’The Truth at Funerals’ Once More: No Human Being So Vile That Something Good May Not Be Said of Him After Death

Julius T. Loeb, “’The Truth at Funerals’ Once More: No Human Being So Vile That Something Good May Not Be Said of Him After Death,” Washington Times (Washington, DC), Jan. 25, 1903. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1903-01-25/ed-1/seq-16/

“The Truth at Funerals” Once More. 

No Human Being So Vile That Something Good May Not Be Said of Him After Death

By the Rev. JULIUS T. LOEB, Rabbi Congregation Adath-Israel

    The editorial in last Saturday’s issue of The Times on “The Truth at Funerals” deserves the highest commendation of every right-thinking man of either ecclesiastical or lay spheres.

    “Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have established” is a just rebuke to those clergymen who decline to praise the dead indiscriminately, because it has been the custom for generations.

    To honor the dead is not only a custom among all races, but it appears to be a principle enshrined in the nature of humanity. There is no man who lacks this feeling. There is no one to bear any base thoughts after the bier of the departed. There is no one to retain any grievances against a fallen foe. In the words of the moralist, Ecclesiastes: “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy are now already lost.”

    The clergyman is generally called upon to utter a few words over the remains of a “plain man”—a plain man without striking merits. Should such a one be styled “undeserving,” and the clergyman refuse to respond to the call? Should not a word be passed concerning the dead to endear his memory in the mind of those who survive him, and those who were near to him in life?

    No man is infallible. Each one of us has his faults and failings. Who, then, is to be considered deserving and favored above the rest? Doth man know at all to distinguish true virtue from ostentation? As the Talmud has it, “Citizen on this earth may prove alien in the Heaven of Heavens.”

    On the other hand, there are good characteristics in everybody. There is no positive evil in any object under the sun. “God has made everything beautiful in its due season.” Every man is endowed with a godly spirit to produce good in some direction. Every creature is made to benefit the world in one way or another. 

    At any rate, we are not called upon to praise the human outcast, but the average man; and where is the man of ordinary standing who has not something to his credit? The good characteristics of the dead should be traced and commented upon as a last mark of respect of those who survive him.

    I dare say there is something tragic even at the bier of a criminal who has expiated his misdeed. He might have been different under other conditions; he might have been better, had he had some one to instruct him. The living may, then, pause and ponder on the principle, “Judge not thy neighbor until thou hast reached his place.” (Ethics of the Fathers.) The Bible thus provides for the one who in consequence of his crime was “put to death and hanged on a tree” that his body be not disgraced by remaining thereon overnight, but that due burial be granted to it also. 

    The new fad of a relentless discrimination against the dead, by a so-called searching for truth, is doubtless a retrogression to a stage of self-sufficiency, and an outrage on man’s most sacred feeling. With all due respect to the learned divines who initiated the movement, I feel that there action is in contradiction to the spirit of the Bible and of religious ethics. 

    If there same gentlemen were always held within bounds in the matter of truth concerning the living, they certainly should not permit themselves to exercise this “truth” to the disparagement of the memory of those who are no longer able to defend themselves. If those who are left behind are all certain of being better and purer than the one summoned from his earthly task, then, and only, may they justly refrain from bestowing a word of praise upon the dead.