Praying at the graves of our greatest sages

By Ben Koren and Shmuli Phillips

In a few days time we are set to read about the death of the first – and likely the greatest – leader that the Jewish nation has been privileged to produce. Given the unique relationship with God enjoyed by Moshe as well as the extraordinary self-sacrifice that he exhibited on behalf of his people, we can expect to learn a great deal from the way in which the Torah directed the people to honour and revere Moshe’s memory.

What kind of prayer site must his disciples have wanted to construct at his grave in order to feel inspired and spiritually uplifted through proximity to his final resting place? Surely Moshe – who interceded so successfully on behalf of the Israelites in his lifetime – should be approached to petition God for mercy from his elevated place in the World to Come?

Approaching the Torah from the perspective of practices and customs which have been popularised in modern Judaism, readers might be shocked to discover that the site of Moshe’s grave was not elevated to a holy place or prayer and worship. In fact, according to Ralbag, the reason why “no-one knows his burial place until this very day” was precisely to avoid a situation in which Moshe’s burial place would be turned into some kind of shrine. Chizkuni spells this idea out even more clearly, writing that his grave was hidden so that those who seek to communicate with the dead – a biblically prohibited practice – would not be able to seek his assistance. The phenomenon of Jews praying at Kivrei Tzaddikim (Graves of the Righteous) is a widely accepted and common practice today — but does that make it acceptable?

It is rooted in Talmudic Aggadah (non-legalistic passages) and, of course, the few obscure instances referencing this practice are open to interpretation. We have a tradition from the Geonim, the last direct link to the Talmudic academies of Sura and Pumpedita, that Aggadot are not to be taken literally, as they are didactic and often rhetorical in nature and sometimes go beyond simple reason in order to make a lesson vivid to the reader. So with that said, let us look to Tanach to find rock-solid textual support for this practice.

Herein lies the problem! Tanach contains no explicit mention of such a ritual. One may rightly point out that there are plenty of practices we do that are *learned out* from Tanach but aren't explicitly laid out in the text, so why should we treat this any differently?

The closest we get to a biblical reference for praying at graves is found in aggadic and midrashic commentaries to Tanach. Rashi mentions that Calev visited the Avot at Ma’arat Hamachpela. Aside from the fact that it's a Midrash, Calev visiting his ancestors and seeing history come full circle with Abraham's prophecy coming to fruition — was surely an inspiring moment.

But where do we find people visiting the graves of David HaMelekh or Yishayahu HaNavi to beseech God on our behalf? The answer: nowhere! Like Calev, we can visit our *grandparents* graves (as well as other loved ones) — there's nothing wrong with that.

Looking at the Torah’s laws surrounding death in the context of ancient pagan practice, a clear agenda and perspective can be noted. Pagan religions all contained priestly services revolving around death, magic and secretive rites. The Torah flipped this on its head, forbidding priests from even going near the dead, with death instead being deliberately distanced through strict laws of Tumaa (ritual impurity). Anyone who came in contact with a corpse or gravesite could not enter the Mikdash for a full seven days.

Notably the concept of the Afterlife is conspicuously absent from the Torah, in stark contrast with most of the other belief systems of its time and the ones have since followed. Judaism celebrates life and promotes making *this* world a better place, unlike other religions. By shifting the focus from the next world and making death synonymous with impurity and 'Ra' (bad/evil), the Torah distances us from the allure and romanticization of martyrdom and asceticism.

The Torah explicitly commands us not to try to communicate with the dead. Shlomo Hamelech taught that the dead know nothing. If it is so important to visit the dead, why would the Torah not have designated them as intermediaries between us and God? To the contrary – it forbids us from even directing our prayers to Michael (the chief Angel of Israel)! [Yerushalmi Berachot 9:1].

In conclusion, it would seem that there are those who promote the practice and those who oppose it. One side argues that this is a clear violation of the D'oraita (biblical) law forbidding communication with the dead. The other side usually acknowledges that although some people violate this law outright by not directing their prayers directly to God, that doesn't mean that the rest are making the same error, as they are adamant that they're only praying in the merit of the deceased or through him (a concept which itself requires considerable clarification) or that he acts as a defense attorney who can put in a good word for us in heaven.

So clearly, at best, this is a grey area. And when it comes to D'oraita laws, our Sages of blessed memory taught that we must be stringent and err on the side of caution.

Today, it has become fashionable for some Jews to leave their families on Rosh Hashana and fly across the world in order to pray by the grave of a rabbi, or go "grave hopping" in the hopes of getting married or opening up mazal, or even to celebrate engagements at a gravesite accompanied with a ritual of writing letters to the dead. It can be argued that at least a small percentage of people who pray at Kivrei Tzaddikim are extremely careful when it comes to having the correct mindset and in doing so, straddle the line of halacha. But is the feeling of spiritual elevation and connection to sages gained from such practices worth the risk of violating D'oraita laws and what appears to be the Torah’s fundamental separation of death from the worship of God? Could a person’s religious energies be better invested in visiting the sick – fulfilling biblical commandments of helping others – than the questionable activity of visiting and praying with the dead?

Posted to Facebook 13 October 2022, here.

Uman Rosh Hashana: revenge of the pagans?!

The annual pilgrimage to Uman raises powerful feelings and passionate arguments from advocates and critics alike. Further debate over the advisability of mass international travel during a pandemic has brought the debate into particularly strong focus for the coming Rosh Hashana.

In this eloquent podcast (linked at the end), Mordechai Ish-Yemini presents a biting theological critique of the legitimacy of praying at Rebbi Nachman’s grave. Ish-Yemini starts by listing several commonly-cited criticisms of the pilgrimage: 

*the appropriateness of leaving one’s family for the festival

*leaving Israel to worship at a holy site abroad

*the easy availability of drugs and prostitution nearby

*funding anti-semitic Ukrainians (with money that is sometimes collected as charity)

The podcast considers these arguments somewhat worthy, though not entirely compelling. Instead, Ish-Yemini focuses his attention on how Jewish tradition views acts of worship at graves. 

Judaism Reclaimed analyses, based on the writings of Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, how worship at the Mikdash is distanced from any association with death, and performed “during daylight and in a state of sobriety…stark contrast to the atmosphere of darkness, mystery and fear which would typically prevail in pagan temples”. Ish-Yemini takes this much further, arguing that turning to the dead for information and guidance in acts of worship forms part of a widespread primitive practice which the Torah sought to outlaw with its prohibitions against necromancy and idolatrous rites. 

The Torah is obsessed with detailed laws which distance any person or object deemed impure by association with death from Mikdash worship. Religious acts of worship at a grave are also severely curtailed in the Talmud (Berachot 18a) – albeit for other reasons. 

A second line of criticism presented by Ish-Yemini examines the whole religious approach centred around being saved by a person, or promoting salvation through faith in a human being. This notion, he argues, more strongly resembles Christian doctrine than Judaism’s focus on each person’s individual connection to God through personal merit and performance of commandments.  

These sorts of ideologies offer a seductive simplicity. Judaism Reclaimed cites and develops Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s critique in Halakhic Man of the vacuous spirituality of the commonly perceived “religious man” which has been allowed to creep into Judaism. This popular ideology, according to R. Soloveitchik, contends that religion is a tranquil and enchanted stream of utopian simplicity into which embittered souls and troubled spirits can cast themselves as an escape from the rational doubts, contradictions and turbulence of reality. In a similar vein, Ish-Yemini attributes Uman’s growing popularity to the powerful human impulse to seek simple, magical solutions – such as propitious places, people and special words to utter – to complex, real world problems. These solutions are typified by the much-publicised promise that Rebbi Nachman will pull pilgrims from Gehinnom by their payot [sidelocks]. 

Does Ish-Yemini go too far? Judaism Reclaimed emphasises the need to respect the experiential side of Judaism alongside its intellectual dimension (see pp 4-5 in the sample here). Is this podcast correct in asserting that the pilgrimage and worship at Uman has swung too far in the opposite direction – allowing subjective spiritual pursuit to undermine the Torah’s core theological foundations?  

This group would welcome a well-argued response to Ish-Yemini’s claims in this podast.

First posted on Facebook 15 August 2021.