Question: Why do some people turn the shovel upside-down at a Jewish burial?
Answer: Thanks for your question about turning the shovel upside-down at a funeral.
Not everything that Jews do in their religious rituals is a matter of Jewish law. A lot of the
behaviors that we assume are required aspects of Jewish ritual -- eating braided bread
on Shabbat, for example -- are actually matters of custom, not law. Different Jewish
communities have different customs, or minhagim, for different rituals.
That is why if you spend Shabbat with a Yemenite Jewish family, you may not see a
braided challah on the table. That is a minhag that originated in Europe; not in the Middle
East.
There are many different minhagim for Jewish funerals. Some communities insist that the
shovel used to place earth in the grave must be held upside-down as a sign of reluctance
to fulfill the mitzvah of burying the dead. Some say that just the first shovel of earth should
be done in this way. Some say each person puts in three shovelfulls of earth, some say
more, some say fewer. None of these choices are a matter of Jewish law.
The important thing is not that you insist on just one way of doing things. Customs can
have deep meaning for a community, or they can just be a way for one person to assert
that he is right and everyone else is wrong. Each person, family and community should
follow the customs that are meaningful for them.
Rabbi Jeffrey W. Goldwasser
