The Sacred Society

I joined the local Chevra Kadisha, the Jewish burial society, about a year before COVID hit. It is, perhaps, a bit of a strange thing to volunteer for, to step up to ritually clean and dress the dead. But when we went into lockdown and the Chevra could no longer meet in person, I felt an unexpected loss. Why had I chosen to participate in these ancient traditions, and what did they mean to me, as both a Jew and an atheist, at a time of mass sickness and death? In mid-2021, I conducted a series of interviews with my fellow volunteers, exploring what inspired them to join, how it had changed their feelings about life, and how they made sense of the experience.

I knew I did not want to make a film dwelling on theology or the metaphysical reasoning behind the rituals, but I did want to depict what happens in that small room at the funeral home. Of course, one cannot bring a camera into the process, so I chose to illustrate it with sand animation. Very fine sand is spread onto a lightbox, over which is positioned a camera. By varying the thickness of the sand using fingers, brushes, and knives, I can create a full range of tonalities and produce a sepia-toned painting— black areas are thickest, blocking all the light, and white areas thinnest. This image is then photographed, modified, rephotographed, modified, etc. It is a process that, like music, can only move forward. There is no going back to correct mistakes. Every action leaves a trace, a visual echo in the sand, as each moment erases the previous. The poetry of this technique—ephemeral and constantly at risk of dissolving into chaos—makes it the ideal way to contemplate the fragility of our lives.

Volunteering for the Chevra has brought me closer to my tradition and sharpened my awareness of how brief our lives are. I hope this film illuminates the volunteers who do such important and meaningful work and inspires others to consider how they can live with an awareness of their own mortality.