Pregnant Women Going to the Cemetery
Adapted from Rabbi Braun’s sermon in 5773
One of the questions that I get often, from those who are connected and from those who are not, is “I am pregnant – am I allowed to go to the cemetery for the funeral?”
It is a fascinating question in its own right and one that highlights the interplay between the things that we do, why we do them and what we actually believe.
I think that most people believe that pregnant women should not go to the cemetery out of concern for the fetus. They believe that going to the cemetery is dangerous and might result in the termination of the pregnancy and the death of the fetus.
It is fascinating to note that there is not a single halachik source for this custom, anywhere in the Talmud or in any of the codes.
There are Aggadic discussions about whether women should go to the cemetery at all, unrelated to pregnancy, and halachik discussions about a woman who is married to a Kohen and pregnant entering a cemetery but there are no discussions about pregnant women entering the cemetery at all.
I began to look for contemporary sources this week, and I did manage to find a few although not a single one of these sources was concerned that simply entering a cemetery was medically dangerous to the fetus.
The first approach and for me the most difficult- I found online on mikvah.org and in a sefer called Nishmas Yisrael, written in Boro Park by a rabbi named Yisrael Dovid Harpenem.
Their basic argument is that the unborn child is impacted by what its mother sees. Literally, the nature and character of this unborn child is partially formed by the experiences of the mother.
When I read this online I was ready to dismiss it and move on. I gave it a second thought when I saw it in this sefer but only a second thought. I am not sure who this person is but the fact that it is written in a book in Hebrew and called Torah does not make it so!
If you are inclined to such a position then you would have to be consistent. Rabbi Harpenem writes that for the same reason a pregnant woman must try hard not to sin and to avoid looking at places of sin lest they affect the child.
The second approach can be found in the only serious source that I could find to address the question. After stating that he too could find no source for the custom, Rabbi Yitzchak Weiss, South Africa and Jerusalem in the 20th century, writes (Minchas Yitzchak 10/42/2) that this custom actually relates to the purification process involving the red heifer.
The Torah describes the fascinating ritual of the Parah Adumah (red heifer) whose ashes mixed with water were used in the purification of one who came in contact with the dead and was thus ritually impure.
Many precautions were taken to ensure that whoever handled the ashes and the water was absolutely pure. The Mishnah3 tells of a colony of children in Jerusalem who lived in an area specifically constructed to prevent their contracting any sort of ritual impurity. These super-pure children would then have the honor of drawing water to be mixed with ash.
Rabbi Weiss posits that the women who chose to raise their children in this colony would take care not to come in contact with anything impure—including cemeteries—for the entire duration of their pregnancies. He suggests that even though we are now in exile and there is neither Parah Adumah nor a special colony of children to draw the water, pregnant women still avoid going to cemeteries out of faith and hope that the era of Moshiach will come soon, and their children will be the first to enroll in the special colony.
This is a beautiful idea. But it is clearly not the reason for the custom, rather a post facto reason to try and explain an existing custom. It is also most definitely not what people believe when they tell pregnant relatives to stay home from the cemetery.
Furthermore if that is the sole reason, then respect for the deceased should override this concern.
The last and most reasonable approach is offered by Machon Puah, an institute devoted to infertility and halacha in Israel. They too begin by noting that there is no source for this common custom and then suggest that the concern here is – how will the emotions of the funeral affect the pregnant woman and her unborn child. That transforms this from a religious custom to a common sense activity. If a woman is nervous that heightened emotion will add stress and be harmful she should stay home. But if not…
They then offer an exception that really gives away their feelings about the strength of the custom. Any time you want to test he strength of a custom or even rabbinic law you see how much it takes to push it aside.
What if the women is only 2 months pregnant and does not want people to know and she knows that staying home from the cemetery will be a dead giveaway that she is pregnant. Can she go to avoid letting people know that she is pregnant? Machon Puah believes that the answer is yes, under those circumstances she may go without any concern at all.
It did not take much for them to push the custom aside.
For me the critical question is – why not simply dismiss the custom. We have no source for it, the attempted explanations range from shaky to bad, and we are preventing someone from giving proper respect to the deceased.
I sent an email to a respected posek that I at times consult with and asked him, is there any good reason that a pregnant woman should not go to the cemetery?
His response was one word, NO- there is no reason she should not go.
I think the real issue is: Do we accept things simply because they have become “not custom” but practiced? Do we accept them even when the prevalent underlying understanding is at odds with traditional Jewish ideas?
I know that this is a pet peeve of mine and you have heard me speak about if often but it is a pet peeve of mine.
I think these ideas, that we have the power to kill unborn children, or that God will allow the death of this child because you entered a cemetery are not traditional Jewish ideas and are not consistent with the idea of a benevolent God.
Yet they persist. We should fight them and try to reclaim our Judaism!
