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A radical departure
By Neri Livneh
The route to the crematorium is winding and
passes down a number of side roads and dirt paths. Alon Nativ,
the owner and manager of Alei Shalekhet ("Autumn
Leaves") has had us sign a confidentiality agreement
prior to this trip, but it was hardly necessary. We'd never be
able to retrace the path we took following closely behind
Nativ's big motorcycle. The crematorium is located behind a
makeshift-looking tin barrier, in a place that looks like an
agricultural industrial zone a jumble of garages and packing
houses amid which remnants of orchards are still visible
somewhere in the Sharon region. Nothing is meant to give away
the presence of a crematorium here.
The person who leased the land to Nativ is worried about
becoming the target of attacks from ultra-Orthodox groups.
This is the source of the secrecy surrounding the event to
which we have been invited the cremation of the body of an
older man who died two days earlier. The atmosphere is
mysterious and somewhat adventurous, almost criminal-feeling,
though everything that will be done is perfectly legal, and
approved with consents and signatures.
The operation of a crematorium does not require any special
conditions or even that much space. Behind the tin fence is a
not-very-large building with an ambulance parked beside it.
Amir, a man of about 40 who sports a kippah, lights the oven
inside. The oven is the story: It is the only one of its kind
in Israel; it heats up to a temperature of 1,200 degrees
Celsius and, according to Nativ, cost millions of shekels and
was specially ordered from the United States. Next to it is an
appliance resembling a food-processor, used post-cremation to
make the ashes "pureed and smooth," as Nativ
describes it.
Amir and Nativ pull a cardboard box out of the ambulance; it
looks like a huge, long shoebox, except that the word
"head" is written on one end. As they transfer it to
the stretcher, the sides of the carton collapse a little and
the (fully dressed) corpse inside is partially revealed.
"This is a disposable coffin," Nativ explains. Does
such a thing really exist? There are wooden coffins, which are
used for burial, and cardboard ones, which are used for
cremation.
Amir, a medic by trade, underwent special training in the
cremating of human bodies with an American expert who was
invited to Israel. "I check each body before the
cremation," he says, displaying a rod-shaped metal
detector similar to the ones used by security guards at the
entrance to shopping malls. "If there's a heartbeat, I
catch it right away. They usually find that in the hospital,
but I check again just in case."
"In the United States alone, approximately 15,000 Jews
are cremated each year!" proclaims an Alei Shalekhet
advertising brochure. Hallelujah. But what else can you do
when even cremation has to be advertised somehow and when
there's no better way than to use those magic words "like
in America"? On the other hand, what about the
associations this kind of thing stirs up? Nativ says he isn't
thinking at all about the Holocaust but "more about
people like Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and John Lennon,
who all explicitly requested that their bodies be
cremated."
Nativ's marketing methodology aims to create the impression
that cremation just like the option to be buried in a coffin,
with or without makeup, with clothing or shrouds, in a secular
ceremony with or without religious nuances, with or without
musical accompaniment and so on, for the price of NIS 6,500 is
the latest thing among the movers and shakers in Israeli
society. He also drops heavy hints about "very,
very" famous people who appear on his secret waiting list
of about 200 names. This is not your conventional waiting
list: The people on it would be quite content to go on waiting
forever.
Planning their final departure
The people on Nativ's waiting list are the type who prefer to
take care ahead of time of all the arrangements surrounding
their death. These are people who know exactly how they wish
to part from the world. Aside from the death itself (and not
even that in every case), they are not interested in leaving
anything to chance. You may be tempted to call them control
freaks people who can't ever relax and leave it to others
around them to get the job done. Nativ prefers to call them
"responsible people."
Who taught him to burn Jews, I asked Nativ at our first
meeting, in a coffee shop at a gas station on the coastal
road. Nothing in the fair-haired and light-eyed motorcyclist's
appearance hints at any morbid leanings. He is 42 and comes
from a fine family; his older sister is an oncologist and
another sister is a Technion graduate. He used to work in
high-tech and spent a lot of time in Europe, in the Czech
Republic mostly, where he saw funerals of a different kind
than he was accustomed to.
Cemeteries in other countries like the Pere Lachaise cemetery
in Paris, for instance are sometimes beautiful tourist sites
as well, or sometimes just a peaceful corner of a tree-filled
churchyard. The cemeteries in Israel are another story
altogether, except for the cemeteries of kibbutzim and
moshavim. The religious funerals in Israel also bear no
resemblance to those that are held abroad and which are often
seen in movies. There, the mourning is always well-designed: a
small group of elegant people men in suits, women in
wide-brimmed hats, the widow in a black dress and black hat,
the fine wooden coffin even the deceased looks his best.
By comparison, funerals in Israel are not very aesthetic.
Delicacy isn't always the strong suit of the Hevra Kadisha
burial society workers. Frequently, they rush and don't speak
clearly, and afterward, there's the sight of the bodies in
sacks tossed into the graves. And with the cemeteries already
being so crowded, often several funerals are taking place at
once, so it is quite noisy. In certain places, the mourners
have to step over other graves and crowd amid the headstones
to get near the open grave.
Anyone who has been to secular funerals, however, can't help
but notice the tremendous difference. The cemeteries, which
generally belong to the kibbutzim, are well-tended and shady;
the ceremonies are carefully organized and the words recited
there have a clear connection to the life and spirit of the
deceased. The body is concealed in the coffin. The mourners
are given time to bid the deceased farewell. No one forces the
deceased who was secular his entire life to join religious
Judaism against his will.
But such funerals long ago became almost a type of status
symbol, both because they entail the need to purchase a plot
in a kibbutz cemetery and therefore are more expensive, and
because they require much careful planning. Many people who
may have liked to organize such a funeral for their loved one
are deterred in the end by all the arrangements they're
required to make, and during the most trying time of grief,
especially when the person has died at home: to arrange for an
ambulance and a refrigeration room, to find a place in one of
the kibbutzim and to see to an amplification system, chairs,
programs and someone to preside over the funeral, a coffin,
transportation and much more.
Cremation aside, Alei Shalekhet is the first company to offer
to take care of all the arrangements. "People who've used
our services have said to me: 'Suddenly I felt like I was
coming to the funeral as a guest,'" Nativ relates
proudly. When he began advertising his business about a year
ago, he received a congratulatory letter from linguistics
professor and chairman of the Ani Yisraeli ("I am an
Israeli") organization, Uzi Ornan. .?About 40 years ago,
I tried to establish such a [burial] society to replace the
Hevra Kadisha," Ornan says. "I even came up with a
great name for it Afar Ve'Efer ("Dust and Ashes")
and we were in discussions with the owners of lands that would
be designated for cemeteries, but in the end, I couldn't get
it off the ground. It required a lot of money and the people I
turned to weren't receptive. When I saw the ad for Alei
Shalekhet, I wrote them a card to congratulate them, and later
I met with Alon Nativ and told him about my experiences."
And have you chosen to arrange your funeral ahead of time with
Alei Shalekhet?
"No. The way I wish to die and be buried is a personal
matter and I have no desire to talk about it. Alei Shalekhet
mostly deals with ceremonies, but they don't have their own
cemeteries. Their ceremonies are lovely and the main thing is
that they don't force anything on anyone. They adapt the
ceremony to each individual. But the ceremony isn't as
important to me as the cemetery. To me, it's very important
not to have any of this religious business. I don't want them
to take my body and put it in a Jewish cemetery. And I don't
want the Hevra Kadisha to get near me at all because I don't
want to discriminate against people according to their
background or their religion. I want everyone to be equal. In
Israel, there is discrimination, not just among the living but
among the dead. Perhaps you are aware that all the Hevra
Kadisha societies are aimed at one religion alone, to which I
don't belong and in which I am not interested. The religious
have power and the establishment has the power to bring people
into Judaism against their will after their death. I don't'
want to support this establishment or to support the Hevra
Kadisha."
No, Nativ doesn't think is a little weird to be an
"undertaker," as his kids refer to his occupation.
Then he says that all he really did was identify a business
opportunity, and that his first introduction to the idea
occurred when a relative showed up at his mother's home asking
to spread her husband's ashes in his mother's garden.
"And in addition there was my own personal desire. I
thought about how I'd like to be buried. I thought I'd prefer
that my body was cremated. I'd seen people have all sorts of
run-ins with the Hevra Kadisha and I didn't like it."
Some time after that, in 2003, "I happened to end up
running around with a friend of mine after the death of his
father, who was a total atheist. We were running around trying
to find a secular burial place for his father and in the end
we found a place on a kibbutz, but it was all done under time
pressure and the whole ceremony was practically improvised on
the spot and I saw how complicated the whole thing can be.
Even a question like who do you inform becomes a big problem
when the father kept all his friends' phone numbers on the
computer and you need a code to get into it. When I came home
I said to my wife: 'When I die, I want them to cremate my body
and I want a secular funeral. I want such and such to be said
and for these people and not other people to come.' And my
wife said to me: 'I could never organize all that. You want
it? You take care of it.' So that's what I decided to
do."
He searched for ways to do it and traveled abroad to learn the
business. "I visited a lot of funeral homes and attended
many funerals. I read all the material one could read on the
subject. In America, it's a whole recognized field of study
called 'Funeral Directing' you study for a diploma and have to
pass exams. I also studied the legal aspects of it and found
that there was no legal prohibition in Israel against the
cremation of bodies, or regarding secular burials in an open
or closed coffin. Theoretically, anyone could open a funeral
home or a crematorium."
In June 2004, together with a silent partner, he launched Alei
Shalekhet. He opened an office in one of the Kfar Sava malls
at the beginning of this year and since March, has been
operating the crematorium as well. He is currently negotiating
with several landowners to purchase land for the purpose of
building private cemeteries.
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