Sharing a Vigil for the COVID-19 Dead — and Beyond
Grounded in ancient practice, remote vigil-keeping is a way to bear witness and extend ultimate kindness to ALL dead — near and far, whether named or unknown.
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions available HERE!
For further background and context, please read on.
If the following introduction seems too daunting right now, please scroll down to 1) “This is Something I Can Do.”
The bodies of the COVID-19 dead continue to accumulate by the tens of thousands — at the epicenter of the pandemic, as well as worldwide. In New York City, “mass fatality management” has involved multiple temporary morgues and hundreds of refrigerated trailers parked outside dozens of local hospitals. Morgue and funeral workers, cemeteries and crematoria are overwhelmed.
While final dispositions are delayed and bereaved next of kin struggle to locate and claim their own, countless dead are being stored indefinitely in freezer trucks. Even with the best crisis management at this time, it is inevitable that at least some bodies will be misplaced or lost.
In Hebrew, a funeral is called levayah — literally, “accompanying.” Whether the dead are Jewish or not, accompanying is considered ultimate kindness from the moment of death. Right now, most of those who usually cleanse, dress, and lay out the bodies of the dead are either overwhelmed or immobilized by public health constraints.
Yet most of the sacred accompanying between death and burial has always been needed *beyond* the brief hours of body preparation. That's where vigil-keeping comes in.
I have been keeping vigil for the dead in hospital rooms and morgues, funeral home parlors and basements, and private homes for 25 years now. In the midst of our current global crisis, mobilization of community volunteers at these sites is not safe or feasible. How can ultimate kindness be sustained at this time?
On April 5th, WAYS OF PEACE began to renew an ancient Jewish practice of remote nightly vigil — bearing witness to painful realities of exile (broadly defined) through timeless rhythms of response. Below are seven principles for sharing this vigil further.
As with Seven Steps to Sacred Fellowship for pre-pandemic times, please consider the following as notes “on one foot” toward a shared vigil for the COVID-19 dead — now on an interfaith basis, in accordance with ways of peace.
1) “This is Something I Can Do.”
For eight months following the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th, 2001, first responders searched through the wreckage for bodies. The human remains stored in refrigerated trucks outside the NYC medical examiner's office were accompanied by a pluralistic rotation of more than 200 volunteers, keeping vigil around the clock until recovery efforts were suspended in May 2002.
“This is something I can do,” declared Judith Kaplan, one of the late-night Sabbath vigil-keepers from nearby Stern College, who chanted improvised melodies on her overnight shift. “I'm not just praying for the Jewish victims, I'm praying for all those who died, for their families, and for society as a whole,” explained Jessica Moore, who shared the Sabbath vigil. Reflecting on her experience a year later, Sabbath rotation organizer Jessica Russak (Hoffman) affirmed: “Yes, it was depressing and soul-wrenching and spiritually uplifting (literally), but it felt great.”
“This was something they knew how to do,” echoed a reporter in October 2018 as dozens of vigil-keepers mobilized following the Pittsburgh synagogue shootings, again with a diversity of personal practices. The only requirement is the willingness to be respectful and cooperative in the presence of the dead. Most vigil-keepers do not fully realize this until they show up to volunteer.
Participation requires no specialized training or materials. Vigils can be kept alone or shared, in shifts of an hour or longer, sitting in mindful silence or singing softly, chanting sacred texts or reading other appropriate material. As witnessed in the post-9/11 disaster relief, such presence is compelling even when there is no access to the bodies themselves.
Vigil-keeping is also accessible to adolescents, and those just coming of age can be invited to sit with someone older. With a minimal investment of enlightened adult guidance, the cultural fascination with “the undead” can be channeled toward a helpful involvement in honoring the actual dead.
2) “Don't Just Do Something, Sit There.”
This is the title of a book by American meditation pioneer Sylvia Boorstein, who identifies as “a faithful Jew and a passionate Buddhist.” Many of us who would be otherwise springing into public action are facing painful questions of how best to be of service during this crisis. Boorstein reminds us that such questions are timeless: “Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart's capacity to accept life as it is.”
In “The Supreme Meditation,” Boorstein's spiritual colleague Larry Rosenberg describes his long-ago formative experience of keeping an overnight vigil for an anonymous laborer, whose body had washed up on the coast of Mexico more than a week after drowning. The vigil had been requested so that the body — already in the process of decay — would be respectfully attended until the dead man’s Catholic priest arrived from another city. Rosenberg's spiritual guide at the time had arranged for the two of them to keep this vigil as “a great incentive to practice….That is the ultimate gift this [dead] man gives us. He offers us a strong motivation for spiritual practice.”
Across cultures and faith traditions, vigil-keeping for the dead is a profound yet simple meditation — one that can open our hearts to the full, vulnerable beauty of human experience. Pausing to find stillness at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of our busy days, we can discover ways to honor all those whose deaths intimately connect us with our own humanity. Healing wisdom can release and clarify our vision in times of shattering, allowing for real accountability and effective action.
3) Think Globally, Sit Locally (Principles over Personalities, Revisited).
The ultimate challenges of ultimate kindness involve offering egalitarian care to ALL community members, regardless of social status or personal connections. The COVID-19 crisis has renewed considerations of Hart Island, the largest mass burial ground in the United States, as well as of the Hebrew Free Burial Association.
Many Jewish burial fellowships have made the painful decision not to mobilize for taharah at this time, given the public health risks of members working in close physical proximity. Others have moved ahead with streamlined rituals, relying more extensively on personal protective equipment as they care for overwhelming numbers of dead.
Some of the strain on burial fellowships could be observed by early April. In the midst of a shortened funeral for a Hasidic Holocaust survivor, his bereaved family was suddenly notified that the body before them actually belonged to an unknown stranger. After the body of the Holocaust survivor was restored and his burial completed, his granddaughter shared her realization that praying over the “wrong body” was actually the fulfillment of a supreme imperative: to honor the unclaimed dead. What seemed at first like a ghastly mistake was transformed into a tribute to her grandfather's unassuming piety.
In the past, vigil-keepers have often found ourselves sitting with more than one body at a funeral home or morgue, and many of us have extended our attentive presence to include all of those lying before us. In the chaos of the current pandemic, we may never know how many bodies of the dead will be misplaced or lost worldwide. Remote vigil-keeping is an opportunity to bear witness to this reality while extending ultimate kindness to ALL dead — near and far, whether named or unknown.
4) All Through the Night: Every Day — and Every Hour — Counts.
For decades, on-site vigil-keeping in my synagogue community has been organized in two-hour shifts around the clock, with volunteers sitting alone or in pairs. I've generally taken the wee-hours shifts between 2-6 am. In this pandemic, a one-hour remote vigil seems most appropriate — especially as a projected daily commitment over the long term.
From our location in Eastern (U.S.) Time, we think of our connections in Central Time, Mountain Time, Pacific Time, even New Zealand Time, and envision a worldwide network of vigil-keepers sitting all through the hours that roll across our global time zones. Some individuals will commit to one hour daily or nightly; others may organize as a group to share coverage of a particular hour between seven or more vigil-keepers in a weekly rotation.
The 30-day period known as sh'loshim marks a turning point in the Jewish mourning process after a death. The first 30 days of my midnight vigil have overlapped with the season of daily counting between Passover and Shavu'ot, traditionally a communal period of semi-mourning. The 33rd day of counting, known as LaG b'Omer, represents the lifting of a plague that killed tens of thousands of Jewish scholars — and a call for greater respect toward our fellow human beings. If not now, when?
5) All Lives are Connected Across Space and Time.
In November 2005 I participated in a multi-faith Bearing Witness retreat in Poland on the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Nearly fifteen years later — and seventeen days into my midnight vigil — I kept my laptop on, even though it is my general practice to sit unplugged and screen-free.
The annual NYC “Reading of the Names” for Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day had been moved online, with readers from diverse Upper West Side congregations participating around the clock from their homes. The ceremony was originally organized by my sacred fellowship mentor Myriam Abramowicz, a filmmaker and daughter of Holocaust survivors, whose quiet and steady presence continued to guide readers through the emotional charges and additional technical challenges of this year's ceremony.
Thirty days later, I kept my laptop on again during a 24-hour #NamingTheLost vigil of shared grief, love, remembrance and recommitment. As it happened, the midnight hour of this multifaith offering ended with a beautiful recitation of the traditional Mourners' Kaddish (Sanctification).
My bearing witness has been supported by trust in sacred fellowship as a way to send healing — back and forward, across space and time — to ALL suffering souls and desecrated bodies. And as I listened to some of the millions of names read aloud so reverently this year, I bore witness to how such healing extends to all those who will inevitably remain unnamed.
6) Remain Mindful of Funeral Ecosystems.
Our natural ecosystems are always impacted by human ecosystems of funeral arrangements — each organic, inorganic, emotional, social, and economic component impacting and modifying the others. As a funeral ecosystem, the natural burial of levayah traditionally balances biodegradability (“To dust you shall return”), sustainability (“Do not waste or destroy”), simplicity and equality (“All should be brought out on a plain bier for the honor of the poor”), presence, protection, and solidarity (“at the time of bringing out the dead, all must stop work and accompany them”).
COVID-19 funeral regulations internationally have included burial in plastic body bags, and even calls for compulsory cremation that ignore official guidelines. As funeral practices are navigated through many unknowns, we can remain mindful that environmentally destructive practices are making a comeback. We can monitor the broader setbacks to global sustainability that include expanded plastics manufacturing and increased fuel / chemical consumption — and that even endanger sacred burial grounds. We need to remember that the long-term damage will disproportionately affect the most vulnerable communities struggling with economic inequality and climate change worldwide.
Pausing for vigil can help us stay vigilant to these painful developments — again, near and far — as we clarify best practices for engaged action. And beyond the vigil, a better understanding of levayah and the funeral ecosystem that it represents can help us to navigate the range of final choices that face all of us.
7) Keep It Simple — and Keep It Going.
As we renew and improvise vigil-keeping for the COVID-19 dead, there are many opportunities for personalized practice. When sitting, I generally orient myself toward the NYC disaster morgue in Brooklyn. Others may choose to orient themselves toward their local hospitals.
Some may choose to orient themselves in a traditionally prescribed direction, like those who rise for “Midnight Repair” to mourn destruction and exile. Some may sit in front of a window or door, or facing another household member with whom the vigil can be shared.
Some may sit silently, as I do. Some may sing, as I also do between periods of silence. Psalms, lullabies and love songs, laments and elegies, hymns and spirituals can all offer perspective as well as solace. Some may read and reflect upon Rev. Lynn Ungar's poem Pandemic, or Brother Richard Hendrick's poem Lockdown.
Some may explore additional Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, or other sacred texts and rituals, and/or other inspirational materials — with full respect for our diversity of faith traditions, and with the clear understanding that no one will be proselytized or converted in any way.
And when the cloud lengthened many days over the Tabernacle, the children of Israel kept the vigil of the ULTIMATE and did not move on. — Numbers 9:19
The ancient Israelites, camping beneath a great cloud in the wilderness, never knew when the cloud would rise and move them forward — and they never knew when the cloud would again descend and bring them to a sudden halt. Today's clouds of grief and trauma continue to rise and descend beyond our human regulation. As in the biblical wilderness, vigil-keeping can help to restore our broken rhythms of community life.
In the spirit of all these offerings and ways of peace, may our vigil-keeping expand into a global interfaith mobilization of compassionate, courageous commitment.
“All the rest is commentary. Go forth, learn” — and share the kindness.
My life-force for the Ultimate, more than vigil-keepers for the morning, vigil-keepers for the morning. — Psalm 130:6
I want to express the gratitude that I have felt for fellow vigil-keepers since my own first vigil over the dead, a quarter-century ago: Thank you for volunteering to fulfill this mitzvah / imperative of ultimate kindness. Your presence means more than anyone can ever say.
Ar Hyd y Nos / All Through the Night
Original Welsh poem by John Ceiriog Hughes (1832-1887)
New singable English rendering lovingly dedicated
to all the dead, survivors, and vigil-keepers everywhere
All the eyelids of the stars say—
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
“Vale of glory beckons this way”
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
Suffering at these times is winter
Yet to beautify life further
We’ll put our weak light together
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
“Share the Vigil” is a How to Mourn AND Organize initiative of WAYS OF PEACE.
For more information, please see our Frequently Asked Questions. To support or join the vigil, please write to SharetheVigil@gmail.com.
