When Rabbi Chaim Schmuckler, a Chabad emissary in Albuquerque, New Mexico, received a phone call from a Jew who told him that his homeless brother was in the morgue in Amarillo, Texas, waiting for the body to be cremated – the rabbi knew he had to act quickly.
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He immediately called his brother, Rabbi Barry Schmuckler, director of the Chabad House in Las Cruces, New Mexico, just 45 minutes from the Texas border – and told him what he had learned. The clock ticked, as the time for the cremation approached – and Rabbi Berry immediately went into action.
“The man who called thought we might be able to say Kaddish about his brother,” said Rabbi Berry Schmuckler. “He did not expect us to really bury him.”
But the rabbis knew that Jewish burial, according to Halacha, is essential.
Rabbi Berry called the funeral home in Amarillo and asked to transfer the body to the Jewish part of a Jewish cemetery in Balen, New Mexico – a five-and-a-half hour drive. He then set out on a 3-hour drive from Las Cruz, to meet the driver of the vehicle that brought the body.
Rabbi Schmuckler, who runs the Chabad House in Las Cross with his wife, has seen how private supervision works throughout the process.
For, Pinchas Sudak, a yeshiva boy from London, had just been staying with the Schmuckler family for a few days, when he was on his way to the national parks, and it was he who joined him on the journey, to assist him in the sacred work. The guy defined the mitzvah he won as ‘the grace of truth’.
“We loaded the car with 20 liters of water, cloth, shrouds and soil from the Holy Land – everything needed for a kosher burial, and set out on a 230-mile journey,” said Rabbi Schmuckler.
The rabbi points out that many times they chose this burial place of the Jewish cemetery in Balen, since there is no need for a coffin. It is found in a natural desert environment, and the cost is lower.
The deceased was laid to rest in the Jewish part of the cemetery.
“We did the purification on the spot, on the desert floor,” says Schmuckler. “We dressed him, said the prayers and buried him in shrouds and a tallit. The gentile driver watched in amazement. He just had to see what we were doing. He even took my phone to take pictures. ”
While this was the first time the rabbi oversaw burial in the desert, he has to date organized funerals for elderly Jews living in Las Cruz, which has a community of retirees known for the city’s warm weather and cost of living. “We have a lot of elderly people here and we saved some of them from cremation.”
Rabbi Schmuckler estimates that there are 1,000 Jewish families in Las Cruces, a town of 110,000 people.
The Jewish community includes retirees, professors at New Mexico State University, and medical students at Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine near New Mexico State University. Tourists often pass through the place in a southwesterly direction.
Rabbi Schmuckler’s Chabad House is one of four existing in New Mexico. In addition to the Chabad house of Rabbi Chaim Schmuckler in Albuquerque, which he runs together with his wife Deborah Leah, and the Chabad house of his brother Berry, there are also Chabad centers in Santa Fe and Taos.
“It felt like we could help a Jew when no one else could,” said Rabbi Berry Schmuckler. “It means being there for another Jew. I hope it will inspire people to know that there are opportunities for mitzvos and need to be seized. ”