{"id":225,"date":"2007-01-24T13:32:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-24T13:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html"},"modified":"2007-01-24T13:32:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-24T13:32:00","slug":"burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html","title":{"rendered":"Burial Grounds as Battle Grounds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So burial grounds have now become the new battle grounds for American Jewish identity.<\/p>\n<p>In a responsa regarding the permissibility of burying Jews and non-Jews together, Rabbi David Golikin, whom I have enormous respect for, closes his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.responsafortoday.com\/engsums\/6_19.htm\" target=\"_New\">ruling<\/a> that both Jewish and non-Jewish burial grounds must remain separated by saying, &#8220;Let us hope and pray that the phenomenon of intermarriage will disappear, so that in the future we will be able to build cemeteries without partitions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Instinctively and halakhically, I agree with Rabbi Golikin&#8217;s general position.  Both the Orthodox and Conservative movements do not allow the burial of Jews and non-Jews together. As <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/till-death-do-us-part.html\" target=\"_new\">Rabbi Waxman points out<\/a>, the position against mixed burial plots is based more on <span style=\"font-style: italic\">minhag<\/span> (Jewish custom) than actual halakhic textual sources.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that Rabbi Golikin&#8217;s blessing belies the reality that intermarriage is not going away and will continue to gain prominence as a lifestyle option for Jews.  Likewise, there is something to be said for someone who wants to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. While being born as a Jew may have more halakhic weight, dying as a Jew is certainly an important statement regarding one&#8217;s identity.<\/p>\n<p>In some ways, what is a greater statement of one&#8217;s identity than where they decide to be buried? If one&#8217;s eternal burial choice does not tell you who they really are and what they want their memory to be, than what does?<\/p>\n<p>That said, would we not bury an Israeli soldier born of a non-Jewish Russian immigrant in a Jewish grave? The sad reality is that many in Israel would, and do, not. While I am not advocating that a custom kept for thousands of years be suddenly revoked, it would not hurt us to rethink some of the particulars of what has become a very complex matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So burial grounds have now become the new battle grounds for American Jewish identity. In a responsa regarding the permissibility of burying Jews and non-Jews together, Rabbi David Golikin, whom I have enormous respect for, closes his ruling that both Jewish and non-Jewish burial grounds must remain separated by saying, &#8220;Let us hope and pray&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Burial Grounds as Battle Grounds - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Burial Grounds as Battle Grounds - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So burial grounds have now become the new battle grounds for American Jewish identity. In a responsa regarding the permissibility of burying Jews and non-Jews together, Rabbi David Golikin, whom I have enormous respect for, closes his ruling that both Jewish and non-Jewish burial grounds must remain separated by saying, &#8220;Let us hope and pray&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-01-24T13:32:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Burial Grounds as Battle Grounds - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Burial Grounds as Battle Grounds - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"So burial grounds have now become the new battle grounds for American Jewish identity. In a responsa regarding the permissibility of burying Jews and non-Jews together, Rabbi David Golikin, whom I have enormous respect for, closes his ruling that both Jewish and non-Jewish burial grounds must remain separated by saying, &#8220;Let us hope and pray&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html","og_site_name":"Virtual Talmud","article_published_time":"2007-01-24T13:32:00+00:00","author":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html","name":"Burial Grounds as Battle Grounds - Virtual Talmud","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-01-24T13:32:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-01-24T13:32:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/burial-grounds-as-battle-grounds.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Burial Grounds as Battle Grounds"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/","name":"Virtual Talmud","description":"Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, where politics and pop culture meet 3,000 years of Jewish wisdom","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/53c806e36632262087fa251c621f2bc9","name":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/417\/4170a8452a509d8efe19496bf5d566e9x96.jpg","caption":"Rabbi Eliyahu Stern"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/author\/estern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}