When Martin Mendelsohn died, his brother’s decision to have him cremated sparked an unlikely legal fight. The court battle focused on odd facts about the dead man’s spiritual life, like his very un-kosher taste for shrimp at Red Lobster.
May Peleg felt so strongly about being cremated that she wrote it into her will. But after the transgender activist committed suicide, her ultra-Orthodox parents objected — and the wrenching dispute has gone all the way to Israel’s highest court.
The body of an Israeli transgender activist will be cremated as she requested in her will, despite objections by her haredi Orthodox mother.
The haredi Orthodox mother of an Israeli transgender woman who killed herself is battling the woman’s lawyer over plans to cremate the body.
An Orthodox Jewish man is suing a Chicago-area hospital for cremating his amputated leg instead of preserving it for burial as he requested.
Jewish burial has experienced fads throughout history, from a simple pine box to embalmment and back again. The pendulum is still swinging today.
After a two-year battle with cancer, Joseph Fitzgerald was determined to leave his final resting place to Mother Nature.
Jews are increasingly choosing to be cremated, defying religious law and thousands of years of tradition that mandate burial.
We need a Jewish conversation that speaks to the realities of both cremation and burial. It involves facing death and what it means for our lives, writes Regina Sandler-Phillips.