2006-05-05
Kids Learn Burial Rites From Barney
by Naomi Glauberman, Contributing Writer
Their bagels sliced, toasted and slathered with cream cheese, the parents and
students of the fourth- and fifth-grade classes at Santa Monica’s Sha’arei Am turn
toward Rabbi Jeff Marx as he welcomes them to Family Education Day.
His introduction is interrupted by Lori Daitch, the director of education. The suddenly
somber rabbi informs the group that he has just learned that Barney, a congregant,
whose real name is Bernard Dinotzuris, has just collapsed in the sanctuary.
With much giggling, and a touch of consternation, the group enters the sanctuary
where the purple plush 3-foot-tall Dinotzuris is sprawled near the pulpit.
“What should I do?” the rabbi asks, appropriately concerned.
A call to 911 leads to the swift arrival of a “paramedic,” in vest and plastic
firefighter’s hat. He takes a good look at the patient, does a bit of CPR and
announces that Bernard is most certainly and irretrievably dead.
This is, in fact, the fourth time Bernard has passed away. For the past four years,
Marx has conducted this discussion on the Jewish rites and rituals surrounding death.
The participating parents have all been informed of the contents of the session in
advance. For the students, depending on the efficacy of the sibling grapevine, it is
more or less a surprise.
“What do we now? “ the rabbi asks.
The kids boisterously offer solutions, ranging from a toss in the Dumpster to
cremation.
“Well,” Marx says. “As it happens, Bernard had written me a letter saying he wants
to be buried.”
When someone dies, the rabbi explains, mortuaries take care of the body. Jason
Schwartz, a teacher, who was just the paramedic, now returns as the “Man From the
Mortuary.” Carefully lifting Bernard onto a book cart transformed into a gurney, he
efficiently wheels him away.
The giggling has stopped; kids who had been jostling and fidgeting have found seats
near their parents.
It’s an impressive transformation.
With Bernard on his way to the mortuary, the rabbi fields questions on Jewish burial
rituals and beliefs on tattoos, cremation, embalming, organ donation and much
more.
Everyone knows that a speedy burial is important, and the discussion ends as the
students and parents, accompanied by teachers Schwartz and Jennifer Flam, head
for the Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary.
“I’ve wanted to do a program on death for a long time,” Marx says on the way to the
cemetery. “It’s good for the kids, but lots of parents haven’t had much experience
dealing with questions of death and dying either. My congregation is the sandwich
generation, caring for both their children and their parents. This is education about
the real world,” he said.
The real world, but in fuzzy purple and green.
“Our first problem was to figure out what we would do for a body,” he says. “We hit
on Barney as the perfect solution — he was no longer an object of attachment for
fourth and fifth graders, but they were completely familiar with him.”
Michael and Elaine Sachs attended the first burial of Barney in 2003 with their older
daughter Rebecca. Six months later, Elaine Sachs, 41, suffered an aortic aneurysm
while on a Girl Scout camping trip with Rebecca, and could not be resuscitated.
Michael Sachs remembers that he had initially thought that a program on death
wasn’t really important for people in their 40s.
“But, in fact,” he now says, “I learned things I assumed I wouldn’t need to think
about for many years. I thought the program dealt with potentially distressing
material in a nonthreatening, matter-of-fact fashion,” he said.
“Even under the shock and duress, the fact that we’d gone through that program,
made the process somewhat more manageable and less difficult,” he says. “As a part
of Jewish education and life experience, I now feel that it’s almost essential.”
Even when the experience does not become as immediately and painfully relevant as
it did for the Sachs family, programs such as these help children understand that
death and dying is an open topic for discussion.
“It’s always helpful to children to give them experiences of seeing death as a normal
part of life,” said Natalie Levine, program director of Family Service of Santa Monica,
a division of Vista del Mar Child and Family.
“Children in the fourth and fifth grade don’t yet think abstractly, so this emphasis on
the concrete steps taken when someone dies helps them manage their emotions,”
she added.
When the cars full of kids from the Santa Monica Synagogue pull up at Hillside’s
Chapel, Jill Glasband, the mortuary’s director of community outreach is waiting.
She gives a tour of the premises, including the casket selection room, as well as
displays of shrouds and caskets and urns for cremation.
In the chapel, with Bernard Dinotzuris settled into a simple pine casket, the rabbi
delivers a eulogy. Students, enlisted as pallbearers, carry the casket to the hearse.
They proceed to the far end of the cemetery, where the rabbi leads a brief graveside
service.
This year, Hillside has prepared a marker for the grave, so with a quick flash
forward, the group moves a few feet and a year into the future for an unveiling of
Bernard Dinotzuris’ gravestone.
All services concluded, the group disperses. As they look at gravestones, noting the
life spans of grandparents as well as young children, everyone seems engrossed in
quiet conversations — ones that will no doubt continue.
© 2006 jewishjournal.com