, shrouds, limousine, hearse, rabbi, or burial plot. His last five days in hospice were totally covered by the government. The only thing I paid for was the headstone.

l did take the rabbi’s advice. My father’s headstone reads born in Germany… he lived in The United States for almost seventy years and ascended to The Land…

In truth, he ascended to The Land, not out of a burning commitment to Zionism, but rather because I, his only child, lived here. Still, being a Jew there was the spark within him that made him happy to be in Israel. We’ll read about that spark in our Torah portion this coming Shabbat when we begin the book of Shmot, Exodus, and learn how Moshe began his campaign to take the people out of Egypt and to The Holy Land.

In the course of his life my father lived on three continents. He merited that the last one was Asia. Israel was never considered a third world country like so many of its neighbors. Today it is an affluent, modern democracy. Not being a financial expert I cannot state with full certainty how its cost of living compares with other nations. I do know its cost of dying contrasts favorably to many western republics. However finances are not the real reason to ascend to The Holy Land. Nor is joining family the right motive. No, the true purpose to settle here is to fulfill the commandment from the Torah. My father did so at the age of eighty-six. It’s never too late to rise up and come home.