You’re Going to Die and be Buried – So Better Do It in Style

Documents from the Cairo Genizah: How is one to be buried? And more importantly, what should one wear to the burial? Egyptian Jews had clear requirements on the matter.

An argument between a husband and wife in the Cairo Genizah

The Jews documented in the Cairo Genizah spent much time pondering death, the world to come, and the revival of the dead. Among other things, many of them considered the way they would be buried, and especially the clothes they would wear. The wealthier members of the community were not buried in simple shrouds, but went out of their way to order nice, sometimes new, clothes for themselves, which they would be dressed in at their burial – perhaps in order to reach the World to Come in a fitting manner, and perhaps to be dressed smartly when the dead are brought back to life. The Genizah is filled with many such examples.

One example can be seen in a testimony written in Hebrew from Fustat (Old Cairo) in the year 980 – over 1000 years ago – in which witnesses testify that a dispute broke out “Between Shlomo HaLevi son of Yeshua” and his wife Satana,  and after they “discussed the matter extensively” they came before the Beit Din (Rabbinical Court) where the husband Shlomo declared the following (the page itself is torn on the left hand side, and the lines were filled in by the publisher of the document, M.A. Friedman, according to the context – in square brackets):

“My wife Satana has been with me for several years, and it was decreed by God for her [descendants] not to survive and she is miserable and bereaved of her children”. What did this Satana want her husband to promise her? That if she should die before him “that the clothes [and coverings] and garments […for her burial] should be in place and that I should not remove any of them…the expenses and shrouds for her burial to the extent of my obligation to her and not to detract from them…and that I will not deduct and not change and not replace…”

If you assumed that “shrouds” refers to simple white cloth, the document contains a description of the desired garments: “And these are the garments: reichanei (apparently a perfumed garment, a prevalent custom at the time), netzpia (‘half coat’) and jilia duria (an undergarment, apparently perfumed), and netzpia (another ‘half coat’) and jilia tzand […]”.

In a will from Fustat almost two hundred years later, a sick person on his deathbed instructs for his debts and businesses with his partners to be put in order, and then commands: “I wish for you to shroud me in highest-quality shrouds, to cut a netzpia for me, and an upper coat from new atabah cloth, and a turban (and ama’ah) and a new coffin – and this is my final provisions from my possessions”.

The Will

“Netzpia” is an expensive garment, apparently cut, perhaps a skirt, whose price amounted to several monthly salaries. Jilia is an undergarment, which clings to the body, and was used by both men and women. Atabah cloth is an expensive material made of a combination of silk, linen and gold threads, which was named after the place it was produced – the Alatabein quarter in Baghdad. An ama’ah is the most magnificent head covering. ‘Cut for me’ – the writer orders that the clothes be new, and cut especially for him.

From these certificates and others, it seems that Egyptian Jews did not believe that “You can’t take money to the grave”.

(The many details about the items of clothing were taken from Ora Muld-Vaza’s PhD on the topic. Rabbinic court testimony regarding the case between Shlomo and his wife Satana can be found in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, ENA4020.50, JTS, and was published by M.A. Friedman in his book ‘Ribui Nashim B’Yisrael’, page 194. The will is in the Cambridge University Library, TS13J3.2, and was published by S.D. Goiten in his article “Wills from Egypt During the Period of the Genizah” in volume 8 of the Sefunot journal).



In the summer of 1948, Ben Stonehill, a Jewish man of Polish descent and a lover of everything Yiddish with a keen historical awareness, made his way uptown on the New York City subway system carrying a bag filled with recording equipment. Word had reached him that Jewish refugees had been brought to a hotel on the Upper West Side, and he wanted to get there as quickly as possible.

When he arrived at the hotel, Stonehill found the lobby overrun; the place looked more like a crowded European train station filled with luggage and lost people rather than a modern American hotel. Every man, woman, and child in that lobby was a Holocaust survivor.

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Stonehill set up his equipment and asked the refugees to sing all the songs they knew from before the war. He recorded over 40 hours of music and most likely saved more than 1000 songs from being lost forever.

Men and women, young and old, sang in Hebrew, Russian, and Polish – but most of them sang in their mother-tongue – Yiddish. Children clamored around the music recorder, begging for a chance at the microphone. They wanted to hear their own voices, recorded by Stonehill. The technology delighted them and they were excited to sing the songs they heard at their parents’ knees, songs from their Hebrew school, from their youth movement, from the ghetto, from the camp, and even from where they remained hidden during the destruction. Those pieces of their culture, their voices, would now be alive forever, for future generations.

As we listen, other voices can be heard in the background, other survivors crying, laughing, and singing along.

 

Ben Stonehill (center) with his children, New York, 1948

Among the children that sang for Stonehill was a little boy named Meir, a 9-year-old who survived the war and had just set foot in New York. The song, Simu Shemen (“Put Oil On It”), is sung in Jewish households around the world to this day.

Hanukkah was celebrated and observed throughout the war, in the ghettos and even in the camps, as the survivors hoped beyond hope that the suffering would end and believed that they would be free once again. These were small glimmers of light in the endless darkness and Hanukkah was of specific symbolic importance during the Holocaust.

 

Hanukkah in Fuerstenfeldbruck DP Camp, Germany, 1945. Yad Vashem Archive 1486/582

These rare recordings that Ben Stonehill taped reveal a nearly lost world, barely kept alive as an entire generation and culture were almost completely wiped out.

“Antiochus”

 

Thankfully we are able to listen to those days long gone.

 

This article was written with the help of Dr. Gila Flam, head of the National Library’s Music Department.

The Ben Stonehill Collection of Jewish Folksongs in the Sound Archive was cataloged by Amy Simon, you can listen to more recordings from the collection, here.

 

If you liked this article, try these:

Revealed: How Chanukah Was Celebrated a Thousand Years Ago

A Great Miracle Happened Where? The Origin of the Dreidel

Latkes, Chanukah Donuts and the Head of Holofernes

 

 

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