Hey there and welcome back to take one, the podcast that brings you just one miraculous page of Talmud each day.

And on today's pages, Manach 40 and 41, we come across this beautiful, short,

but so evocative line, have a listen.

The Gamara comments at that time, i.e. a person's burial, we certainly affixed ritual

ritual fringes to the shroud because otherwise it would be a violation of whoever

mocks the poor blasphemes his maker. If we did not place them, it would be mocking the deceased

as if to taunt him that now he is no longer obligated in mitzvot. What a stark, dark, beautiful, haunting, moving passage. I just had to learn more.

What did I do? You know what I did. I picked up the phone and I called our great friend and teacher by David Bischoffkin. How are you, my friend?

Leal, what an absolute privilege and pleasure. And this is a really fascinating custom that I think most people are totally unaware of,

which is talking about the rituals and the rights in which we dress bodies after they pass away.

When someone passes away, there are very specific rituals and rights with which we prepare for burial.

For instance, we do not bury people as opposed to some other places like we don't put them

in a suit. We don't dress them up. We don't put on makeup. There's a specific injunction not to have a

fancy coffin in the Jewish world where we don't have those fancy or oak coffins and fancy pillows or any of that stuff.

One of the very interesting rights that has to do with how we bury the dead is whether or not, when a person dies, whether or not they should be buried while wearing sitis, while

wearing their talus, which is the four-cornered garment that has little strings on each side

that represent the totality of the mitzvosts of the commandments that we keep. And this is actually a

dispute in the Talmud, where the Talmud on one hand says, you shouldn't do it because someone who has passed away is no longer able to observe commandments.

So it's going to make them feel very kind of out of the game.

And very, it's almost like mocking the dead to put on something that

shows that you kept all of Mitzvost and now all of a sudden they can't keep Mitzv, they're no

longer alive. It is mocking them to put on a Talas. There are other people who said,

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