RELIGION/ JOHN DART : Revised Look at Death and Judaism : Traditions: Ron Wolfson’s book examines new thinking in the faith, which has long advised against mourning the loss of young infants.

For centuries, Judaism has advised parents that if their baby dies within its first month of life, they should not observe the traditional mourning period nor say the customary post-mortem prayers. The rabbinical rulings were once thought to lift a great burden from Jewish communities in the eras when many infants died shortly after birth.

But in 1974, when Ron Wolfson and his wife, Susie, were jolted with the news that their firstborn had died 13 hours after birth, the couple felt robbed of ways to work out their grief. The mother experienced pain and anger; the father tried, unsuccessfully, to push the loss from his mind.

“There was no funeral--the cantor arranged for the mortuary to take the baby to the cemetery for burial . . . in a tiny, unmarked grave,” said Wolfson, a vice president at the University of Judaism. There was no shiva , the prescribed ritual gathering of relatives and friends at the bereaved’s home for seven days. The girl was not remembered in prayers on certain holidays or on the one-year anniversary of her death.

“Ironically, for a tradition that is so wise in most matters of loss, its answer for the death of an infant was hollow and unhelpful,” said Wolfson, now writing a book on how Jews handle death, “A Time to Mourn, a Time to Comfort.”

But the book reports a recent change in thinking. In the Conservative wing of Judaism, the rabbis’ Committee on Jewish Law and Standards accepted the argument of Rabbi Stephanie Dickstein of Hoboken, N.J., in 1992 that certain statements in the vast rabbinic legal literature would permit mourning for a deceased baby less than 31 days old.

Although the Conservative rabbis’ decision is not widely known, Wolfson said, it carries full legal authority within Conservative Judaism.

Rabbis in Reform Judaism, the more liberal branch of organized Jewry in North America, often inform parents of what Jewish law says but then advise them to decide whether or not to carry out the traditional rites, according to Rabbi Daniel Syne of Hebrew Union College in New York City.

“Almost inevitably in my experience, I have found that parents require a period of free expression of grief as a mechanism for their own healing,” Syne said. “I do not know of any rabbis who have forbidden a funeral for an infant.”

In practice, many Jews who respect their religious tradition have done what seemed best to them. Wolfson said he recently met a man in his 80s who said he has said Kaddish for 59 years at his synagogue since the death of his baby.

The Kaddish is a famous Jewish prayer of praise to God. Only those in mourning stand while saying Kaddish in Orthodox and most Conservative synagogues. But in most Reform and in some Conservative synagogues, the entire congregation rises to recite the ancient prayer to show support, remember departed relations and recall the memory of Holocaust victims, Wolfson said.

Wolfson, who lives in Encino, is director of the Whizen Institute for Jewish Family Life at the University of Judaism campus atop Sepulveda Pass. His book is his fourth in “The Art of Jewish Living” series, co-published by the university and the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs.

The book’s purpose, Wolfson said, is to help Jews “to know the basic practices and then decide for themselves how they’re going to express them and observe them.”

For instance, he said that for a variety of reasons many people with a death in the family decide today not to sit home for the full, seven-day shiva . “One reason is that the new medical technologies make dying such a long and drawn-out process,” Wolfson said.

“People told me in interviews, ‘I sat shiva . I mourned my mother while she was in a coma for six weeks. So when it came time to have the funeral and sit in my home, three days was enough for me.’

“Now, the tradition says seven days, and I would recommend seven days,” he said. “But I’m trying to be an educator here and sensitive to what people’s concerns are. I think some of these people ought not to observe the full seven days.”

Even with fewer than one-third of Los Angeles’ Jewish families affiliated with synagogues, according to most studies, Wolfson said he is still surprised that many Jews do not know that their religious tradition frowns on elaborate caskets or ostentatious gravestones.

“Rabbis discourage even flowers at funerals--anything that would divide the rich from the poor,” he said. “That’s why everybody’s buried in the same clothes, a white shroud. Everyone is supposed to have a simple wood box for a coffin. Gravestones are flat and pretty much of equal size.”

Embalming is a customary mortuary practice to slow the body’s decay and prevent it from turning black and blue, Wolfson said. Yet, “embalming is anathema to the Jewish way of burial, which considers the return of the body to the ‘dust’ from which it was fashioned a high priority,” he said. “Moreover, embalming results in the disposal of blood. In traditional Jewish practice, the entire body, including its fluids, is to be buried.”

Jewish tradition forbids autopsies except when the law requires it or when a physician justifies it as providing knowledge needed to treat others suffering from the victim’s disease, he said.

Cremation is so opposed by Judaism that some rabbis forbid funeral rites and the reciting of prayers of mourning if the deceased’s body is burned. Nevertheless, Wolfson said, when a family decides to cremate the body anyway, Conservative rabbis have ruled that a rabbi may officiate at a service in a funeral home, but not at the burial of ashes, lest the rabbi’s participation be interpreted as approval.

At Mt. Sinai Memorial-Park and Mortuary, situated on a hillside across the Los Angeles River from Burbank, 1% to 2% of burials are of cremated remains, said General Manager Arnold R. Saltzman. Although the cemetery is owned by a Conservative synagogue, Westwood’s Sinai Temple, Mt. Sinai serves the entire Jewish community.

“We do not do cremations and we do not encourage it, but we have provided for burial of ashes if the family requests it,” Saltzman said.

And despite the Jewish admonition to be buried in the ground, Saltzman said nearly 30% of the interments at Mt. Sinai are in above-ground wall crypts--again, following the wishes of Jewish families, many of whom do not follow the traditional strictures.

While being photographed at Mt. Sinai in connection with this story, Wolfson said he did not want to be pictured with wall crypts in the background because of his personal opposition to the practice.

Wolfson said that researching and writing about death and mourning was not a depressing experience. His book deals more than most on the subject with how to comfort mourners, he said.

Yet, the educator, who is 44, weighed 275 pounds when he started writing. After following a diet of his own devising, Wolfson was down to 175 pounds when he finished the book eight months later because he became more aware of his own health and mortality.

“All you have to do is write a book about death, and you suddenly realize there is lot to live for,” said Wolfson.