Garry Shandling To Have Buddhist Funeral
Garry Shandling Image by Getty
(JTA) — Garry Shandling, the award-winning American Jewish comedian who at 66, will have a Buddhist funeral.
The service, which Shandling had arranged secretly, will take place next month, TMZ reported. The cause of his March 24 death is still unknown.
According to the celebrity gossip site, “He was never very vocal about it, but Garry was a devout Buddhist …”
Shandling, who the Forward eulogized last week as “one of the greatest Jewish comedians ever,” said in a 2011 interview with GQ that he had been a practicing Buddhist since he was in his 20s.
During the elaborate funeral service, “The Garry Shandling Show” star will be ordained as a Buddhist monk by having his head symbolically shaven by another monk, and while a monk leads a chant, the guests will light incense.
TMZ said it is not known whether Shandling will be buried or cremated.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
