The man asked Rabbi Shlomi Tabib for one thing as he lay dying of Stage 4 lung cancer: Make sure there was a Jewish cemetery in Taiwan by the time it was going to be needed again.
Tabib couldn’t make it happen in time for the patient. The man, a longtime member of the Jewish community in Taiwan, was buried elsewhere.
“When he passed away, it was a wake-up call,” Rabbi Tabib told Chabad.org. “I knew that if we didn't take this on and make it happen, no one else was going to do it.”
It would be three more years before the cemetery opened its gates. But finally, a few weeks ago, it did. Set in a forest about 40 minutes from Chabad of Taiwan, the island’s first dedicated Jewish burial ground held its first funeral, and the last crucial piece of Jewish infrastructure on the island was complete.
‘We Don’t Take It for Granted’
Organized Jewish life in Taiwan goes back only to the 1950s, when American Jewish servicemen stationed on the island gathered for Shabbat and holidays. Rabbi Shlomi and Racheli Tabib arrived in 2011 and built on that foundation, establishing Chabad-Lubavitch of Taiwan in Taipei City, and opened the Jeffrey D. Schwartz Jewish Community Center a decade later. Funded by Taiwan businessman Jeffrey Schwartz, the $16 million complex gave the island its first permanent synagogue and kosher kitchen, along with a Judaica museum, a 300-seat ballroom and a mikvah finished with a gold-leaf ceiling.
One piece was still missing. In Taiwan, where 95% of the population is cremated, burial according to halachah, Jewish law, has never been available, and families had to send loved ones abroad.
The importance of a proper burial in Jewish law and tradition cannot be underestimated. “For dust you are, and to dust you will return,” G‑d told Adam, the first human being. Chabad.org’s extensive section on Death and Mourning quotes King Solomon, who said: “And the earth returns to the land as it was, and the spirit returns to G‑d, who gave it.” The article explains that “the next stage in the continuing saga of a human life is that the body should return to the earth, the source of all physical life, and be reunited with it, just as the soul returns to its Divine root.”
Taking part in the proper burial of a Jewish person is considered a mitzvah of the highest order. Maimonides explains that even the High Priest, who was prohibited from attending his own family’s funerals, was required to take it upon himself to personally bury a met mitzvah, an abandoned Jewish body that had no one to attend to its proper burial.
The Tabibs saw the need almost as soon as they arrived, but local law didn’t allow for the permanence Jewish burial requires, and the project stalled for years. The turn came when the rabbi found a private cemetery willing to set aside a section permanently for Jewish use, a step Schwartz helped make possible. Rabbi Tabib then worked with rabbinic authorities to structure and fence off the plot so it would function as a distinct Jewish burial ground.
On June 23, the cemetery was consecrated when its first burial took place there. The deceased’s family lived outside Taiwan, and Rabbi Tabib served as their representative on the ground, and working closely with Chabad of Hong Kong and ZAKA’s international division, oversaw the arrangements. Taiwan’s burial laws, unlike those in much of North America, permit burial directly in the earth without a casket, in keeping with the most ideal halachic practice.
“I know you say it’s your job, but we don’t take it for granted,” a family member wrote to Rabbi Tabib. “You were there for us at our collectively most difficult time in our lives. What you do touches hearts.”
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