Deb Tambor: Before and After
Confusion and controversy marred the funeral of a mother of
two said to have committed suicide after leaving her Hasidic community and
being denied access to her children.
Friends and family of Deb Tambor, a former resident of the
ultra-Orthodox community of New Square, in upstate New York, believe she killed
herself on Friday, September 27 in the bedroom of the home she shared in
Bridgeton, N.J. with her boyfriend, Abe Weiss. Like Tambor, Weiss is a former
member of the Skver Hasidic sect, which founded and controls New Square, a
village about 50 miles north of New York City.
The village is considered one of the most culturally
isolated towns in America, with sex-segregated streets and female residents
who, in obedience to the town’s rabbis, do not drive.
Despite their close relationships with Tambor, Weiss and
some 40 former ultra-Orthodox friends of hers who quietly converged on New
Square Sept. 29 to witness her funeral and pay tribute to one of their own were
unable to do so. Members of the New Square community said that Tambor’s family
chose to bury her elsewhere with only immediate family present due to the shame
she had brought upon the family and the community.
“Who wants to be
buried next to this lady?” New Square resident Menashe Lustig told the Forward
in a phone interview. “It’s very difficult to know where to put her. I hear
they called up the rabbonim in Israel and they told them the decision” that she
should be buried elsewhere. Of Tambor’s life and death, he said, “The family is
ashamed. They’re very ashamed.”
The actual circumstances of Tambor’s death remain unclear,
pending findings from the Cumberland County, N.J. coroner. An official with the
New Jersey state attorney general’s office said toxicology tests can take 12 to
16 weeks to receive. But neither her friends nor her family suspect foul play.
According to her friends, Tambor became depressed after
leaving the New Square community four years ago and divorcing her husband.
Weiss, her live-in boyfriend, said her family had disavowed her earlier, when
she told family members that she had been sexually abused by a member of the
tight-knit New Square community as a child and they denied it.
Driven by her depression, Tambor checked herself into a
psychiatric hospital, said Weiss, which is when family members in New Square
moved to block her from seeing her children, who are now 11 and 13.
“Her depression started when she decided to leave the
community and was threatened with losing her kids,” Weiss told The Forward.
“Her biggest issue was that no one cared for her, everyone blew off all her
issues.”
Weiss and other ex-Orthodox friends of Tambor began
congregating about 4 p.m. Sunday for her funeral outside New Square’s funeral
home, located on a cul de sac at the end of Roosevelt Avenue. According to some
of those who gathered, every few minutes a Skver Hasid would slowly drive past
them.
Weiss said that the crowd of formerly Orthodox friends were
given a variety of conflicting reports by their contacts inside the community:
that the funeral would be in an hour, or before dark, or after night fell, or
at midnight. Rumors flew back and forth by text and in a closed Facebook group
for Jews who are “off the derech [path], or OTD, as many former ultra-Orthodox
Jews refer to themselves.
Around 9 p.m. one of Tambor’s uncles came to the group and
said he would call the police and have them all handcuffed, Weiss said. The
police came, stayed about 30 minutes and then left, saying that the friends had
a right to be there, said Weiss and others who were present.
At 4 a.m., still uncertain when Tambor’s funeral would
actually take place, her friends stood in a circle in front of the funeral home
and lit candles. A few friends spoke about Tambor. They then observed a moment
of silence before dispersing.
Five minutes later, while Weiss was en route to stay with a
friend in nearby Monsey, N.Y., one of Tambor’s brothers texted him offering to
take him to view her body, Weiss related. Two brothers picked him up and took
him to a quiet street just outside New Square’s border, where a privately owned
minivan waited.
In the back of the van was Tambor’s coffin, Weiss said. Her
brothers allowed him to look but not touch the coffin or take off the top so
that he could see her face.
Later that morning, at around 10 a.m. the same brother
texted him that Tambor’s funeral was taking place at that moment at a cemetery
in West Babylon, Long Island, Weiss said.
“It was nice what they did yesterday. It would have been
nicer if they let me come to the funeral,” Weiss said.
A member of Tambor’s family told the Forward that the
decision not to bury Tambor in New Square’s cemetery was not because she was a
suicide. Suicide is considered a grave violation of Jewish religious law, and
traditional practice formally prohibits suicides from being buried within the
gates of a Jewish cemetery.
But other suicides have been buried in the
community cemetery, said the family member, based on the presumption that they
repent in their last breath. The family member spoke only on condition of
anonymity due to fear of retribution from his community were he to be quoted by
name.
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen - Read more: forward
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