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November 26, 2015

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Israeli court allows LGBT activist’s unorthodox burial

Source: AP | November 26, 2015, Thursday | Print Edition

The body of an Israeli transgender woman who committed suicide will be cremated despite her ultra-Orthodox family’s wishes, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in documents obtained yesterday.

Before she killed herself earlier this month, May Peleg wrote in her will that she wanted to be cremated, a practice that Jewish law forbids. Her religious family took the request to court, which sided with Peleg’s representatives.

The court balanced Peleg’s wishes against her family’s desire for a Jewish burial, pitting religious law against individual rights and highlighting the contrasts between the country’s Jewish character and its often liberal orientation. Rabbinical authorities oversee the country’s Jewish burial practices, though a single crematorium is allowed to operate quietly.

Peleg, 31, was raised in an ultra-Orthodox community which shuns non-heterosexuals, and was estranged from her family. She was a prominent LGBT activist in Israel and her suicide elicited an outpouring of grief.

Peleg said she did not want a Jewish burial because the religion would not recognize her as a woman. “This constitutes a lack of respect and an erasure of my identity,” according to a statement released by her supporters.

Her will also stipulated that she wanted some of her ashes to be buried under a tree, where her two children could come to mourn.

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