In Israel, a Jerusalem District Court last week upheld the right of Shmuel Rosen's wife and two sons to carry out the recently-deceased Rosen's wishes to have his body cremated. Today's Jerusalem Post reports on the legal controversy surrounding the request. Rosen, an 80-year old Holocaust survivor, lived as an atheist. However cremation is inconsistent with Jewish religious law, and on that basis, a distant relative of Rosen's went to court to oppose the cremation. Since World War II, cremation has also been identified by some with Hitler's crematoria. However, Israel's attorney general's office advised the Jerusalem court that there was apparently no legal prohibition in Israeli law on cremation -- which is offered only by one funeral home in the country. The court's honoring of Rosen's wishes may give impetus to a proposal that was introduced in the Knesset in 2005 to ban cremation, or any other alternative to burial of Jews that damages the body.
UPDATE: On Monday, Knesset member Ya'acov Cohen (United Torah Judaism) introduced an amendment to the burial law to effectively ban cremation. (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 8).
