Have any Orthodox Jewish families buried an empty coffin because their child converted?
One potentially scary deterrent for Jewish people to accept Jesus, or Yeshua, as their Messiah has been the assertion that in some families, particularly Orthodox Jewish families, that convert would no longer be considered Jewish–and in extreme cases, no longer considered alive. I’ve heard more as rumor than anything else, that some Jewish families would bury an empty coffin to recognize that their son or daughter had "died." Is there any shred of evidence to support this? Has it ever really happened?
I’ve heard that some will say Kaddish (the prayer of mourning) if a child leaves the orthodox community (not necessarily converting to a different religion. As someone mentioned before, you cannot convert out of Judaism). I do know what you are talking about, I have heard it too, but I haven’t heard about the burial thing. I think that it is only in some very religious communities, not the ones that you see every day on the street, although I have never asked any of the orthodox people that I know.
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July 27 2009 04:45 am | Uncategorized
claptic on 27 Jul 2009 at 10:05 am #
do you have a shovel?
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Ruth Asher on 27 Jul 2009 at 10:12 am #
answer: very few but it is understandable. The child is rejecting their parent’s religion and is now considered an apostate, outside of Judaism. Many parents in other religions have done things almost as drastic.
Some even worse – killing their children for "dishonoring" their "religion" or culture. 3 teenage girls and a guardian were killed in Montreal, Canada recently because the girls wanted to be teenagers, not treated like slaves at home.
Other parents reject their children, declaring them dead or throwing teenage children out into the streets if the child comes out of the closet – the majority of those parents are Christians.
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Your Friendly Jewish Accountant on 27 Jul 2009 at 10:45 am #
You’re wrong on a number of accounts, and I’m sure your Christian friends have pushed these ideas on you.
You cannot convert OUT of Judaism. It’s called being an apostate Jew. They’re never not considered Jewish or not alive, though they may be cast out of the family for instances of say, intermarried w/ a non-Jew.
If you thought for a second about the cost of a burial, let alone one of an empty coffin when the rest of us are on a waiting list for a plot, you’d delete this question.
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Yah man on 27 Jul 2009 at 11:27 am #
That is what they did with Jesus, but he came back after the Sabbath for a couple of days because he always wanted to be like the prodigal son in his story. But they still treated him like he was crazy, so then he went to the "nations", probably India and called himself Thomas like his twin brother Didymius Thomas? Or, else he went to Rome to look for his real father? Maybe to Spain, like Paul(?), where he joined up in his old age with General Vespasian or Titus? Maybe that is where the runaway slave story came from in the NT story honoring the Emperor?
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purplegirl88 on 27 Jul 2009 at 11:52 am #
I’ve heard that some will say Kaddish (the prayer of mourning) if a child leaves the orthodox community (not necessarily converting to a different religion. As someone mentioned before, you cannot convert out of Judaism). I do know what you are talking about, I have heard it too, but I haven’t heard about the burial thing. I think that it is only in some very religious communities, not the ones that you see every day on the street, although I have never asked any of the orthodox people that I know.
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Jewish/spend a lot of time around other Jewish people.