NYC Council Testimony on Hart Island (5/30/19)
Photo Credit: Amy Pearl / WNYC (Hart Island visitors are not ordinarily permitted to take photographs)
A cemetery for the indigent and unclaimed is known as a potter's field, referring back to the New Testament. More than one million dead, most of them lost to family and forgotten by history, have been buried on Hart Island in layered trenches by prison inmates since 1869. Hart Island challenges us with a tangled thicket of ethical dilemmas, from mass incarceration through cadaver shortages to land use deliberations. The NYC Council recently took steps forward in public hearings on legislation that would expand community access to Hart Island, and address related issues of community access to burial information and resources.
Testimony of Rabbi Regina L. Sandler-Phillips, MSW, MPH
WAYS OF PEACE Community Resources
I’m Rabbi Regina Sandler-Phillips, executive director of WAYS OF PEACE Community Resources. I have worked as an advocate for the past twenty years to reclaim traditional, sustainable burial practices as quiet acts of justice and kindness. Often identified as “green” today, these practices are upheld with minor variations by both Jews and Muslims throughout the world. I dedicate this testimony to the memories of two community burial leaders whose lives were cut short over recent months, but whose legacies of lovingkindness shine on across our lines of diversity: Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Ms. Husna Ahmed of Christchurch, New Zealand.
A Jewish funeral is called levayah, which literally means “accompanying.” Traditionally, levayah begins at the time of death, as a process that honors and protects both the human body and the earth. We watch over, cleanse, dress, and lay out the dead in simple, biodegradable garments and coffins. We accompany the dead to their graves, and we pick up shovels ourselves to participate in their burials. We return later to mark the graves, visit, and remember.
Accompanying the unclaimed dead is a supreme Jewish imperative. Long committed to providing the honor and protection of levayah in New York City, the Hebrew Free Burial Association has buried nearly 60,000 indigent Jews since 1888. Today my support for Hebrew Free Burial and my support for Hart Island are integrally connected.
The same time-honored ethical principles that call for sustainable, egalitarian, participatory Jewish burial—mipnei k’vodam shel aniyim, “for the honor of the poor”—also call for cooperative mobilization of resources in our cities of diversity, so that neighbors of all backgrounds can be buried with honor—mipnei darkhei shalom, “for these are ways of peace.”
Photo Credit: Amy Pearl / WNYC (Each marker represents 150 adult bodies or 1000 infant bodies)
The most integrated solutions to the challenges of Hart Island actually point toward the most equitable and sustainable choices facing all of us at death. This is reflected in the City Council bills now under consideration: for public access, with adequate budget provisions; for transportation planning; for a municipal office that will support and assist all New Yorkers to access vital funeral resources; and for an inter-agency task force on issues related to public burial. I affirm the call for greater family / community representation on the inter-agency task force.
The honor of the dead is not an isolated funeral product, but rather an ongoing process of building community across all the lines that too often divide us.
I was privileged to visit Hart Island in September 2017, and I want to express my gratitude for all that has brought us to this point: for the solidarity of anonymous prison inmates who built monuments to honor those they buried; for the loving courage and tenacity of Hart Island family members, friends, and community activists; for the stewardship and accompaniment of supportive municipal representatives through decades of challenge and change.
All of these have brought us to this historical moment of opportunity for justice and kindness to come together—off the coast of the Bronx, and beyond. Thank you all.