The Essence of Life: Communing with Death
Written by Jess Winter, Photography by Casey Gordon
Sheera LaBelle volunteers to care for the dead in Portland’s Jewish community. She finds God through performing an archaic ritual.
Sheera LaBelle’s face brightens when she talks about death. She recalls her walks to the Jewish Funeral Home of Portland and the Chevra Kadisha Chapel. She stands patiently outside and prepares herself to walk down the stairs and enters the basement which is filled with the pungent smell of decomposition. She concentrates as she describes the feeling of the basement. “Well, it’s a bit cold when you think about it. I mean the table is a metal table, that’s cold…I mean, there is kind of a cold institutional feel to it.”
Sheera walks gracefully to her kitchen chair and sits, hands wrapped around a half-empty mug, waiting anxiously for the coffee that drips in the machine behind her. Sheera’s sun-kissed face is full of warmth as she tilts her head, smiles, and she begins to tell of her childhood. Mostly, she recollects her questions of Judaism and how she began to find God in death.
Like her mother used to, Sheera performs Tahara.
Sheera never planned to care for the dead. She was contacted 20 years ago by Portland’s Chevra Kadisha, the Jewish burial society. The call was unexpected. She assumes she was contacted because of her nursing background and because her mother did Tahara. She still does not know how they found her. Sheera thinks it was serendipity: “It was so bashert. Meant to be, and certain things are meant to be.” Sheera was asked to observe Tahara, and she accepted.
Tahara is a cleaning and purification ritual which is conducted shortly after death. It is customary that men perform on men and women on women. In Judaism, the body is not embalmed and there is no viewing. The dead should be remembered as if they were still alive. Jews try to keep the cleaning process as respectful as possible by keeping the body covered. After the purification, the individuals performing Tahara ask for forgiveness for anything they have done to offend the dead.
Each time a Jewish woman dies, Sheera receives a phone call telling her what time she needs to meet three other women from the Portland Chevra Kadisha at the funeral home. Upon arriving, the women put on surgical gloves and blue smocks before lifting the body onto the table.
As she speaks, Sheera’s voice is thick with compassion. “The whole time we keep a sheet on them and really try to keep them covered as much as possible. Especially their face, so it’s a modest procedure.” Sheera looks at her hands as she begins to clean her nails. She uses her body as a map, pointing to all the places that are cleaned: hair, nails, arms and legs. Pretending to clothe herself in shrouds of white linen, Sheera lifts one leg into the air at a time and ties the pants with an invisible string. “I will often take my gloves off after the person has been dressed in their burial shrouds as we are moving the person into the casket…The body is often cold because it’s been in the cooler…I like to have my bare hands on the casket.” On the lid, like Braille, there is a Star of David. “It’s a nice feeling coming to a close. I feel like I’ve done kind of a good deed and sent the person on whatever trip they’re going on.”
In Judaism, Tahara is the ultimate mitzvah—the ultimate act of kindness. Sheera sits at the counter. Her wrinkles, gently etched on her face, are more evident when she smiles. “I think I like to help and part of Judaism is doing Tzedakah [an act of charity] making the world a better place…I think for me, it’s just a way of making things better, doing something really.”
Since she was young, Sheera has grappled with the existence of God. She remembers living in a kosher household with a deeply religious mother and an agnostic father. She used to watch her father wrestle with his faith. “I could see sometimes how he would struggle with it and go along with it so much for my mom. But I think he could care less on certain level.”
Like her father, she too began to question her faith. “I think some of it just seemed like such bullshit. You know, it just seemed very rote and I think I always questioned it.”
After her Bat Mitzvah, Sheera stopped going to synagogue. She continued to remain unaffiliated until she had children.
Sheera and her husband decided to raise their two daughters in the Jewish tradition. “I wanted them to have some sort of singular identity. I mean growing up with friends who were half-and-half…celebrating Christmas and having a Bat Mitzvah…I felt very strongly that I wanted to raise my kids Jewish.” After her daughters completed high school, Sheera again stopped going to synagogue and went back to her unaffiliated self.
Sheera knows Tahara is something her daughters are unwilling to do. She says they are uncomfortable at the sight of death. Without new participants, no one really knows what will happen to the tradition. Even though Sheera is uncertain of Tahara’s future, she will continue helping until she is physically unable.
While participating in Tahara, Sheera finds God. From the beginning of the ritual she feels his presence. “I do feel closer or more in touch with the essence of life and death. And I don’t know what that feeling is, but I can frequently just feel like shivery…I’m just very highly aware.”
Looking around her kitchen, she shakes her head. The drones of a lawn mower are muffled as the last blades of grass are eaten before winter. Stumbling over words, she says, “…[Tahara] will actually make me feel like I’m out in nature or having that spiritual moment, communing with life.” Sheera continues, “I think it’s probably one of the very few sort of spiritual things that feels meaningful to me…It’s a time where I do feel close to God.”
