Jewish funerals - just watched waking the dead on tv.....?

Question

and at the jewish family funeral, everyone placed a pebble on the grave.

Just wondered what the significance is of this please.

Thanks.

xx

Answer 1

At Sikh funerals they place money in the coffin ( lots of it!) then cremate the body. I understand this is a traditional custom but what a waste of money! At least give it to charity or something!

Answer 2

There is a belief, with roots in the Talmud, that souls continue to dwell for a while in the graves in which they are placed. In the Eastern European folk imagination, these souls -- even those that were benign in life -- can take on a certain terror in death. The stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer and the plays of the Yiddish theatre, rich in the mythology of Eastern European Jewry, are filled with these types of hauntings: souls who returned, for whatever reason, to the world of the living.

The practice of leaving stones atop a grave can be explained as a response to these beliefs. More than a simple marker of one's visit, stones on the grave are the means by which the living help souls remain where they belong -- in the grave where they do no haunting.

Another beautiful answer to the stones on graves question takes its cue from the inscription on many gravestones: the five-letter Hebrew abbreviation taf, nun, tsadi, bet, hey, which stands for "teheye nishmato tsrurah b'tsror haChayyim." This phrase is usually translated as "May his soul be bound up in the bounds of eternal life" -- a phrase wishing for eternal life for the departed.

Yet tsror (the fourth word of the Hebrew phrase) can also be translated as "pebble." Suddenly, the phrase takes on a more nuanced meaning, based on the historical significance of pebbles.

Answer 3

We don't use flowers because they deteriorate quickly and the money could be put to better use. The stones are to signify that others have been there who care about the deceased.
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Answer 4

I was always taught that we do it to show that we were there, that people came to visit. There is probably a deeper historal meaning though.