Source: Religion News Service
http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/tight_economy_puts_the_squeeze_on_death_rites/
When Leonard Horowitz died at Putnam Hospital recently (April 20), the 92-year-old developmentally disabled man left behind no family, no friends, no savings and no final requests.
Nevertheless, Horowitz was buried with full Jewish rites at Staten Island’s Mount Richmond Cemetery, where Rabbi Shmuel Plafker recited blessings as two workers lowered Horowitz’s plain pine casket into the muddy ground.
The brief ceremony, which concluded within 20 minutes and with Plafker the only mourner present, was the second of the morning for the Hebrew Free Burial Association, a nonprofit organization founded in 1888 to provide funerals for underprivileged Jews.
The financial downturn has contributed to a jump in requests for the association’s services in the past four months, officials said, while donations and investment income have dropped about 15 percent since last year.
“Regardless of the socioeconomic situation, our mission is to see that a Jew should be buried properly,” said Plafker, the association’s cemetery chaplain. “In Judaism, the ultimate kindness is to take care of the dead.”
The average cost of an American funeral—estimated at $7,323 by the National Funeral Directors Association—can break the bank for struggling families, even more so during a recession. The association reported grim figures for 2008, as clients increasingly opt for more affordable alternatives to stretch limousines, mahogany coffins and sit-down dinners.
Yet some funeral homes that cater to traditional religious communities have reported lesser declines, presumably due to strict codes for honoring the dead that apply in boom and bust times alike.
For example, while the NFDA reported a 78 percent jump from 2007 to 2008 for requests for cremation—which is generally several thousand dollars cheaper than a burial—that option is forbidden for devout Jews, Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Mormons and others.
“The economy is going to have an impact on what people do with their dead, but even in down times, people want to do right by their dead,” explained Gary Laderman, an expert on American death rituals at Emory University. “It’s one of the fundamental duties of the living to make sure you take care of the dead in the proper ritual way. There’s a great deal at stake for these communities, in terms of your relationship with God in the afterlife.”