הוצאת גופה מקברה לשם קבורה בארץ ישראל

00:01 Speaker 1 Okay, today we have a very short letter. Our very short letter is on page 90, and we have it on the screen today for the people watching. It's letter Y, D, T, N, S. And like all the letters we're doing, it's from exactly fifty years ago, give or take exactly. This is from 1900. There's a short letter, but I think it has a story behind it. When I say I think I, it has a story behind it, I mean, I can't be sure it does, but, uh, just, uh, force muting everybody. You can always unmute yourselves. Um, I think it has a story behind it because it jogs some memories for me about the Rebbe's experience in this particular field. So let's, let's read the letter and then let's talk about it for as long as we have together. Uh, the letter, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom of it or turn if you happen to have a print book, it's from a letter where the question had been, Somebody had asked whether they can move their father's bones to Israel. This is a pretty common question, as Peretz pointed out before we started talking. This comes up a lot. People bur-people get buried outside of Israel, and when it becomes possible to move people to Eretz Yisrael or when it becomes, uh, desired to move them, sometimes it's not-- sometimes it was possible before and they suddenly have a change of heart. People wanna reinter-- disinter and reinter their loved

01:09 Speaker 1 ones in Eretz Yisrael. So somebody wrote to the Rebbe asking if this was acceptable. And the Rebbe writes in classic form, First of all, I'm not, I'm not touching this, not with a ten-foot pole. This is a question for a posek, and I expect you to call a rav. The Rebbe does this every time somebody asks him for something that's an issue of practical psak, but it also is something we've seen in prior letters, a way that the Rebbe indicates that there is more to this than a yes or no question, that details matter. If it's a simple yes or no, I think the Rebbe's probably perfectly comfortable answering yes or no in a letter. This is something that will require a Rav We're gonna get into today why there are some nuances to the subject. The Rebbe says, and this is really our take-home message. What's the most important thing, though? Probably plural. The best way, the, the most obligatory way to create a For your, for your ancestors. This is what Peretz and I were discussing. Guesses are open to what exactly this is. There's an extra he in there. Point is, the Rebbe says that the most important thing at hand is not necessarily where your ancestors are buried or taking care of their ancestral plots. That is a way to show honor to them, but the ultimate way to show honor to them is by keeping That is the ultimate honor that someone can pay their relatives who are deceased. And

02:31 Speaker 1 I think that's pretty significant because, uh, just before we get into the halakhic aspects and the background, that is pretty significant because a lot of people, they, they, uh, they think that the best way to honor their loved ones is to dedicate a building in their honor or to dedicate a-- or to, to put out dedications for them or to, uh, make their burial plots particularly lovely. I think you can pay a lot of places for a service that'll come by and drop flowers by or clean up the area. This is a way of honoring the deceased, but the, the truth is the best way, and flowers are probably also. The truth way-- In truth, the best way to honor the deceased is to keep Which is obviously the most difficult, the one that people are least likely to pursue. It is much easier to dedicate a, a, a building or, or a, uh, In honor of somebody or In honor of someone who's departed rather than actually keeping But the Rebbe does stress that the easy way out is not our way. Okay, so going up to here, uh, the Rebbe says that this is a, a deeply nuanced subject, uh, enough that he says it needs a I think it's an open question why. I'm flipping over my screen right now so you can follow with me. It's a din in Shulchan Aruch, and it's actually a really clear one. So it's an open question why the Rebbe thinks this requires a It's

03:37 Speaker 1 a yes or no question. Are you allowed to disinter somebody buried in And bury them in Eretz Yisrael? We'll read the Shulchan Aruch together. This is in Yoreh De'ah. The siman is shin, samech, gimel. You're never allowed to disinter. You're never allowed to dig up a body and its bones. Not even from an honorable plot to another honorable plot. You're not allowed to move it from a bad plot to another bad plot. You can't even move someone from a bad plot to a good plot. You're not allowed to move bodies. Leave them alone, put them in the ground and let them stay. Certainly, you're not allowed to take somebody out of a good plot and move them to a rotten plot. However, if it's within-- if it's moving, and Shakh clarifies down there, you'll see on the, down there in the Shakh. He says that Means let's say he was buried in the wrong plot, a plot that doesn't belong to him or in some general plot or a mass grave, unfortunately. Are we allowed to move him to his family's plot? That you're absolutely allowed to do. You're allowed to move him Even from a good plot to a bad plot Because people generally wanna be buried in their family plots near their relatives, so that's one exception to the rule. So we have a rule, generally, we're not allowed to move people. Exception number one is that you can move someone from a plot that doesn't belong to them to a family plot.

04:53 Speaker 1 And then the second exception to the rule, Okay, that's a din in Shulchan Aruch. The Does not disagree. This is it. Shulchan Aruch says you're allowed to take somebody from And bury them in Eretz Yisrael. So what's the question? Why is the Rebbe asking that we need a It's an open question. We have a Shakh here. Shakh says why you're allowed to do it. The Shakh says, I'm sorry, that's not the one I wanted. I wanted gimel. There we go. Why is it To move someone to Eretz Yisrael? Because it's a kapara for him. It helps the dead when you move them to Eretz Yisrael. Why? Because the dirt of Eretz Yisrael causes a kapara that atones for them. It's the last line of Hazinu, right? And then, and the, uh, the dirt of the land will be an atonement for the people. So we have a tradition that the Is You actually see in the Down here, if you look near the bottom in the red text, that that's why there's a minhag to put a little bit of the dirt of Eretz Yisrael into the coffin, into the kever with the meitzar. I was on a-- I was in a, a Chevra Kadisha for a little while, and we absolutely did this. We had little vials of, of Eretz Yisrael dirt that we would put in before we buried them, so this is a practice. He says there's what to rely on. There certainly is. In addition to the Tanchuma mentioned here, there's

06:08 Speaker 1 a Yerushalmi that says it explicitly. In any event, there seems to be a milah for the dead person of moving them to Eretz Yisrael, and therefore, since it benefits them, it's allowed. So why does this need a Simply dig up the relative and move them to Eretz Yisrael. The answer to this question is probably, the Rebbe doesn't say why, but it's probably is like three So, uh, this is a I'm giving you the sources, you can look them up. Two twenty-five B, it's in Shruma, one forty-one B, it's in Ache, seventy-two B. Each of these sources explicitly say that the land only atones for a person if they merited to live there in their lifetime. It doesn't work if a person never went to Eretz Israel. That this-- You, you can't, you can't game the system. Somebody who lives in Eretz Israel and dies in Eretz Israel and is buried in Eretz Israel, the Yeah, you're right in the right section, so you should be getting to this pretty soon. I think it's in, uh, I think it's in like Mem Vov or something. Anyway-

10:22 Speaker 2 Somewhere around there

10:22 Speaker 1 ... this, this idea of making a condition is, is already a fair shegemarah, so it's absolutely allowed. Then Mendel adds that it's a side note that he was there for a year or so, and his body was complete and had not decomposed. Very holy person, clearly. Um, going back to this, so, uh, I think we've explained why this is a nuanced topic that needs to be seen halakhically. What I'd like to add, though, is that the Rebbe has particular knowledge of how nuanced this topic is because the Rebbe had a run-in with this topic in his youth. So in the year, um... Let me get my years down here. I have my notes. I'm bad at dates. In the year fifty-six eighty-eight, the Rebbe arrives in Berlin. When he arrives in Berlin, he wants to get into the Berlin library and possibly to get into a Berlin curriculum. There was some sort of a class he couldn't join. It's not clear exactly why he needed this, but he needed some certificate saying that he was a rabbi. Now, the Rebbe had already gotten some form of smicha from the Ragged Jever, which is something that most of us are familiar with, but that wasn't sufficient. It said something on it like he knows Shas and Poskim backwards and forwards, and that wasn't enough for the secular Berlin, uh, the Berlin University, so they needed better paperwork. The only person who they would trust to say that he was a certified rabbi and was able to

11:25 Speaker 1 enter the libraries was the-- one of the big rabbis, Orthodox rabbi, but he was also respected very much by the secular community living in Berlin. And as all of those you, those of you who follow my recordings know I, I like to point him out often because he's one of the seven or eight famous Yechiels ever to have lived. Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, the Tsadikk he. He was living in Berlin at the time. He was widely respected. He had an institute there that gave smicha and a certificate that was honored by Berlin itself, and the Rebbe needed to go to him to get a certificate. So the Rebbe shows up in his office and says, "I'd like a certificate attesting to my smicha. I can prove that I've gotten it before. I just need you to sign off." And, uh, Rabbi Weinberg, the Tsadikk he said to him, "Not happening. You have to sit through the entire smicha curriculum. I don't just hand these things out like candy." And the Rebbe says, "Look, you gotta do me a favor. I'm not gonna be able to get in. It's gonna take, like, four years to go through your program. Do you have any options for me?" It's unclear whether the Rebbe or the Tsadikk he proposed the following deal, but this was the deal. The Tsadikk he reached back on his shelf behind him and pulled out a pamphlet he'd been working on. This pamphlet is around now. You can read it. It's called Pinay Atzmei

12:23 Speaker 1 Zamezim, whether you're allowed to disinter dead people, when you're allowed to move them from one place to another. The book specifically doesn't focus on Eretz Yisrael. It specifically focuses on moving people from one place in Eastern Europe to another. But I believe it discusses-- it does discuss Eretz Yisrael in passing, at least in a couple of the perakim. He'd just written an extensive book on the topic. He hands this to the Rebbe, and the challenge is that if overnight you can learn this entire book and come back and give me some good thoughts on it and show that you understand it fully, then, uh, then I'll give you my smicha as if you've been here for the whole program. Otherwise, you gotta sit for the regular session. The Rebbe goes home, works hard, and comes back the next morning, and he knows the material. He knows the material cold. He gets his smicha from Rabbi Jacob Yisrael Weinberg, the Sdei Chesh. So the Rebbe studied this in depth. Um, we actually know this story from, uh, a Gerrer Hasid, Nachman Kowalski is his name. He was in Zurich, and he one time asked-- He was very close with the Sdei Chesh. He one time asked the Sdei Chesh why he hadn't visited the Rebbe. Once the Rebbe had already become the Rebbe, the Sdei Chesh answered, "I can't visit him or write to him because I'd have to address him as a gaon hatzadik harav since he's a Rebbe, and, uh, and he was my

13:24 Speaker 1 student, and I'm not comfortable using that, using that terminology." So the Gerrer Hasid said to him, "When was he your student?" And that's how the, that's how the story originally came out. He said many nice things about the Rebbe, by the way. He always called him an adam godel b'Yisrael. Anyway, this was a, a nice story, and we didn't have many details on it until the Rebbe's Reshimas came out. In the Reshimas, if you go to one twenty-seven and one twenty-eight, you'll find that the Rebbe's notes on this Sefer have been preserved. We have the Rebbe's Ha'aras on this Sefer that he submitted as his smicha test, and the date on them is from Teves five fifty-six eighty-eight, which would've been the exact date that he was trying to take this test. So we actually have a transcript more or less of the Rebbe's analysis of this work by the Sdei Chesh, of the Rebbe's analysis of when you're allowed to move bodies from one place to another. Basically, when the Rebbe was a younger man, before he was Rebbe, he, he's invested a significant amount of time, maybe one night, but a significant amount of energy into writing extensive notes, it's like twenty pages long, on, uh, on his Hasidism on this topic. I had it open on this screen here, but now I don't because it decided to close on me. I can probably pull it up again. It's okay. I'll just give you some highlights. If you don't mind, I'll give you

14:26 Speaker 1 some highlights, and then we'll probably call it a day. Um, one sample that I, I was digging through it, it's like twenty pages long. I didn't have time to read the entire thing, maybe later. But one of the ways that the Rebbe spun off of the, um, the Sdei Chesh's comments on when you're allowed to move a body is the Sdei Chesh asked a question. It says in... Here we are, Sanhedrin forty-six B. You ready, Paritz? Okay.

14:49 Speaker 3 Yeah. Yep.

14:49 Speaker 1 Ready or not. Yep. Paritz is ready. Forty-six B. You can add this to your share 'cause the Rebbe has a comment on this. It says Sanhedrin forty-six B, it says that a person is not allowed to ask not to be buried. A person can't say, "It is my final wish that you just leave me out on the street and let the birds pick at me." That's, that's not okay. And the reason why, it's actually an af kamina why, but the Gemara's conclusion is the reason why is because we don't honor a person's wishes if they wanna bring bizayon onto somebody else, and his family would be humiliated to see him rotting in the street. So we don't listen to him, even though this is the wishes of the dead, and we generally honor the wishes of someone on their deathbed very seriously. If their wishes are to bring bizayon to somebody else, to humiliate somebody else, in this case, their family members, we don't listen to them. So asks the Sdei Chesh, how are we allowed to honor the wi-- the wishes of the meis and move him? For example, in the case of Mendel's relative, where this person specifically made a rule. He made a stipulation when-- that he wanted to be buried in Eretz Yisrael, so we're allowed to honor his wishes and move him. Isn't that a bizayon to the other people in the cemetery? Other people in the cemetery ask, "Why, why are you moving me? Why are you moving these

15:44 Speaker 1 people away from me? Do you li-- Do you, do you not, do you not like the location? Is there something wrong? Do we smell?" I don't know. The, the other people get up-- The other pe-- the other dead people get upset. So the Sdei Chesh asks how it's allowed to honor someone's wishes to move them out of a cemetery when doing so causes a bizayon to their neighbors in the cemetery. And the Sdei Chesh then adds that if you'll say we don't worry about the dignity of a bunch of dead people in a cemetery, let me show you a braisa, says the Sdei Chesh, where Rabbi Gamaliel institutes several, uh, rules to protect the dignity of dead people, including the fact that they used to only cover the faces of people who died of starvation because they had bad-looking faces, and they used to leave rich people's faces uncovered. But then they felt they were humiliating the people who died of starvation, so they started covering everybody's face. That's why we don't do open caskets, so as not-- so as to honor everybody equally. This is one of the takanas of braisa. So it sounds like we do care about the feelings of dead people. This is the Sdei Chesh, and he leaves it as a question. The Rebbe in his Ha'aras and his Reshimas, he says, first of all, he can prove from many places that the braisa that the, that the Sdei Chesh is quoting is not talking about the honor of dead

16:39 Speaker 1 people. It's talking about the honor of living people. The reason why we cover the faces of the dead poor and the dead rich alike is so as not to humiliate the people who are starving, who are alive. And the Rebbe proves this from many places, but the truth is, as the Rebbe himself says, this is the Peirushin Yoreh De'ah three fifty-three one. I'll read it to you. That they used to do things a certain way, and then they changed it. This is the lashon that's important. But you and Niam Chaim, the living poor, were misbaishim. They were embarrassed. So the Shulchan Aruch itself paskens that we're talking about the living dead here. So the Rebbe pushes away this braisa. As for any humiliation suffered by the dead themselves, the Rebbe thinks they're fine with it as long as it's a good reason, for example, honoring the wishes of the meis because as soon as they know that it's a good reason, it's a halakhic reason, they don't believe that they're being slighted. So the Rebbe says there's no way these, the other people in the cemetery are being slighted by us doing a mitzvah. The mitzvah here is to honor the wishes of the dead or to move them there. It's Yisrael, if it's shaya, if it's a pesek tasken, and, uh, that doesn't upset the dead at all. So the Rebbe-

17:35 Speaker 3 Isn't that like, isn't that like lo le-rash?

17:39 Speaker 1 It sounds like lo le-rash doesn't apply when they know you're doing the right thing. Um, that's the way... I'll, I'll read you the Rebbe's lashon. I wanted to have it on the screen, but my thing timed out. So I'll just read to you. The Rebbe says, "If you mefanan meis a basic palas, uh, the basic palas acher, when we move a dead body from one cemetery to another, mishum shemitchila, mishum demitchila kisnu sheya'aseh ken because they originally made this condition, like in Mendel's case. And mishum mitzvat Akeidat Yitzchak or because the mitzvat Akeidat Yitzchak divrei meis because it's a mitzvah to listen to them. Here's the Rebbe. They know. They know. They know that it's not-- that we're not moving him because we don't wanna leave him with those people who are in the cemetery. That's why we're moving him. They know that just because that's what the meis asked. Therefore, the char meis have no bizayon me'ikarit from, from, from the, from initially. They initially have no bizayon 'cause they know we're doing it to honor the words of the meis. So we do shisha worry about lo le-rash in a lot of cases, but the Rebbe doesn't seem to feel we worry about lo le-rash where there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. And here, the perfectly reasonable explanation was that we're doing a mitzvah, me'akidat Yitzchak divrei meis. This really wasn't, uh, the point here wasn't necessarily to paskin, especially since the Rebbe himself in the letter says you need a rav, mehara herab

18:56 Speaker 1 to paskin on such issues. But the point here was more to draw out the idea that the Rebbe, um, when he says this is a complex issue that a posek needs to look at, whether you're allowed to move someone from klal Yisrael He's not just throwing away a Shulchan Aruch that says very clearly that you're allowed to or dealing-- nor necessarily even just dealing with the Kabbalistic implications brought in the Divrei and in the, uh, in the Kleizenberger and in other places. The Rebbe is also dealing with the fact that he's well aware of how extensive the issue this can get, and he's dived into it himself. This is part of this, is the Rebbe has twenty pages of original writing on this topic. And so he's saying, "This is a-- this is not a topic you can be flippant about. It is not necessarily the case that you always can or always can't. It needs a Rav . And then, and along the way, it reflects the story of how the Rebbe got Semikhah. So I thought it tied things together nicely. Anybody have any questions, comments, or personal stories? In my experience, whenever I do these Halakhic ones, no one ever talks afterwards. Let's, let's get Poll Track in here. Oh, that's right. That's right. No, that's what I'm doing.

19:55 Speaker 3 Is it, is it important-- Is it an important thing to be buried in Israel? Which, uh, what, um, my question is sort of like, if it was that important, then there would probably be some sort of prizbal-style proclamation during the burial to make that condition for everybody.

20:16 Speaker 1 It's definitely important to have Afer Eretz Yisrael in there. As I mentioned earlier, when, when I was working in the Chevra Kadisha, we always practice this minhag, this minhag of putting some of the Afer Eretz Yisrael in there because of mitzvot Aretz Yisrael. Is it important to be buried in Eretz Yisrael? That really depends on whether you hold like the Shulchan Aruch or like the, uh, or like the Yerushalmi, right? So the Yerushalmi implies that you get nothing out of it if you lived your whole life in Chutz La'aretz, so you're not gaining anything. It's a ze'ah, you're not gaining anything. In that case, I guess it really wouldn't be important. Someone who's never visited has no kapara by moving there, uh, according to the Yerushalmi. But Shulchan Aruch believes it's such a major advantage that you're allowed to, that you're allowed to impose a desire into a corpse in order to do it because it's good for him. Better to, uh... And if you read up, read this top shach here that's on my screen. The reason why we generally don't exhume a body is up here. It's terrifying. I'm gonna read it to you. At the time, the reason why we generally don't exhume bodies, the reason moving them around is very difficult . They think they've been summoned for the Yom HaDin. They think they've been summoned to be judged, and they freak out. So it's very painful to move a body, and nonetheless, we do it because ultimately it helps them

21:14 Speaker 1 a lot to move them to Eretz Yisrael. So Shulchan Aruch's position is that it's an enormous milah. Such an enormous milah that it overrides the fact that we're freaking them out and making them think the Yom HaDin has arrived. But on the other hand, uh, it looks like from the Kabbalistic sources, from the Yerushalmi, that there may be no advantage at all. So I guess that's kind of an open question, whether there's an enormous advantage to being buried in Eretz Yisrael. Something anecdotally that we say a lot about the Rabbeim's decision to put their sions in Chutz La'aretz was that it was an incredible sacrifice, when , that Rachel is crying by the way that she's not buried in Eretz Yisrael because she needs to be there for her children in Golus. We always frame this as an incredible sacrifice, as though it would've been better to have been buried in Eretz Yisrael. So maybe there's a milah there, but that's a, that's a story, not a psak. Shaya.