Saturday, December 06, 2014

Retro-Talmudic burial?

A PROPOSAL TO REVIVE A VERY OLD CUSTOM: Rabbi Seeks to Bring Back Cave Burial. Head of Etzion Bloc Religious Council seeks to bring back Talmudic era custom of exhumation and use of ossuaries.
Israel is dealing with a shortage of cemetery space, and a new initiative in the Etzion Bloc suggests an original solution – exhuming the dead person's remains one year after his funeral and reburial inside an ossuary that is placed inside a burial cave.

This was the customary way for Jews in the Land of Israel to bury their dead during Talmudic times, some 1,500 years ago.

The idea is being floated by Rabbi Rafael Ostroff, Chairman of the Etzion Bloc Religious Council.

[...]
The custom actually goes back at least to the Second Temple period.