The Beis Din Rabbani HaGadol recently published a sharply worded ruling in which it completely rejected a cruel appeal by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara against the decision of the Regional Rabbinical Court in Ariel that the religious parents of a mentally ill woman did not have to pay for their daughter to be cremated.

The tragic story behind the ruling began in September 2023, when a mentally ill 31-year-old Israeli woman was found lifeless in the town of St. Moritz, Switzerland after taking her own life. The woman’s Israeli passport and her will were found in the room. The  nifteres had written in her will, which was signed and notarized in Israel about two weeks earlier, that if her death was determined in Switzerland, “her body should be brought for cremation nearby and quickly.”

The nifteres also wrote in the will that her ashes should be stored in Switzerland until her brother collected them. She also appointed her mother as the administrator of her estate and her sole heir.

The will’s validation process began in the Regional Rabbinical Court in Ariel. The nifteres’s mother stated in the hearing that her daughter suffered from “many mental difficulties, delusions and false visions and was not sane when signing the will.”

Following the hearing, the Beis Din ruled that since the nifteres was not of sound mind, she was incompetent to make decisions regarding her property and body and therefore the will is considered void and her body should be flown to Israel for kevurah as soon as possible.

However, Baharav-Miara’s Office filed an appeal against the ruling of the Regional Rabbinical Court to the Great Rabbinical Court with the claim that the Rabbinical Court has no authority to discuss the issue of the body as it is not part of the estate.

On the other hand, the mother claimed that the entire will was void because at the time of its writing, her daughter was not competent to make such decisions. The mother also requested to bring her daughter to Kever Yisrael for several reasons, including the family’s wish to have a kever to visit.

In their ruling, the dayanim, HaRav Shlomo Shapira, HaRav Tzion Louz and HaRav Tzvi Ben-Yaakov, ruled that the nifteres’s family members, including her sick father, who wished to bring her to Israel for kevurah, are not obligated to act against their faith and finance the cremation of their daughter’s body, especially since according to them, the nifteres was not of sound mind when writing the will.

The dayanim noted in the p’sak that the purpose of the appeal is unclear – what is the State-Attorney’s interest in preventing the parents’ wish to bring their daughter to Israel for kevurah? The dayanim slammed the prosecution’s conduct, stating: “It seems that a great deal of callousness, perhaps heartlessness, was needed to act as mentioned. The conduct of the prosecution in this case does not contribute to increasing public trust in the judicial system.”

“To our repeated questions, the prosecution’s representative said that the State of Israel will not act and has no means to finance the cremation of the body. Therefore, in the absence of an operation to fulfill the request in the will, the matter will not be realized. And what will be done from now on? Will the deceased remain in a temporary burial in Switzerland forever?”

“It is very likely that in the absence of the ability to fulfill the will, a judicial decision will eventually be issued allowing the family to receive the body in order to transfer it to Israel. And what is the point of harassing the suffering family, without reason or cause? The request that the Beis Din revoke its decision will not change the situation and will only cause suffering to the deceased’s relatives.”

The dayanim noted the irony of the current situation in which “the State of Israel invests many resources to return the bodies of the murdered and abducted in the difficult war… and at the same time the prosecution invests efforts in the prevention of bringing a Bas Yisrael to Kever Yisrael against the pleas of her parents and family.”

The Dayanim rejected the appeal, ruling that Beis Din has the authority to rule on the validity of the will in its entirety, upholding the p’sak that the will is void and the young woman must be brought to Kever Yisrael. They also ruled that the State-Attorney’s Office must pay the nifteres’s mother NIS 30,000 for legal expenses.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)