Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Nepal Chabad Rabbi Prevents Cremation of Jewish Accident Victim

A Chabad rabbi in Nepal averted the cremation of a 32-year-old Australian woman who died in a road accident.

Rabbi Chezki Lifshitz told JTA by phone from Kathmandu Wednesday that he had just recovered the body of the former student of Beth Rivkah College in Melbourne.

He said he was flown by helicopter from Kathmandu to the scene of the bus accident near Chitwan and had managed to retrieve her body.

“In Nepal, they usually cremate the bodies,” he said. “Two months ago a Jewish guy was killed in a river and the Nepalese cremated him.”

Cremation is against Jewish law, which mandates burial immediately after death.

The Nepali authorities were performing an autopsy, Rabbi Lifshitz said. He said the body would be sent back to Australia the following day. The rabbi said he spoke with the girl’s parents.

She was believed to be traveling in a small bus on Monday when the accident occurred. It is unclear how many other people died in the crash. Rabbi Lifshitz, who is originally from Bnei Brak in Israel, said the mini-bus went over the edge of the road and plunged into a river below.

He said she had wanted to fly to Luka to trek to the base camp of Mount Everest but a cyclone had hit the area earlier this week and made it impossible to travel there.

Rabbi Lifshitz said the family of the Jewish man who was cremated had donated a Torah scroll to the Chabad house he runs in Kathmandu.

Rabbi Lifshitz’s Chabad house is famous for hosting the largest Passover Seder in the world, attracting over 1,500 people, mainly Israeli backpackers.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.