Today I bore witness to a friend being placed in the earth. It was a Jewish funeral service. I’ve attended several over the years, but this one included traditions I had never seen before.

Yes, there were prayers in Hebrew and English, and moments of silence and reflection. But right at the start, there were differences.

The pallbearers carried the coffin to the gravesite, stopping meaningfully seven times along the way. Tradition teaches that seven is the number of completion. The pauses embody reluctance—acknowledging that the act must be done, but wishing it were not so. That was exactly how I felt. Her death was sudden, unexpected. Just weeks ago she was well. The pauses became our own hesitation, our unwillingness to accept reality.

At the grave there was the open earth, a mound of dirt, two shovels, and the coffin. After it was lowered, the rabbi explained the next tradition: each mourner would place three shovels of dirt into the grave. I had seen flowers, pebbles, even handfuls of soil offered before—but never this. The rabbi himself went first, flipping his shovel over so only a trace of dirt could fall. The mourners flipped the shovel for full loads. His reluctance was built into the act. And no shovel was handed from one mourner to the next; it was always set down, never passed, so that grief could not be transferred like a burden.

The sound was unforgettable: great clumps of earth striking pine, a timpani in the ground. Later, as the mound settled and softened, the sound muted.

The rabbi’s message was simple but weighty: the soul exists before and after, but only in life can there be mitzvahs. In that framing, existence divides into self, community, and the divine.

I thought immediately of those who elevate one of these above the others, instead of holding them in balance. Like a stool with one leg too long—what should be stable becomes awkward, then unusable. Over time it tips.

The image holds elsewhere too. Even in Christianity’s Trinity, imbalance distorts what was meant to be steady. Well-intended devotion can lengthen a single leg until the whole stool can no longer support us.

Ruth was the source of many mitzvahs in life, and they have often cascaded down through her family, friends and colleagues. A small bit of immortality.