How Can We Plan A Memorial Service? An Interview with Rabbi Sara Shendelman

Credit: Rabbi Sara Shendelman

Today, SevenPonds speaks with Rabbi Sara Shendelman, a rabbi and cantor as well as a former ordained minister. Currently based in Berkeley, California, she officiates all types of weddings and conducts memorial services, both interfaith and Jewish, for individual families. She holds an MA in Education from New York University and is the Director and Founder at Jewish Arts Culture and Torah School. She is the author of Traditions: Complete Book of Prayers, Rituals, and Blessings for Every Jewish Home  (1998) and the forthcoming Spiritual Bankruptcy and How to Avoid It: Karmic Debt Can Be Expensive, planned for publication in late spring of 2014. Today, she discusses how she chose to become a rabbi, the types of services she offers for people planning memorial services and her advice for memorial service planning.

Zoë: Why did you choose to become a rabbi?

Rabbi Sara: I did not seek to become a rabbi or cantor. I have always been involved with help services ever since I was a child. I was heavily involved in the Jewish Renewal Program when I was a teenager. I worked as a cantor with some well-known heads of Rabbis, especially Gershon Winkler, the Chief Rabbi of Denmark. He said to me, “You’re doing so much rabbinical work. I might as well ordain you. They’re gifts that I accepted. I’ve always had a strong connection to transitions their rituals, whether weddings or memorial services. Rituals mark and bless a change in our lives. They helps us accept or facilitate our new reality.

Zoë: What types of services do you offer for people planning a memorial service?

Rabbi Sara: My job is to help others breathe in their loss and go through the grieving process. I help them decide rituals would be meaningful for them. I chant both the prayers they select and more traditional ones. I provide a time for meditation and a time for whoever wishes to say a few words or tell a brief story. There’s a Jewish tradition called Shiva where the family sits for seven days, and people come to talk about the person lost. It’s important to create an atmosphere, whether with favorite music or favorite foods at the service, so that everyone feels the joy of that person and tells their story. I believe that the soul lives through all the love and spirit of that person who is now free of pain and wants his friends and family to feel loved and in control.

Rituals mark and bless a change in our lives. They helps us accept or facilitate our new reality.

Zoë: Do you have any advice for readers planning a memorial service?

Rabbi Sara: In sadness and stress, it’s important to feel the community around us, to feel those arms and loving compassion from the people around you. It shows us that although  the person gone loved you, there are still others who love you and hold you in their hearts.

Also, It is only through mourning that we can heal the wound. Tears that are never shed can lock up inside us. I believe the family and friends should be the primary speakers, as they are the ones who loved and were held close. I find the words said by the attendees draw strangers together as they learn of things that they themselves have not known, or appreciated. It becomes a true celebration of the life that has passed.

Credit: Rabbi Sara Shendelman

Zoë: What is your personal approach when conducting a memorial service?

It is only through mourning that we can heal the wound. Tears that are never shed can lock up inside us.

Rabbi Sara: My first approach is to create sacred space by doing ritual. I do this with music, words and some chant. I want to fill the whole room with love and am very careful with creating false intimacy. I’m reminded of my dad’s own funeral where the rabbi was given information from others and gave a nice speech, but he didn’t really know him. I’m a strong advocate for having the people who knew and loved the person lost talk about him or her. We need them to communicate. I always tell the family when I hear the stories, “What a wonderful person. I’m sorry I didn’t know them.” Sometimes, I do know them because I have some people who call on me for everything, whether funerals or happy occasions.

Zoë: Could you please share an example of a creative or unique memorial service you might have conducted?

Rabbi Sara: I worked with a family who lost their 20 year old daughter. The way the family needed to grieve was to keep the journal in which she had written all her poetry. The first day was the funeral. On the second day, everybody gathered at an auditorium and her friends and family read her poetry and the poetry she loved. There were pictures everywhere.

My first approach is to create sacred space by doing ritual. I do this with music, words and some chant. I want to fill the whole room with love

There is a Jewish tradition of unveiling for the tombstone. So we gathered for the ceremony eleven months after the funeral. Her family had a beautiful and one of the most unusual tombstones I’ve seen. There was a butterfly release; it was an example of people wanting to be creative. At the time of her funeral, the family and closest friends got together and released balloons lit with candles. They put messages in them and had them fly into heaven. Her best friend who lived far away from the family left and, when she got home, found the lantern in the yard of her house—thousands of miles from its origin. She felt like her friend was still there and felt her friend’s spirit. There’s continuity. It’s a transition, not a death. How can something as great as a human soul be completely gone?

Zoë: Thank you very much for speaking with us!

Rabbi Sara: You’re welcome! Thanks so much!

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