And Sarah was Stroking Avraham's Head: Rilke, Pandemic & The Intimacy of Caring for the Dead

Jewish law demands we bury our dead, yet human nature is to "protect the mourner in their grief" by distancing them from doing the act themselves.  Jewish law follows suit by, over time, taking the demand to lovingly care for your dead and creating distance from that to "protect" the grieving.  Rehearsing Rilke's opening from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rabban Gamliel's decrees on simple loving burial (despite our natural inclination to use "do whatever rich people do" as our definition of "honoring" our dead in burial customs), the reawakening to these truths during COVID's guidelines for not touching bodies, and the archaeology of burial caves and ossuaries, I synthesize a different approach.