Israel’s High Rabbinical Court has ruled that a woman who died by suicide cannot be cremated, despite a request in her will, and that her body must be buried in Israel.
The court rejected an appeal by the State Attorney’s Office and upheld an earlier decision by the Ariel Rabbinical Court, which had ruled that the woman’s will was invalid due to a lack of legal competence.
The woman, 30, drafted her will in August 2023, requesting that if she died in Switzerland, her body be cremated there. She instructed that her remains be stored in Switzerland until her brother could collect them and that all her assets be transferred to her mother.
Two weeks later, she was found dead in a Swiss hotel. Her family, who opposed cremation, petitioned the rabbinical court in Ariel, which determined that the will was invalid and that her body should be brought to Israel for burial.
The State Attorney’s Office argued on appeal that the rabbinical court had no jurisdiction over the handling of the woman’s body because the matter was not financial. The woman’s mother countered that wills are not limited to financial issues and that the rabbinical court was within its authority to rule on her daughter’s final wishes.
A panel of three judges—Rabbis Shlomo Shapira, Zion Luz-Illouz, and Zvi Ben Yaakov—ruled that the court was obligated to determine the will’s validity and that it had the authority to do so. "Having concluded that the deceased was not competent at the time she wrote the will, the court fulfilled its duty by ruling that it has no legal standing," the judges wrote.
The ruling emphasized that the woman’s family—particularly her father, who is in poor health and had pleaded for her burial in Israel—could not be forced to act against their religious beliefs or finance the cremation. The judges noted that, in their view, the woman’s request stemmed from emotional distress, affecting the will’s validity.
The court criticized the State Attorney’s Office for contesting the family’s wishes, stating that Jewish tradition prioritizes burial. The ruling also referenced Israel’s ongoing efforts to recover the remains of victims and hostages from the war with Hamas, contrasting those efforts with the legal battle to prevent the woman’s burial in Israel.
The court declared the will null and void and ordered that the woman’s body be buried in Israel. The State Attorney’s Office was also ordered to pay the family 30,000 shekels ($8,300) in legal fees.
