Audio: Honoring the Body “Taharah”
This evening an interesting podcast found its way into my RSS reader and I thought it was worth sharing with all of you. The latest episode of the Interfaith Radio podcast includes a segment exploring Judaism and its burial rituals. More specifically the ritual of Taharah which apparently involves purifying the bodies of the deceased via ritual washing. Although I can’t say that I’m excited about death, mine or anyone else’s, I am always eager to learn more about Jewish ritual, so I for one found this to be quite informative and educational. As Jews by choice most of us have missed out on experiencing many of Judaisms rituals and life cycle events and to be honest I don’t think that many of us learned that much about death and mourning in the Jewish tradition during our conversion process and that’s why I figured, I should share this audio documentary with our readers. This segment is less than 20 minutes long, so it’s not much of a time commitment and in my opinion worth every minute in terms of its educational value. Said another way, if you’ve got the time to spare I recommend checking it out.
Below is the segment Synopsys as found on the Interfaith Radio website.
Honoring the Body: Taharah
Begins At: 22:50
In Judaism, one of the holiest rituals is the washing of the body for burial, called taharah. In this award-winning documentary, producer Rebecca Sheir explores taharah through the eyes of three people who have performed the rite themselves.
Produced by Rebecca Sheir, host and producer at the Alaska Public Radio Network
Honoring the Body: Taharah was the winner of the 2006 Third Coast International Audio Festival Director’s Choice Award
Just click the image below to open a direct link to a downloadable version of the posdcast
Please don’t forget to scroll forward about 22 minutes into the audio because that’s where the Jewish segment begins.
As always if you do check out the podcast feel free to share your thoughts on it in the comments section below.
Sounds interesting though I won’t be getting a chance to listen to it now. But thanks for sharing it. I remember when my mom passed away and we looked these things up. I think you make a good point in that this is something that should be covered in conversions classes.