[Avodah] poignant question

[Eli Turkel]

<< Last night at the chevra kadisha seuda a lady who is already a
 grandmother
asked me a somewhat sad question. She told me that both her  parents had
died within nine months, when she was 14 years old, and they had not  had a
tahara. In fact they had had open caskets with a public viewing (which of
course we would consider a bizayon). She asked me if this meant that her
parents  could not rest in peace? A poignant question. >>

A few years ago I was at a funeral in Jerusalem where a man's body shipped
from Chicago was mixed up with a Moslem women also brought in from the US.
Right before the burial the mistake was found and eventually the bodies
exchanged (the idiot at the airport couldn't understand why he got 2 calls
of mistakes on the same day).

We asked someone why this person (a religious Jew) would suffer through
this bizayon. The answer he gave was that this would be a kapparah for the
niftar. Hence, while an open viewing can be viewed as a bizayon, one can
also say that the bizayon acts as a kapparah


King Chizkiyahu did six things: concerning three of them [the Sages] agreed
with him, and concerning three of them, they did not agree with him.

He dragged his father's bones on a litter of ropes, and they agreed with
him; he broke in pieces the brazen serpent, and they agreed with him; he
concealed the book of remedies, and they agreed with him.

http://vbm-torah.org/archive/yeru2/22yeru.htm

-- 
Eli Turkel
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