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Before we respond to the cremation question, it is first necessary to clear up that anyone who believes in YHWH (Yahweh) - the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - is part of Israel and therefore subject to obeying all of God's commands. Touching or even being in the vicinity of a dead body was strictly forbidden in Biblical times - and, for good reason, is still valid today.
Numbers 5: 2 "Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone who has an infectious skin disease or a discharge of any kind, or who is ceremonially unclean because of a dead body.
Leviticus 21: 11 He must not enter a place where there is a dead body. He must not make himself unclean, even for his father or mother,
"Unclean" meant the disease they died of, or their decay dust might have gotten onto someone's clothes or into their nostrils/bodies, which meant they were infected and could infect others. In those days they had mostly tombs and didn't necessarily bury the dead in the ground. So, entering a place where a body was decaying meant they could breathe in the decay and risk death themselves.
God was very thorough about the things He did and did not want us to do. And whenever He said "don't!" (especially when it was repeated more than once), there was GOOD reason for it. He even said we were to stay away from the dead bodies of animals (and what is listed below comprises only a FEW Scriptures on this subject):
Deuteronomy 14: 1 The LORD told Moses and Aaron 2 to say to the community of Israel: You may eat 3 any animal that has divided hoofs and chews the cud. 4-8 But you must not eat animals such as camels, rock badgers, and rabbits that chew the cud but don't have divided hoofs. And you must not eat pigs--they have divided hoofs, but don't chew the cud. All of these animals are unclean, and you are forbidden even to touch their dead bodies. 9-12 You may eat anything that lives in water and has fins and scales. But it would be disgusting for you to eat anything else that lives in water, and you must not even touch their dead bodies.
24-28 Don't even touch the dead bodies of animals that have divided hoofs but don't chew the cud. And don't touch the dead bodies of animals that have paws. If you do, you must wash your clothes, but you are still unclean until evening.
39 If an animal that may be eaten happens to die, and you touch it, you become unclean until evening. 40 If you eat any of its meat or carry its body away, you must wash your clothes, but you are still unclean until evening.
While your niece's grief is understandable, it would be best for her not to keep the ashes at home, much less wearing them on her person. The reason is: From dust we came and to dust we are to return (Gen. 2:6-8, Gen. 3:19). In the U.S. we embalm people and bury their caskets inside metal or cement boxes, so there's no way for them to actually decay - which totally goes against Scripture. And if we cremate, the least we can do is to empty the ashes so they can go back to the ground.
The Jews, to this very day, do not embalm their dead; they place them in plain wooden caskets with no metal in order to allow the body to decay as quickly as possible.
Even though Jewish tradition has developed a taboo against cremation, there is no explicit source in the Bible against it - and there are no explicit sources FOR it, either. Reference is made in I Samuel 31:12-13 to the burning of the bodies of King Saul and his sons and subsequent burial of the bones, but this does not mean it is to be a regular practice. The practice of the ancient patriarchs was burial, such as shown by Jacob being buried with his ancestors in a cave that Abraham had bought (Genesis 49:29-33). Yeshua's body was interred in a tomb after His crucifixion (Luke 23:52-56; John 19:38-42).
Allowing a body to decay and return to dust in no way detracts from our souls entering heaven....
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