Kavod v'Nichum

Kavod v'Nichum seeks to restore to Jewish death and bereavement practice, the traditions and values of honoring the dead (kavod hamet) and comforting and protecting the bereaved (nichum avelim). Jewish practices have always provided an avenue for community support from sickness to death, from funeral to burial, from grief to comfort. Our goal is to bring the rituals around death into the synagogue community.

Kavod v'Nichum has gathered a board and volunteers who are an active and knowledgeable group of men and women, lay leaders and Rabbis, from different movements, dedicated to the development and growth of the Chevra Kadisha movement.

We have done extensive work with the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee of Greater Washington (JFPCGW) an umbrella of 48 synagogues in the Washington, DC area. They assist synagogues by teaching ritual washing and training volunteer chaverim to work with families. They also provides community wide educational workshops and negotiate a citywide funeral contract that is estimated to have saved families over $5 million in funeral costs in the last 10 years.

Kavod v'Nichum publishes a comprehensive web site with hundreds of pages of material, visited by over 50,000 people in the last 12 months. We also publish a monthly Chevra Kadisha newsletter. We serve as consultants to the Palm Beach Board of Rabbis assisting them with problems at two cemeteries in South Florida.

There can be no higher mitzvah in our community than the creation of a Chevra Kadisha, because we show our commitment to chesed shel emet.