In the morning on the first day of Chol HaMoed, I called the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to try to arrange an emergency passport. “My eighty-one-year-old mother is very ill,” I had planned to explain, “and I need to travel to Arizona immediately.” I even had a letter signed by her doctor explaining the severity of her health issues. I had planned to use the letter as testimony in case there was any difficulty processing my application for a passport.

The embassy was closed, though, because of a legal holiday in the US, so I dialed the embassy’s emergency number and explained the situation. In truth, in the week since I’d received the doctors’ letter, my mother’s situation had improved slightly, but I had an inexplicable desire to go see her, so I faxed the doctor’s letter over to the embassy, along with a short note requesting a passport.

A few minutes later, I received a call back. Someone would be there to open the doors and give me a passport! I felt that Hashem was removing all the red tape. Quickly, my wife and I took a cab to Tel Aviv and within an hour and a half I had an American passport in hand. Meanwhile, back in Bnei Brak, my daughter had called Rabbi Moshe Gafni of Degel HaTorah, who arranged an emergency exit visa for me from the Israeli side.

Packing for my trip, I sawed my lulav almost in half so it would fit it into my suitcase. Paranoid about the top leaves, I carefully packed the lulav, along with my esrog and the other minim, saying a short prayer that they would remain kosher despite the bumping and jostling they would suffer as baggage. I said goodbye to my wife and children, and by 5 p.m. I was on a plane on my way to Phoenix, Arizona, with a stopover in New York.

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early 20 hours later, on the third day of Chol Hamoed, having hardly slept, I landed at the Phoenix airport, retrieved my suitcase and started walking toward the exit to find Charles and Danny, who had arranged to pick me up. Anxious as I was about my mother, I was excited. I had not seen my parents in over ten years, and I had not seen my brothers in almost 20!

I scanned the arrivals area with anticipation, and there they were — my brothers! I ran to them and hugged the both of them simultaneously. I didn’t have time to process the enormity of the moment because we were busy navigating the crowd of passengers as we headed to the parking garage where we loaded my suitcase into a rented car. But amid the flurry, an unbidden thought kept resurfacing: Charles and Danny look terrible — is it just because they’ve aged?

Minutes later, as we were driving out of the parking garage, I learned why my brothers looked so ashen. Two hours before I arrived, Mom had passed away.

Two hours. I had missed her by two hours. I sat sobbing in the back seat of the car, bewildered and grief-stricken. My brothers were crying, too. When my tears subsided and I had collected myself enough to speak, I asked, “Where’s Dad?”

My father was waiting for us at his house, which my parents had bought ten years earlier. I’d never seen this house before, but when I walked through the doorway, I recognized furniture from my childhood. Memories of my beloved mother flooded my mind. I imagined her sitting on the sofa. I imagined her dusting the breakfront.

When my father shuffled into the room, I ran to hug him. Sad but dry-eyed, he told me in a hushed voice that he had expected to bring Mom home from the hospital that very day. Taking me by the hand, he showed me all the equipment he had procured in preparation for her return. “It just wasn’t meant to be,” he said and then walked off to be by himself.

My father is a complicated person; a Korean War veteran, he went through a lot in life. Just a few years earlier, he had begun to show signs of senility, but this was the first time I was seeing it in person. He looked so frail and fragile. You could see signs of neglect in the house — the fridge was empty except for a solitary container of half-eaten yogurt. My father was devoted to my mother and tried to care for her the best he could, but when it became clear that he wasn’t able to anymore, Danny largely took over and even obtained power of attorney to overrule our father’s questionable decisions.

Presently I felt very strongly that I had to go see my mother. She had already been transferred to the funeral parlor. “Can we go now?” I asked my brothers.

I sat in the back seat of the car next to my father. We rode in silence, but at one point, Dad reached over to hold my hand. I could see he was in an agitated state. Mom was his whole world — for over 60 years, he had done everything he could to keep her happy and comfortable. They had gone through so much together and now she was suddenly gone. The loss was crushing him, and yet, at the same time, he was feeling overwhelming pleasure by being in the presence of his three grown sons, whom he rarely saw. He kept squeezing my hand and gazing at all three of us. It was clear his feelings were confusing him.

When we arrived at our destination and pulled into the parking lot, I suffered a terrible shock: It wasn’t a Jewish funeral parlor.

I was so aghast that I couldn’t speak. I shot my brothers a look that they immediately understood. “This is what Dad wants,” Danny quietly said. My father is a tinok shenishba; he grew up without a Torah education and unfortunately had a couple of life experiences that biased him against “black hat” Judaism. He was strongly opposed to me becoming frum. But this? A non-Jewish funeral parlor for my mother?

We walked in and somebody showed us to a large room where my mother was lying in state. Her head and face were clearly visible! When I reached the side of the bier, I collapsed to my knees. “Mom!” I cried out. “Mom!” I buried my head in my forearms and wept uncontrollably for I don’t know how long.

When the tears finally ebbed, I rose to my feet and stood by the bier, trying to absorb everything that was happening. “Why is she here?” I asked my brothers.

Then came the next terrible shock: “The plan is to cremate her.”

I almost fainted.

In a feeble attempt to comfort me, Charles — who wasn’t religious but had lived in Israel on a kibbutz for five years and had picked up small fragments of Torah while he was there — took from his pocket a lock of hair that he had cut from my mother’s head soon after the doctors had said that little hope remained. “I cut this off while she was still alive. I wanted a lock of her hair to keep as a memento, so something of her will always be with me. If you want, this lock of hair is for you.”

I felt dizzy. From the shock, the grief, the exhaustion of traveling. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to make him feel any worse than he already was feeling, but I shook my head no and tried to collect myself. Cremation? Chas v’shalom!

“You can’t do this! You can’t cremate her!” I pleaded with my brothers. They listened sympathetically as their little brother — the “rabbi” from Israel — continued to tell them in an agonized voice, but in no uncertain terms, that Jewish people are buried. “She cannot be cremated. It’s cruel and forbidden. Burial has always been the way of the Jewish people, all through history, and it’s not going to be any different for Mom!” I was out of breath and sobbing uncontrollably at this point.

When I regained my composure, I tried to explain as best I could the evil of cremation and the importance of burial. I told them about Shem and Yafes performing the mitzvah of covering their father’s nakedness and how each brother was rewarded. Since Shem played the primary role in the mitzvah, he and his descendants were rewarded with a “covering during life” — tzitzis. Yafes and his descendants (non-Jews) will be rewarded with a “covering after death” — burial — after the war of Gog and Magog. From this teaching, I argued, we see that burial is a reward. That when a person dies — even a gentile — it’s the best thing to do, and Mom deserves the best. “She must have a kosher burial. We can’t do less for her. She cannot be cremated! That cannot be done to her! Please!”

My brothers listened in silence. They knew I was in pain and they were sympathetic. “It was Dad’s decision,” one of them finally said.

All the while, my father had been sitting by himself near the entrance of the room, lost in his thoughts. I went to him and said, tears on my face, “Dad, did you decide to cremate, Mom?”

He looked up at me and his face grew dark. “Your mother and I made the decision together. It’s none of your business.”

“But why, Dad? Why not bury her?”

“Never mind why. It’s none of your business. Butt out!”

I knew I wouldn’t be able to reason with him in this agitated state, so I turned again to my brothers: “Please. Please. You cannot let this happen. You cannot do this to Mom.”

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aruch Hashem, it wasn’t two “Conservative” Jewish brothers against one frum one. Although my brothers are completely secular, they’re proud to be Jewish. Danny even admires me for becoming Torah-observant; in fact, knowing that I was struggling financially as a full-time learner raising a large family, at one point, he was sending me money every month, even though he’s hardly well off. This had gone on for a ten-year time span. So I wasn’t alone in my agony about the cremation. They were on my side.

But as Charles pointed out, the papers for cremation were already signed. It was a done deal.

Suddenly, Danny had an idea. “I’m Mom’s power of attorney,” he said. “Let’s go speak to the manager of this place. Maybe we can get her out of here.”

The four of us crammed ourselves into the manager’s office. Dad sat in silence, his mind elsewhere, while Danny took the lead. “My mother is lying in state here,” he began. “We are her three sons. Without knowing Jewish law, our father decided upon cremation, but my brother — who just came from Israel and is a rabbi — tells us that my mother cannot be cremated and must be buried. Jews are forbidden to cremate their dead. It is the Law of Moses.”

In an even and deathly calm voice, the manager answered, “The papers have been signed already. Once the papers about a body are signed, Arizona state law forbids any changes. I cannot release the body.”

Not put off, Danny explained — very politely — that he had power of attorney to revoke my father’s decisions. The signature of my father, he said, was not binding. The manager stared at my brother’s face. Then he looked at the rest of us, one by one. I lowered my gaze and prayed.

In front of our eyes, a miracle occurred. Without calling any lawyer, without consulting anyone, the manager agreed to let us take Mom away to a Jewish funeral parlor. He took out a telephone book, found the number of the local chevra kaddisha, and even invited me to use his phone. I called the number, explained the situation, and asked the chevra kaddisha to come as fast as possible. The necessary paperwork was completed and soon enough, a van from the chevra kaddisha pulled up to take her body. Just like that, my mother was released.

At the Jewish funeral home, we were told by a clerk that, according to halachah, someone had to remain awake beside my mother and guard over her starting after the taharah that evening and throughout the night, until the body would be placed in the hearse the following morning. “We can provide this service for a fee,” they told us. But Charles immediately declared, “I will watch over her.”

Throughout this time, I had been in touch my wife, who had obtained the phone number of an Orthodox rabbi in Phoenix and had called him to explain the situation. The rabbi was shocked by the miraculous story of my mother’s release. “That particular funeral parlor has cremated many Jews in the past,” he told her. “Never before has a Jewish body entered there and left it.” The next morning, the rabbi from Phoenix drove to the cemetery and presided over the funeral.

I marveled at the sequence of events. In 24 hours, my mother had died, been brought to a non-Jewish funeral home, was readied to be cremated but was moved to a Jewish funeral home where she was given a full taharah. Then her oldest son remained awake by her side throughout the night, aided by his two younger brothers who maintained steady contact with him by phone. At the cemetery, an Orthodox rabbi gave a hesped and Mom had a kosher burial with a minyan present.

After the levayah, my father pulled me aside. “When my time comes,” he told me, “bury me like you buried Mother.” Why, then, had he and my mother originally decided upon cremation? I found out that it was an error based on ignorance and a laudable concern for modesty: My father explained that they both had assumed that men always perform the taharah, even on women.

“Mother did not want to be washed by a man,” my father confided.

Now I understood why I had been unwilling to delay my trip until after Succos. Now I understood why on Succos night, it entered my head to suddenly pick up and fly to Arizona, leaving my family to spend the chag without me. Hashem put the idea in my head because He loved my mother.

Shivah was pushed off until after Simchas Torah per halachah, but at the family gathering in my father’s house after the funeral, he shared something about my mother that I had never known. He related that a few times in her life, Mom suffered deep depression — a side effect of chemotherapy. Once she even needed electric shock treatments to bring her out of her depression. When she was still recovering in the hospital, she walked around the ward and visited with other patients, particularly those who were depressed. With true concern, she’d listen attentively to everything they said and encourage and strengthen them. Using her charming smile, she did her utmost to make them smile and not lose hope.

She was so good at it that the doctors noticed. One of them told her that he wanted her to get professional training so that, after finishing treatment, she could work in the hospital as a certified counselor on a permanent basis and earn a handsome salary. Mom, who was in her sixties then, agreed to the training and accepted the job.

“We certainly could have used the money,” my father shared, “but she refused to accept any pay. ‘It’s my thing,’ she would say. For years, she went to the hospital three times a week to visit with the patients as a volunteer.”

After the funeral, my brothers flew back home to their families, but I decided to stay with my father. During our time alone together, Dad told me a lot of interesting stories about his experiences in the army serving stateside during World War II and as a US Army intelligence officer overseas in the Korean War. Despite my father’s resistance to Yiddishkeit, he drove me to a Chabad family about half an hour away so I could eat at least one bread meal in a succah. The rest of the time, I subsisted on fruits, vegetables, and Corn Flakes.

On Simchas Torah, I was alone with my father in his house. There was no shul within walking distance, so I davened in my room. I found a small table and pretended it was a bimah. On it, I placed the one Chumash I could find in the house — a bar mitzvah gift to me from my Conservative shul. Singing the traditional songs, I circled the Chumash joyfully seven times, occasionally picking it up and carrying it. I was so grateful that Hashem had sent me to save my mother from cremation. I was so grateful that I was a frum Jew.

My mother was good through and through. Despite her limited Jewish education, she always lit Shabbos candles, respected laws of chometz on Pesach, and “lobbied” that we all fast on Yom Kippur and go to shul. Hashem loved her, so He sent me, her one religious son, from across the sea to make sure that she was provided a taharah and a kosher burial. The Al-mighty sent me on eagle’s wings to save her from cremation.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 964)