Ashenheim, Lewis, M.D. On Precipitate Burial Amongst the Jews, Theologically, Physiologically, and Morally Considered

Dr. Lewis Ashenheim, co-editor of the Kingston Jewish monthly First Fruits of the West argues here against the Jewish custom of immediately burying the dead. He discusses at great length the medical phenomenon of "apparent death." Ashenheim quotes Mendelssohn (p.7) and a tract by "Rabbi Itzig Satenoff," "Vertheidigung der fruehen Beerdigung der Juden" [Defense of the Early Burial of the Jews] (p. 9). Isaac Satanow, a native of Poland, was a member of Mendelssohn's circle in Berlin, and an early Haskalah figure (whose kabbalistic leanings and penchant for producing pseudepigraphic literature made him a maverick in that circle). "Early burial," or rather opposition to it, became a cause celebre of the Haskalah movement. See A. Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (1973), pp. 288-294; S. Feiner, The Jewish Enlightenment (2002), pp. 331-335