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When a family member dies, can I contact him/her through the grave? If so, by what means?
Answer:
It is indeed painful when a family member dies, and we wish that we would never lose contact with them.
But contact is not only via the physical means we are accustomed to. We function in a very physical reality and get use to limited ways of communication. Those means of communication do in fact cease when someone passes away. There is no way to talk to them as we used to. But there is an entire spiritual realm out there, a realm in which a soul lives after it departs the body.
Imagine I were to tell you a hundred years ago that you can communicate with someone across the world by hitting little plastic buttons on your desk. You would think I am crazy. "What, i don't have to open my mouth? They don't have to hear? No one will deliver the letter?"
But you are doing that right now. Using a plastic, soundless, keyboard to communicate with me.
Similarly, the forms of communication with a soul may sound foreign to us, but they are very real.
And they are:
Giving charity in his/her memory
Studying Torah in his/her memory
Reciting Psalms
Also, it is not an uncommon Jewish custom for people to go to the gravesites of a deceased relatives to invite them to family celebrations. In fact, the souls of deceased parents and grandparents do attend their children's/granchildren's weddings.
Also, just as one would ask a parent to pray to G-d on his/her behalf while alive, so too, one may go to a relative's gravesite and ask that person to pray in Heaven for his/her sake. (NOT to be confused with praying to the person or that soul! Prayer is only and always to G-d.)
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Life Cycle » Death » AfterlifeLife Cycle » Death » Passing On
