Visualizing a “Holy Society:” An 18th Century Czech Painting Cycle of Jewish Obligation to the Dead

When we think about how people encounter the dead, perhaps the most obvious set of interactions would be between the corpse and those who prepare it for burial or cremation. In a panel about how Jews are in “community” with the dead, we should consider how those who care for the dead body, traditionally known as the members of the chevra kaddisha translated as “holy society,” consider themselves obligated to corpses and to the larger community. What is the nature of the community built between the chevra kaddisha and the bodies they care for?

In order to answer this question this paper takes as its subject matter a painting cycle created in the 1780s for the chevra kaddisha in Prague. These 15 paintings are unusual for showing in great detail all the steps required to have a Jewish burial according to the Ashkenazi rite. There were also four additional paintings created for the cycle in the 1830-1840s. Unsurprising for the subject matter, the paintings include the image of the corpse of a Jewish man. Notably however, the corpse is never the sole focal point of the image – every image includes multiple figures, and the corpse is never the center of attention. This makes the paintings doubly unusual: the inclusion of a corpse is rare in Jewish art, and the choice to not center the corpse makes the images distinct from other religious iconography of death. This allows us to ask about what the paintings are trying to do by showing the process of the caring for the dead through the inclusion of both the corpse but also the myriad men and women who partake in its care. In this paper I will argue that the paintings demonstrate how care for the dead requires and builds a particular kind of community – one that extends from the chevra kaddisha members, to the mourners, to the larger Jewish community, and to the dead themselves. The paintings thus demonstrate, in a way unique to visual imagery, the intimacy and importance of intra-communal obligations to the dead, particularly in a moment of intense state pressure to change those rituals of care.

Unfortunately, little is known about these paintings and there is virtually no archival documentation found so far about their commission, creation, or purpose. The historical context of these paintings is key to understanding their significance and role in the ethics of Jewish death and dying. During the period of the paintings’ creation Prague was ruled by the Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II who tried to impose various new Enlightenment era hygiene reforms on the chevra kaddisha. The reforms, including waiting a significantly longer period to bury the body and moving cemeteries out of the center of the city, were met with opposition from the Jewish community who considered their traditional death rituals sacred and safe. It is during this conflict that these paintings were created, depicting the traditional rites while including symbols of modern hygienic science (for example the inclusion of chevra kaddisha member and prominent Prague physician Jonas Jeitteles). Thus these paintings can be understood as political and ideological documents, attempting to defend traditional values and obligations to the dead in the face of state opposition.

It is not entirely clear whether these paintings were made to show visually the significance of Jewish death rituals to the non-Jewish authorities. From the 19th century additions however, we know that these paintings were on display in the chevra kaddisha’s banquet hall, and would have been decorating the walls of the room as the chevra kaddisha’s members celebrated their annual banquet. I will thus argue that the paintings operate as a reminder of their ever present sacred obligation for the members, even during a moment of merriment. The paintings depict proper and somber practice, and during the 19th century the attachment to these rituals would have only been weakened as the old ghetto was torn down, and more and more Jews attempted to assimilate. The paintings’ presence would have visually reinforced, in a way more direct than text, the need to keep up these sacred rituals and remain in obligated community with the dead.

When looking at the paintings closely some details emerge that illustrate what these images present beyond what would have been in the chevra kaddisha’s manuals for caring for the dead. It is particularly noticeable that the paintings all include at least four figures and many include more than ten. They thus show the kind of embodied intimacy between the chevra kaddisha’s members as well as between the living and the dead body. The paintings also depict the family of the dead and lay members of the Jewish community who support the chevra kaddisha through the giving of tzedakah, or alms. The paintings move between the domestic sphere, the chevra kaddisha’s building, the street, and the cemetery. They thus draw communal connections between the dead body, the subject of the care, the members of the chevra kaddisha, the larger Jewish community, and the mourners, as well as the spaces they all inhabit. The pictures thus visually illustrate the entanglement of connections, obligations, and spatial relationships between all of those who interact with the chevra kaddisha and the dead. Here care for the dead literally takes a village (or more accurately the entire Jewish ghetto of Prague): all participate and all must be respected.

It is thus my contention that the paintings present a visual document of what it means to be in holy community with the newly dead. Within their historical context these paintings operate as an argument both internally within the chevra kaddisha and outwards toward the larger civic society about the sacredness of Jewish death rituals and the larger communal and inter-relational nature of death-care obligations. The paintings are worth studying, alongside textual sources, for understanding the communal nature of Jewish death obligations, and particularly can illustrate an embodied intimacy between the living and the dead absent in textual records.