My uncle died in childhood in the 1940s in Egypt. He is buried at the Jewish cemetery in Cairo.
Sadly, his family left Egypt in the 1950s. Today there are less than 100 Jews left in the country. We’re worried what will become of that cemetery when there is no one left to protect it.
My family was wondering: Is it permitted, under Jewish law or custom, to move his remains. We’d like to bury his remains next to those of his parents in Canada.
Yes, it is permitted to remove remains from a Jewish cemetary to bury them in another cemetary.
When reburial is done, the immediate family of the deceased must observe a short period of shiva. Please contact a rabbi for more details on how this should properly be done.
Zev Steinhardt
I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but after being buried for 60 years, will there be anything left to move?
Why wouldn’t there be? They exhume graves a hell of a lot older than that all the time.
I suppose it would depend entirely on the condition of the grave and cemetary. In some climates, human remains in graves can last hundreds or thousands of years. In others (where flooding is common, for example), the entire body (skeleton and all) can degrade to nothing in less than a century.
Zev Steinhardt
That’s a pretty ironic thing to say, considering the man’s buried in Egypt.
I’m not Jewish, but I recall reading (on these very boards, matter o’ fact) that Jewish custom is to bury the dead as quickly as possible in a simple pine box. I think embalming is forbidden. Because a Jewish body isn’t locked up and preserved as is the custom in some cultures, it may decay to nothing surprisingly quickly depending on soil and climate conditions, as Zev stated.