Rabbi Daniel Greer LAW ’64 was once a venerated leader for New Haven’s Orthodox Jews. Now, he’s serving a 20-year prison sentence for sexually abusing a student at the Yeshiva of New Haven — a case that stunned the community and laid bare the culture of abuse at his religious schools.

Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual misconduct.

In 1977, the future was auspicious for Rabbi Daniel Greer LAW ’64.

He’d recently returned to New Haven after several years living in Israel with his wife, Sarah, and their newborn son, Dov ’98. He would go on to forge a close relationship with Mayor Ben DiLieto; his resume boasted a stint as the New York City deputy commissioner of ports and terminals; he held degrees from Princeton University and Yale Law School. He was ready to lead New Haven’s Orthodox Jewish community as a bastion of change.

“People would talk about him almost with reverence,” said Columbia School of Journalism professor Ari L. Goldman, who grew up 10 years Greer’s junior in the same Orthodox Jewish neighborhood on the Upper West Side of New York City. “His accomplishments [seemed] so unattainable to a young man in the yeshiva world.”

That year, the Greers established the Gan School, the first of three schools in the Edgewood neighborhood, which claimed to offer rigorous schooling to students from across the country who would otherwise forgo a premier Jewish education.

Nearly 40 years later, three former students publicly accused Greer of sexually abusing them while they were students at the Yeshiva of New Haven, where he served as dean. One such allegation saddled him with over $20 million in damages and a 20-year prison sentence.

In May 2016, New Jersey retirement home manager Eliyahu Mirlis, 32, filed a lawsuit against Greer, 79, alleging that the rabbi had sexually abused him dozens of times between 2002 and 2005, while he was a student at the yeshiva. A civil jury found the rabbi liable in 2017, ordering him to pay $21.7 million in punitive and compensatory damages, as well as legal fees. After a weeklong criminal trial in September 2019, Greer was found guilty of four counts of risk of injury to a minor and sentenced to 20 years in prison — though he can seek parole after 12 years. A federal appeals court upheld the civil verdict on March 3. Today, he is serving time at a state prison in Cheshire, Connecticut.

Rabbi Aviad Hack ’97, a yeshiva alumnus and eventual administrator, along with another former student — who testified anonymously as R.S.A. during the criminal trial — have both accused Greer of sexually abusing them, which Greer denies.

Over the past four years, the Orthodox Jewish community in New Haven has been rocked by accusations of sexual misconduct against Greer — a man prominent in the Elm City not only for his role as a religious leader but also for his work revitalizing the Edgewood neighborhood through real estate development. For more than 30 years, Greer ran a trio of small Jewish schools: the Gan School, serving elementary-aged students; the Tikvah High School for Girls; and the Yeshiva of New Haven. The schools have all ceased operation since allegations against the rabbi first surfaced.

Conversations with former students, parents and New Haven residents paint a disturbing picture of life at Greer’s schools. While academically rigorous, the yeshiva operated under a strict set of rules imposed under Greer’s and Hack’s often-unforgiving hands. Students recount disproportionate consequences for minor transgressions and Greer’s and Hack’s frequent touching of select boys. Students and state prosecutors both described Greer’s treatment of vulnerable students as fitting into a pattern of grooming. Many students only attended for a year, either choosing to withdraw or facing expulsion.

“The more you saw, the more you saw the weird stuff,” said Lawrence Dressler, a parent of a former yeshiva student.

Central to the school’s culture was the personality of Greer, the founder, dean and ultimate downfall of the yeshiva. In an interview with the News, New Haven Independent editor Paul Bass ’82 described Greer as a “cult figure” — a man who commanded absolute respect in his insular community and inspired fear in students. He doled out harsh and unusual punishments and chose favorite — and least favorite — pupils. He hosted students in his home often and served them alcohol.

Attorneys representing Greer and Hack did not respond to requests for comment.

As dean, Greer was subject to virtually no oversight, sources say. He created an environment in which manipulation and secrecy were normal, where emotional and sexual abuse went unchecked for decades, largely undetected by outside adults.

By conducting interviews with over a dozen of Greer’s colleagues, students and survivors, and reviewing nearly 100 pages of testimony and other court records, it becomes possible to piece together the story of a man who once represented the future of Orthodox Judaism and now spends his days behind bars. He leaves in his wake a community grappling with a fallen leader and childhoods marked by his abuse.

‘Something of a celebrity’

As a young man, Greer heralded a dynamic new form of Orthodox Judaism for many in his tight-knit community. He grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City in the 1940s and 50s, raised by two Modern Orthodox Jews. He attended high school at Manhattan Talmudical Academy and graduated in 1956.

In August 2019, after the state of New York passed a new iteration of the Child Victims Act, sexual abuse lawsuits rained down on the school. Thirty-eight former students made claims of abuse at the hands of school rabbis spanning four decades and dating back to the 50s, when Greer was a student.

After attending Princeton and Yale Law, Greer married school teacher Sarah Bergman in 1971. In 1972, he ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic nomination for Upper West Side district representative in the New York state assembly.

Goldman grew up in Greer’s neighborhood and worked as his campaign manager. Though they lost, Goldman described the campaign team as being “totally enamored of and devoted to” Greer. “He was something of a celebrity in the neighborhood,” he said.

Goldman described the Orthodox Jewish community he was raised in as “very provincial” and having “limited horizons.” He said that Greer’s academic and professional endeavors broke the mold, inspiring Goldman himself to pursue experiences beyond their neighborhood.

In the decades that followed, Greer’s religious beliefs shifted to the right.

He and Sarah founded the Gan School in 1977 with the help of Harold Hack GRD ’75 and Adelle Hack GRD ’72, parents of alleged survivor Aviad Hack. Though Greer maintained a law office in the school’s early years, his role as a religious and educational leader gradually became his primary one, the transition running parallel to his ideological evolution.

Greer’s daughter, Batsheva ’00, was the lead plaintiff in the “Yale Five” case of the late 1990s, in which a group of Jewish undergraduates sued the University. The students alleged that Yale’s housing policy requiring unmarried first years and sophomores to live in coed dormitories discriminated against Orthodox Jewish students. A federal appeals court ruled in Yale’s favor in December 2000.

Columbia journalism professor Samuel Freedman interviewed both father and daughter for his 1998 New York Times Magazine piece about the case. “He was a purist,” Freedman said. “He thought [there was] no compromise on this issue, and he was clear that he was the one driving [the case].”

The rabbi worked hard to control his public image. In 1998, Bass published a story in the now-defunct New Haven Advocate entitled “Fortress Greer.” In the wide-ranging article, Bass explored the real estate empire Greer had built in the Edgewood neighborhood and the many tax-credit programs and federal block grants he used to fund the enterprise.

New Haven residents whom Bass interviewed for the article said much about Greer, from his rigidity as a landlord to the 8-feet-tall fences he erected around his properties. But you never hear from the rabbi himself — in an interview with the News, Bass recalled multiple fruitless efforts to convince Greer to provide comment, including visits to the yeshiva. “He pushed me down the stairs,” Bass told the News of one such encounter, an incident he also mentioned in the 1998 story.

After the article’s publication, Bass claimed, Greer’s associates removed bundles of newspapers from distribution sites around the Elm City. Today, few copies remain.

‘They would break you down’

Little is definitive about the history of the Greer schools. Their online presence is thin and widely scattered. Several websites — hosted on platforms such as WordPress and Tumblr — once promoted the yeshiva, but none appear maintained today. In interviews, former students and parents provided differing years of operation for all three schools. Many recalled that only a handful of students populated each grade, often dwindling to six or seven pupils by the year’s end due to expulsions and withdrawals. In some years, they said, the only students in any given class were Greer’s grandchildren.

Most sources suggest that the Gan School was founded as a coed elementary school and gradually evolved into the Yeshiva of New Haven as its male students reached high school age. Its counterpart, the Tikvah High School for Girls, was founded in 1988. Both high schools housed students — many from outside of Connecticut — in dormitories converted from homes owned by Greer’s network of nonprofits.

The yeshiva was located at 765 Elm St. in the former Roger Sherman School building. It looms over all the other houses on the block, leaves of ivy curling around the window frames and up the red brick walls. Over the decades, Greer acquired over four dozen surrounding homes in the neighborhood, using several for student housing but renovating and renting out the rest.

For students, daily life at the yeshiva was dictated by an intense schedule and high expectations.

“There was no room for error,” said one former student, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. “If you were one minute late for prayers, and showed up at 7:01 instead of 7:00 … Five minutes at breakfast, that’s the point at which … you’d miss breakfast altogether. You wouldn’t eat.”

Jake Dressler, who attended the yeshiva between 2007 and 2008, described the “very strict regimen”: After rising early for morning prayer, students ate breakfast together and attended a full day of classes, alternating between secular and religious coursework, often without a break until 9:00 p.m., when they would return to the dorms to study.

The yeshiva was academically rigorous and also atypical. According to one parent, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, the school did not hold parent-teacher conferences. The parent said that there was virtually no communication between school administrators and guardians. “They wanted to do it their way and not be challenged by parents along the way,” they said.

Many former students described living in fear of Greer, saying his personality seemed to largely dictate school culture.

One alumnus who requested anonymity for fear of retribution described a man capable of switching between “a very sweet, caring side” and unchecked anger at a moment’s notice. He intimidated adults and adolescents alike.

Still, Greer and his colleagues made a compelling appeal to prospective students and families. Students often came to New Haven from out of state because their hometowns lacked strong Jewish high schools, and he pitched his schools as paragons of adolescent Jewish education. Once they arrived, however, many soon realized that little was typical about the Greer schools.

Several alumni from both the yeshiva and Tikvah stated that they felt school administrators had deliberately recruited students from households characterized by instability. In an interview, R.S.A. — who testified in Greer’s criminal trial and attended the yeshiva in the mid-2000s — said that growing up, he had endured “emotional, physical [and] mental abuse” at home.

“I only agreed to go to a school like [that] so far away from home because I was trying to run away … I was willing to go anywhere,” he said. “Everybody in that school had something they were running away from.”

At the yeshiva, minor infractions were met with time on the green chairs. Teachers sent students to the chairs — located in the lobby of the first floor of the 765 Elm St. building, outside the front office — for the slightest mistakes, so the experience became commonplace. For bigger transgressions, Jake Dressler said, administrators turned to the “Sabbath apartment.” Misbehaving students were forced to spend entire weekends in the Greer-owned apartment, with other students delivering their meals.

School administrators kept a tight grip on their students’ personal lives. They were not allowed to leave campus without permission. They could never walk around New Haven alone. “Secular” possessions, such as radios, were not allowed in the dorms. Former Tikvah student Naomi Klein said that personal belongings frequently went missing from their rooms following random searches conducted by dorm counselors — staff who lived in the dorms.

Students received little respite, only permitted to return home a handful of times each year. Former Tikvah student Sara Rosenberg recounted a situation in which another student requested permission to go home for the high Jewish holidays to support her parents during their impending divorce.

“They told her, ‘If you leave and your parents come get you, you will not be able to come back.’ And she left and was not able to come back,” Rosenberg said.

In some instances, school administrators’ decisions about discipline — or lack thereof — had life-threatening implications for students. During Hack’s July 2016 deposition, prosecutors questioned him about an incident where a yeshiva student was allegedly transported to Yale New Haven Hospital after consuming too much alcohol at Hack’s home. “[Greer] is known for serving alcohol to people who are under age,” Hack said in the deposition.

Rosenberg described another situation in which a classmate went into anaphylactic shock, and Tikvah dorm counselors refused to help her. When the girls took it upon themselves to call 911, they asked the ambulance operators to silence their sirens and dim their lights, but school administrators found out anyway. The next day, the sick student was expelled. Administrators told the Tikvah girls not to tell their parents and removed all phones from the dorms.

“I mean, you’re 14,” Rosenberg said. “[So] it’s a little bit scary that you’re told not to tell your parents stuff that you know happened at school.”

In interviews, former students wrestled with the complicated question of their net experience at the Greer schools. One source said that she got an “amazing education” from Tikvah, a sentiment echoed by several other students.

Still, nearly every student interviewed characterized the school culture as abusive.

“It’s pretty sick and twisted, honestly,” R.S.A. said. “[They would] break you down mentally and emotionally and then they [would] fill the void.”

Greer’s survivors

Jake Dressler and other students recalled taking weekly trips to the swimming pool in Yale’s Payne Whitney Gymnasium during his year at the yeshiva. In the locker room, Jake said, Hack, the chaperone, changed clothes with his students. He said that he “didn’t know adults were allowed to get naked in front of children.”

The behavior fit into a disconcerting pattern of Greer and Hack acting inappropriately with students. Lawrence Dressler, Jake’s father, said that both administrators always “had [their] hands all over” certain boys — an assertion several former students corroborated.

Once, Lawrence said, Hack nibbled on Jake’s ear in a classroom, a statement Jake corroborated and Hack confirmed in a deposition. The younger Dressler said he pulled away from Hack so quickly that the teacher’s teeth left a scratch on his ear.

“We were so young, we were like 13, 14,” Jake said. “It didn’t even cross our minds to tell an adult.”

Moments like these, though, belied a much more alarming trend of sexual abuse of male students, allegedly spanning nearly two decades, traversing state lines and shattering a small but tight-knit community.

To date, three former yeshiva students have publicly accused Greer of sexually abusing them while they were at the school. While only one, Mirlis, has sought legal remedy, both Hack and R.S.A. testified to their abuse at the rabbi’s hands during the civil and criminal proceedings. R.S.A. also described his experience in an interview with the News last year.

In a 2016 deposition taken prior to the civil trial, Hack told attorneys that his relationship with Greer became sexual in the spring of 1991 or 1992, after Greer first inappropriately touched Hack — who was then 16 or 17 — in the basement of a house he owned.

Hack grew up in a house just down the street from the rabbi’s. His parents helped the Greers found the Gan School, and his father, Harold, would serve on the board of directors for the yeshiva for decades. As a boy, Hack said, he had “tremendous respect, reverence, awe” for Greer.

Later in the relationship, the rabbi would allegedly tell Hack that it had been difficult for him to avoid touching his student before his 16th birthday — the age of consent in Connecticut.

Hack told attorneys that sexual encounters between the two took place in Greer-owned properties in the Edgewood neighborhood and in hotels and motels around Connecticut and in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Missouri. Greer often checked into hotels under the name Daniel Green, he said, and paid in cash, wearing a hat to conceal his identity.

“[Over] time it became part of the way life was,” Hack said in a deposition. “You know, I got up in the morning, the sun has this habit, it rises in the east every single day. And [I had] a meeting with Daniel Greer every single week.”

The only weeks without meetings, Hack said, were between the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and also during the Nine Days, when some observant Jews refrain from bathing.

Their relationship allegedly remained sexual for over a dozen years, until Hack married his wife in 2004.

Occasionally, he told prosecutors, he tried to voice his unhappiness to Greer. He described one sexual encounter during which the rabbi asked Hack why he was upset. Hack told him that from a modern-day perspective, students of history understood that World War II had ended in 1945. “But when a person was in the concentration camp in 1943, they didn’t know that the war was going to end in 1945,” Hack said he told the rabbi. “From their perspective, they might have to endure this hell forever. I said I [felt] like that.”

He remembered Greer growing angry. “You compared me to a Nazi.”

Hack said fear deterred him from cutting off the relationship as a student or young adult — fear of Greer’s anger, of the repercussions of his perceived disloyalty. He said he feared “losing [his] specialness” and the potentially negative impact on his family if he fell out of favor with the esteemed rabbi.

“In the grand scheme of things, is it really worth taking everything down, destroying everything over this?” Hack said he asked himself.

By the time his own relationship with Greer ended, Hack said in his deposition, he had been aware of a sexual relationship between the rabbi and Mirlis — then a junior in high school — for at least a year, beginning in the fall of 2003, during his third year working as an administrator at the yeshiva. He said that he “saw all the signs,” that Greer was taking “too much of an interest” in the student.

Still, Hack maintained in his deposition that he wasn’t aware of mandatory reporter laws — which in Connecticut require professionals in contact with children through their line of work to report any suspicion of imminent or ongoing child abuse or neglect — until “a number of years later.”

In the September 2019 criminal trial, prosecutors estimated that Mirlis endured at least 106 instances of abuse between the fall of 2002 and the summer of 2006, when they had a final sexual encounter the year after his graduation.

“That’s what I do with my kids,” prosecutors said Greer told Mirlis after their first encounter at his Elm Street home, during which the rabbi fed Mirlis nuts and wine, kissing him and groping his crotch. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

Greer’s relationship with Mirlis was well documented by the New Haven Independent, which followed both court cases closely between 2016 and 2019. Witness testimony painted a picture of a dynamic discomfitingly similar to the one allegedly between Greer and Hack — a relationship characterized by psychological manipulation and untold emotional damage wrought on the survivor.

During Greer’s December 2019 sentencing, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Maxine Wilensky read a statement in court written by Mirlis. Mirlis wrote that he still struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder and will never recover from the abuse Greer inflicted upon him. He wrote that he would happily return the financial settlement if it meant he could “turn back the clock and relive [his] childhood.”

The last instance of sexual abuse Greer has been publicly accused of occurred in 2008. R.S.A. was a 12-year-old freshman at the yeshiva at the time.

“Plausible deniability,” R.S.A. said. “That’s what it started off as.”

He described small instances of touching that could be chalked up to innocent mistakes — an easily denied, accidental brush of the backside, for example.

One evening, he said that Greer invited him to celebrate a minor academic success by taking a walk in Edgewood Park together. He said the rabbi asked his 12-year-old student what he liked to drink: whiskey, vodka, tequila or wine?

Wine, R.S.A. supposed.

The pair sat together on a bench in a moment similar to Mirlis’ first encounter with Greer. Greer fed R.S.A. nuts and wine, and then he attempted to kiss him, R.S.A. alleged.

“It’s kind of shitty when the first kiss you get is an old dude trying to stick his tongue down your throat while you have a mouthful of peanuts,” R.S.A. said.

He said that he did not tell anybody about that night for over two years. The societal norms he grew up with still dictated that it was “the worst thing in the world” to be gay, and he was embarrassed about what had happened. Prior to the incident, Greer had made him feel like he was his favorite student. Like he was special.

Justice served?

On Elm Street, the red brick building stands vacant, leaves of ivy crawling up the walls. It isn’t outwardly obvious that the property ever housed a yeshiva — the building’s edifice still reads “Roger Sherman School” in bold capital letters. Still, if you peer through the window of the locked front door, you can see “Yeshiva of New Haven” etched into an interior entrance.

Today, Greer sits in the Cheshire Correctional Institution, a state prison for men 30 minutes from the yeshiva. He is carrying out a 20-year sentence, to be suspended after serving 12. A federal jury in Hartford ordered Greer in May 2017 to pay $21.7 million following Mirlis’ lawsuit against him. According to Mirlis, he has yet to collect the $15 million in compensatory damages his abuser owes him.

Greer initially faced eight charges in the September 2019 criminal trial: four counts of second-degree sexual assault and four counts of risk of injury to a minor. On the last full day of the trial, however, Superior Court Judge Jon Alandar dropped the sexual assault charges after the defense moved to acquit because they exceeded Connecticut’s five-year statute of limitations.

Two days later, after roughly seven hours of deliberations, a six-person jury returned their verdict: guilty on all counts.

Some of Greer’s staunchest supporters maintained his innocence even after closing arguments. Rabbi Avrohom Notis, who used to run his yeshiva out of Greer’s Elm City facility, told the News during the September trial that it would be a “travesty of justice” for Greer to be convicted.

Still, others familiar with the case expressed relief at the rabbi’s sentence.

“I’m glad that motherfucker’s in jail,” Jake Dressler said.

Now, many are left to reckon with the aftermath of a case that stunned New Haven’s Orthodox Jewish community.

Among many questions that have yet to be answered is whether other adults in the yeshiva’s administration were aware of Greer’s behavior. Dressler said that he was confident the “secular teachers” — part-time instructors who taught English or math — had no idea about the abuse, sexual or emotional, taking place behind the scenes.

A parent of a former yeshiva student said that many in the community feel betrayed by the rabbi, to whom they entrusted their children’s education and well-being. A former student said that the community Greer worked so hard to build has “all [come] tumbling down” with the scandal.

“It was still shocking, it was sad,” Goldman said. “You know, [he] was a golden boy who had so much potential and so much promise.”

In an interview with the News, Mirlis said that he viewed the guilty verdict as a “monumental step” towards finding closure. “[The] goal is for other victims to have the courage to come forward and to hopefully get their day of justice.”

UP CLOSE:
With success against the spread, Yale men’s basketball wins support of sports bettors

Story by William McCormack

Graphics by Will Wang

Photos by Lukas Flippo

Published on March 5, 2020

Sports betting has created an unusual source of national attention for the Bulldogs this season, as angry strangers comment critically on players’ social media accounts and the Yale program as a whole still feels underestimated.

Dave Portnoy, brazen internet celebrity, pizza critic and founder of Barstool Sports, placed his bet at 3:59 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2019.

At the time, most in New Haven concentrated on the Yale football team, which trailed Harvard by 14 in the fourth quarter at the Yale Bowl. But Portnoy made his pick on Yale men’s basketball, selecting the Elis to defeat Big Ten opponent Penn State. The wager? $10,000, submitted a minute before tipoff at 4 p.m. as the teams finalized preparations for their Saturday afternoon showdown in State College, Pennsylvania.

And for the next two hours, Portnoy likely sat on the edge of his seat, gaining faith in his decision as the game progressed. The Bulldogs led 31–21 at halftime, while football fans stormed the field after Yale’s double-overtime comeback at The Game in distant New Haven. The Elis’ advantage held strong into the second, expanding to as much as 16 in the half as guard Azar Swain ’21 poured in a game-high 24 points. With 3:32 to play and a 56–46 Yale lead, Portnoy’s payoff of $82,500 seemed imminent, until a 12–0 run from the Nittany Lions allowed them to escape with a 58–56 win in the closing minutes. Portnoy did not respond to a request for comment.

An angry video and a screenshot of the late-game play-by-play publicized his failed bet to 1.1 million followers. “@YaleMBasketball killed me,” Portnoy’s Twitter bio read for the next month. Captain and guard Eric Monroe ’20 heard about the burst of online activity when he checked his phone afterwards.

“For a guy who probably doesn’t know much about college basketball, I don’t know why he’s placing $10,000 on a game,” Monroe said. “It was kind of a weird thing to take in after a game because we were obviously so disappointed. We had that game more than secured as a win… [it was] funny but very depressing, because that would’ve been a very important win for us. [The betting] is funny and amusing to me, but it’s also a lot of people who just use it as a way to get angry.”

The wager, in many ways, only marked the beginning of sports bettors’ obsession with Yale basketball this season. Two-and-a-half weeks later, the Bulldogs ranked as the most “profitable” team of the 353 programs in NCAA Division I men’s basketball — Yale had covered the spread, the sports books’ projected outcome for the result, in nine of their 10 games. Although oddsmakers have adjusted their spreads during Ivy League play, Yale remains in the top decile of “profitable” college basketball squads. Their 17–9 record “against the spread” nearly matches its 20–6 overall mark in DI contests. The betting has given the Elis an unusual source of national attention as they seek another Ancient Eight title.

Regulations around sports betting and its legality have shifted rapidly in recent years, and Yale players accustomed to an average of 1,500 home supporters each game are caught in the middle of the betting flux. Gaming publications preview money lines and predictions about the team online, angry strangers comment critically on players’ social media accounts, and the Eli program as a whole — the often profit-generating product for an increasingly national betting audience — still feels underestimated.

A CHANGING LANDSCAPE

Across the country, the approach of the NCAA Tournament coincides with an influx of sports betting. According to a 2019 report from the American Gaming Association (AGA), fans were expected to wager around $8.5 billion dollars on March Madness last year. 47 million Americans intended to bet on the event, with an increasing portion, 4.1 million, anticipating the use of regulated, legal apps or casino sportsbooks. According to AGA President Bill Miller, fans expected to bet 40 percent more on the 2019 NCAA Tournament than they did on the Super Bowl that year, and for the first time in decades, many could do it legally.

A May 2018 Supreme Court decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA) on the basis of the 10th Amendment. Mark Hichar ’81, a Boston-based shareholder of the Greenberg Traurig law firm and an adjunct professor in gaming law at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law, said concerns about game fixing and point-shaving scandals inspired PASPA. The law essentially outlawed sports betting nationwide except for in Nevada, but Hichar said an illegal sports betting market with annual betting handles between $50 and $300 billion persisted.

PASPA was also known as the Bradley Act, named after former Princeton basketball star and then-U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley.

“[PASPA] put the onus on the states, it commanded them not to pass these laws, and it was on that basis that it was struck down by the Supreme Court,” Hichar said. “[After the ruling, Delaware was] the first state to allow sports betting within their boundaries. New Jersey followed soon after. As we speak, somewhere around 20 states, including the District of Columbia, have authorized sports betting.”

Hichar said that of those 20, about seven have yet to put their laws into effect, since they have yet to pass the regulations necessary for implementation.

Tribal conflicts with Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods have complicated the legalization process in Connecticut, where sports betting remains illegal, Hichar added. Rhode Island, where Yale defeated Brown in January, is one state that has legalized mobile sports betting. Brothers Dave and Cam Rosa cheered on Yale from the first row at Brown’s Pizzitola Sports Center.

The two Providence locals said being able to bet on the contest was “the final straw” that brought them to buy tickets and watch. Unfamiliar with any names on the Yale roster, they supported players by their numbers instead. With the win, Yale improved its record against the spread to 13–3.

“Numbers don’t lie,” Dave Rosa said. “You gotta score points. Johnson and Wales, [Yale] beat them by 50. You can play basketball one way or another if you beat a team by 50.”

Except for Massachusetts and Connecticut, some form of sports betting is legal in all states where Yale plays Ivy League games. Massachusetts is currently considering legislation that would make sports betting lawful.

Hichar said a large illegal market for sports betting still exists, making data on betting handles hard to estimate and verify, but legalization has also helped detect small instances of tampering and betting irregularity (in tennis matches, for example) through digital oversight of wagers. For the Elis, that’s not a concern.

“I don’t really care about what anybody else is doing,” forward Jordan Bruner ’20 said. “That doesn’t affect me at all honestly. If people are making assumptions that we’re going to lose a lot because we play a high-major team, then they probably don’t see us play very often because we got a lot of high-major athletes and a lot of high-major talents… We know what we have in the locker room and we know we’re going to come out and compete and just play as hard as we can. Wherever the chips fall is where they fall.”

A decade or two ago, when the only legal point-spread betting took place in Nevada, accessible, updated information about Ivy League basketball teams was hard to find. When betting against the spread, one bets that a team will not just win or lose, but will do so by a certain margin that oddsmakers at sports books set prior to the game, increasingly through the use of algorithms.

A New York Times story from 2009 documented the habits of professional bettors who occasionally bet on the Ivy League in Las Vegas. One of them, Alan Boston, subscribed to Ivy League student newspapers for the latest updates on each team and its roster. Because the papers do not publish on Saturdays, he told the Times that he avoided betting on the Ancient Eight’s Saturday games, the second legs of back-to-back weekends often filled with unpredictability. Wagering on lower-profile Ivy League teams could offer sports bettors with the right information a unique advantage.

“When there is imperfect information, people exploit that,” Hichar said. “People don’t tend to know the teams in the Ivy League as well as they know those in the SEC, with the result that the spreads for the Ivy League game, probably, are of lesser quality than the spread for other games where they have known teams. I think that that tends to attract bettors who believe they have better knowledge than the people who are setting the spread. So if you think the spread is ridiculous because Yale is not going to lose to North Carolina by 20 points… [that] attracts money to games where there’s a perception that there’s imperfect knowledge.”

“We know what we have in the locker room and we know we’re going to come out and compete and just play as hard as we can. Wherever the chips fall is where they fall.”

—Forward Jordan Bruner ’20

Yale lost to the Tar Heels by three in December, 70–67, covering a spread that the sports booksset at 6.5. Today, while larger programs continue to receive more coverage than the Elis, access to online statistics has decreased the information gap. Still, Yale plays on national television far less than the average Power Five conference team, and sports books do not accept bets for the game or two Yale plays against DIII competition each year. This season, sports books did not set money lines for Yale’s games with Oberlin and Johnson and Wales.

Hichar, who lived in Ezra Stiles when he was a student, often walked across the street to Payne Whitney for games. He and his friends played a lot of bridge, he said, but betting was nowhere on their minds. Easy access to mobile betting — legal and illegal — has changed that for some Yale students today. The NCAA prohibits all of its student-athletes from engaging in sports betting at any level, and while sports betting remains unlawful in Connecticut, illegal online betting is extremely common.

Andrew, a Yale sophomore who does not play a varsity sport and preferred not to share his last name with the News, has bet on the Bulldogs twice this season. He lost $10 when Harvard beat Yale by a point in February and won $15 when the Elis dominated Princeton on the road a week later.

“Especially if it’s not high stakes, I feel like for me it’s definitely just the adrenaline rush of it,” he said. “Being able to say like, ‘Oh my god, I have a little bit of a stake in this game,’ it’ll make it more enjoyable for me to watch, and I think it allows me to understand the mechanics of the game a lot better as well just because I’m paying more attention.”

BETTING ON THE BULLDOGS

Head coach James Jones thinks success against the spread speaks to a perception battle the Bulldogs perpetually face. The casual fan rarely associates Yale, which has ranked top 50 in the nation for much of this season, with a strong basketball program.

“The part that hits me is that we’re always being doubted,” Jones said. “One of my former statistical guys sent me something about us being like the number one team in the country over the last 10 years with beating the spread. So for 10 years we’ve been disrespected a little bit in terms of how people perceive us… It’s just that the perception of Yale basketball hasn’t got to the point where it should be. That’s the way I look at it. They underestimate us.”

Yale’s winning percentage against the spread in the 2010s was 58, the highest in the country.

“For 10 years we’ve been disrespected a little bit in terms of how people perceive us … [T]he perception of Yale basketball hasn’t got to the point where it should be. That’s the way I look at it. They underestimate us.”

—Head coach James Jones

Jones pointed to trends in Ivy League preseason polling to illustrate his point as well. In 10 of the past 14 seasons, Yale has outpaced projections in the Ivy League Preseason Media Poll. Picked to finish third at the start of this season, the Elis will improve that statistic at the end of the weekend. Yale is guaranteed to finish either first or second in the conference no matter the outcome of its final regular-season contests at Dartmouth and Harvard. At the same time, Jones said he would not want it to be the other way — better Yale beat the spread than be the worst team against it, failing to fulfill expectations every time.

Players have encountered the same chasm between perception and reality. Once, guard Mike Feinberg ’22 started chatting with two kids in New Haven about basketball.

“I told them I played at Yale, and they didn’t understand,” Feinberg said. “They didn’t even know we had a team. One was a freshman in high school, which is pretty old to not know that, and the other was his younger brother in seventh grade… It’s kind of crazy how the average basketball fan doesn’t know that Yale basketball is a prominent Division I basketball team and that we’re good, that we can hold our own against the best teams.”

Feinberg said he thinks it’s “wild” how adults bet thousands of dollars on the performance of college athletes. He said the betting makes him a little uncomfortable, but he understands its place in sports, an extra draw for the average fan.

The Bulldogs have beaten the spread in every contest they have played with a Power Five opponent this year. In Stillwater, Oklahoma, Yale fell by seven, beating a spread that projected they would lose by 13. At Penn State, to Portnoy’s distress, the Elis lost by two, but anyone who picked them to cover the spread, set at 15 points, made a profit. A few days before Christmas, the Bulldogs’ nine-point win at Clemson saw them beat the spread again. And in its next game, Yale lost to North Carolina by three, improving its record against the spread to 11–2.

Frank Krugel, an usher who works every men’s basketball game at John J. Lee Amphitheater, said some of his friends started betting on Yale after its narrow loss in Chapel Hill two days before New Year’s. Sports fans first, his friends come to watch games live.

“They kind of realized what a good team Yale is,” Krugel said. “North Carolina is kind of having a bad year, but still, to be in the same ballpark as them says a lot of things.”

Many in the sports betting world already had their attention piqued. Shane Messer, who runs a Twitter-based business on the account Puckline Papi in which customers pay him for sports betting recommendations, said he began betting on the Elis after their performance at the November Penn State game.

By now, he said Yale has essentially become an “auto-bet” for him, a team he automatically chooses to bet on each game they play. Messer estimates he has sold recommendations to bet on Yale to at least 600 people since Portnoy’s big wager on the Penn State game.

“I like to think I got on the Yale-against-the-spread trend pretty early this season,” Messer said. “Seven times out of 10, they’re winning [me money]… You know how it works with Barstool and Dave Portnoy. When they tweet about something, it’s got a million views and interactions. That alone could help Yale basketball betting on its own.”

The Bulldogs followed their performance against Penn State with five straight wins against the spread, driving up to Massachusetts as the most “profitable” team in the nation by mid-December. An 83–80 overtime win helped the Elis improve their actual record, but UMass guard Carl Pierre hit a three-pointer in the final seconds to shrink Yale’s ultimate advantage to three. Monroe and forward Paul Atkinson ’21 both defended Pierre on the play, contesting the shot without risking a foul. With a six-point lead, Monroe said he simply wanted to avoid giving Pierre a chance to convert a four-point play.

The conversion helped the Minutemen cover the spread, and what felt like a meaningless, late-game three-pointer to Yale players (that was irrelevant to the outcome of the game) incurred the wrath of bettors on Twitter. “Paul Atkinson is a hoe for not stepping up to contest but why tf was Eric Monroe backing up the entire time?” one user commented on Twitter. “Not only was he back pedaling [sic] the entire way but he kept looking back for the screen and fell for it.”

“These Twitter accounts that follow who beats the spread consistently like Barstool accounts and stuff, we’re popping up on tweets [that say] Yale’s very good against the spread, like ‘Bet on them, bet on them,’” Monroe said. “So people do it and people get mad when we don’t, which isn’t very often I guess… [After UMass] some guy just went on a rant on Twitter, like what the hell is Monroe thinking and Atkinson’s head is not even in the game. It’s like, dude, do you even understand basketball? We’re just trying to win the game.”

Even after failing to cover the spread at UMass, by winter break, the Yale basketball betting craze had spread from coast to coast.

Back at home in California, Colman Seery ’22 was buying jeans at a Levi’s in the mall when a retail worker there revealed his Yale basketball betting habit.

“Somehow one time, he saw me on my phone on Yale, and he’s like, ‘Oh, I bet on Yale basketball,’” Seery, who has never watched a Yale basketball game, said.

But despite beating the spread in its Ivy-opening games at Brown, the Bulldogs’ success against the spread has taken a dip in 2020 and during conference play. Yale went 11–2 against the spread this fall, but has regressed to 6–7 in the new decade. Oddsmakers have corrected spread lines, making it more difficult to beat teams by significant margins.

Sports books projected the Elis to win by 20 at Howard, ranked one of the worst teams in DI basketball, but Yale could only manage a 14-point victory. A similar scenario played out when the Elis hosted Cornell, defeating the Big Red by 15 but unable to cover a 17-point spread. Yale has failed to cover in other February games against Harvard, Penn at The Palestra, Cornell in Ithaca, and Penn and Princeton at home. Feinberg said Swain, who scored a career-high 33 points in the Harvard loss but missed a free throw that would have sent the game into overtime, received hateful comments afterwards from some who had bet on the nationally televised game on his Instagram.

Messer said that games with national audiences typically draw greater betting activity, adding that a gradual adjustment of the spread is a common occurrence in sports betting. As more people put money on the Bulldogs, winning a profit becomes more difficult.

“[Betting on Yale] is definitely something that I would say a lot of bettors are missing out on, but I can guarantee you the guys making the lines are not missing out on that,” Messer said. “They’re definitely aware of how dominant Yale has been against the spread this year… It’s big money that moves the betting line. If somebody comes in and hammers the Yale spread for $250,000, they’re going to move the betting line the other way just to entice some people to bet on the other side.”

Still, online sports betting publications have covered Ivy League games all season long. Google Yale and its opponent for any given weekend, and betting guides appear. A search of the Yale-Princeton game in mid-February — a nationally televised contest that attracted an especially high volume given that the NBA was in the midst of its All-Star weekend — yields stories from The Action Network, FanDuel, Sports Chat Place, Winners and Whiners and CBSSports.com. Most previews offer broad storylines, review each team’s success against the spread and promise betting advice on the game. Some, like stories in OnlineGambling.com, occasionally draw quotes from the News.

“A GOOD THAT PEOPLE CONSUME”

The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Murphy v. NCAA and the subsequent legalization of sports betting in several states have raised questions about where players, both professional athletes and student-athletes, fit into the recent changes.

According to USA Today, NCAA leadership announced in 2018 that the association remains against sports betting and would not plan on seeking an “integrity fee” from sports books — money that would help offset expenses associated with monitoring for potential betting irregularities. Their announcement came about a month after the Supreme Court decision, while the NBA’s decision to pursue integrity fees came in May 2018. Mike Bass, an NBA spokesman, also cited expenses in an interview that month with the Associated Press, additionally making the argument that the NBA is an “intellectual property creator” of basketball games that enable sports betting to occur.

A month before the decision, a joint statement from player’s unions for the MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA also declared their desire for athletes “to have a seat at the table to ensure that players’ rights and the integrity of our games are protected.”

“The leagues take the view that, without their products, sports events, sports betting wouldn’t exist,” Hichar said. “Thus, their view is that they should be entitled to some compensation to the extent that sports betting occurs with respect to their products.”

However, Hichar said he does not see a scenario in which collegiate student-athletes earn direct revenue from sports betting. Plus, in some states, although sports betting has become legal, betting on NCAA competitions is still not. For example, the proposed legislation in Massachusetts, Hichar said, would not permit any betting on NCAA competitions regardless of where they take place.

For some at Yale, a school rarely included in the debate around college athlete compensation, the argument resonates. Feinberg said he personally believes players should receive a portion of all revenue related to collegiate sports made by anyone.

“I’m a big believer that [if] people produce something that people care about, it’s a good that people consume,” Feinberg said. “People consume our basketball games. They watch our games, they get enjoyment out of it and all that. And it comes at a price and people pay that price… What would the games be without the players? It wouldn’t be a basketball game, you know? What would you watch? The refs and the coaches?”

Monroe said he has long been in favor of college athletes getting the opportunity to make money off their likenesses. Last fall, the NCAA announced a vague step to allow college athletes to “benefit from the use of their name, image, and likeness.” The NCAA Board of Governors issued the announcement a month after California passed legislation that would make it illegal for colleges to prohibit their student-athletes from earning income on endorsements, social media advertising or other related activities. Others do not think the ongoing legalization of sports betting complicates the conversation. As Jones pointed out, sports bettors can always lose — and indeed, have lost — money when they wager on the Elis. 

Regardless, as March Madness nears, wagers are set to increase in both size and quantity. The Bulldogs, who clinched an Ivy Madness berth with a win over Penn last Friday, hope two wins at the Ancient Eight tournament can facilitate a second consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance. 

Some fans might be surprised by an upset, but the sports bettors who have followed the Elis from afar almost all season long would not be.

“They’ve exceeded the oddsmakers in every one of those [Power Five] games,” Messer, the Puckline Papi owner, said. “If I was a team in March Madness and I ended up drawing Yale, I’d be a little bit concerned.”

After life: Muslim deathcare in New Haven

Story by Ko Lyn Cheang

Photos by Erum Hassan

Published on November 22, 2019

Secular regulations hinder Muslim burial practices in Connecticut

When a Muslim woman dies in New Haven or a nearby town, Sana Fatima Farooqi is informed by the local imam. She finds someone to take care of her sons for the hours that she will be gone. Then she messages one of her WhatsApp groups — “Gosl Sisters Group” or “Washing and Shrouding CT” — to find two to five women who will join her to wash the body of the deceased woman in the Muslim ritual of ghusl before the woman is shrouded and laid to rest.

When she arrives at the funeral home, Farooqi prepares warm water scented with camphor oil to wash the body. Sometimes the home will have running water available in the preparation room. If not, she and the women helping her carry buckets of water for the washing. Out of respect for the modesty of the deceased woman, Farooqi covers her from neck to foot in a white cloth. Just as Muslim women cover themselves in life, they give the same respect to a Muslim sister in death.

The hardest part for Farooqi is washing the breasts and genitals without ever looking at them. The women always wash the right side of the body first, then the left. They repeat this process twice, more if necessary. They must not clip her nails. They must not cut her hair. The body is sacred, as is her resting soul.

Sometimes they must clean blood that trickles from the nose or from exposed wounds on the body. Farooqi takes care not to let any blood get on the white sheet that will shroud the woman in the grave. The cloth, called the kafan, must remain pristine.

Once the washing is completed, Farooqi will dry the body and perfume it with camphor, sidr (jujube) leaves or scented oil so the woman smells as if she had just taken a bath. They dab the scented oil on the parts of the body that touch the ground when Muslims prostrate themselves before God. The forehead, the tip of the nose, the hands, the knees, the feet — these are the places where you are closest to God.

Finally, the women take three seamless white cotton sheets and wrap the body, folding the right side of the cloth over the left. When Muslims bury the body the traditional way, in a shroud without a burial container, the fabric decomposes and the shroud, along with the body, returns to the earth.

~~~

I met Farooqi at the mosque on George Street. She invited me to sit with her on the carpet. The material was scarlet and gold-patterned, vibrant against the black velvet skirt beneath her knees.

From the outside, a passerby would never guess that the unassuming two-story New England-style house with the white cladding, pitched roof and dormer windows is a mosque. But for the Muslim community in New Haven, finding a way to practice their faith within a secular context is not something new but a fact that they have long accepted. The daily call to prayer sounded quietly within the walls of the mosque; in this country, public broadcasts of the adhan are inconceivable. I would soon learn that in death practices, too, Muslims in America have had to learn to adapt.

Erum Hassan

Small-boned and bespectacled, Farooqi’s soft-spoken voice belies the hefty responsibility she bears in the local Muslim community. Farooqi manages a loose coalition of about 10 women who volunteer their time and, in some cases, money, to carry out ghusl for any Muslim women who pass away in New Haven.

“A lot of people are scared to do it because they think, ‘It’s a dead body,’” said Farooqi. “But I think, what if it were me? Who is going to do it for me? Everyone passes away, so you feel honored that you can help somebody in that state.”

For Muslims, washing the body prior to shrouding and burial is obligatory, according to hadith, which are the recorded words and actions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It is written in hadith that when the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad died, he gave instructions to women to wash her three times or more, with water and sidr and camphor. Muslims today continue to follow these instructions on how to wash the bodies of the deceased.

Farooqi rarely knows the families of the women whose bodies she washes. She has met families from Bosnia and Bangladesh, families who don’t speak English and families who have lived in Connecticut all their lives. Since 2012, she has washed the bodies of over 20 women.

The women who assist Farooqi are usually younger, since the washing involves lifting the body, requiring physical strength. Most are devout and pray five times a day. For many, their motivation is deeply religious. Farooqi and the women who volunteer their time to do ghusl never charge for what they do. Sometimes, appreciative family members will give them some money to replenish ghusl supplies. Every few months, Farooqi purchases towels, soap, camphor, cotton buds, Q-tips and other materials for ghusl, usually with her own money. Recently, Farooqi has begun using burial kits provided free of charge by a nonprofit organization called Akhiri Tohfa based in Connecticut.

“She is not alone in what she does. In Windsor and Bridgeport, Orange and Weston, other Muslim sisters like Farooqi take the lead and organize similar teams to wash the bodies of women in their communities who pass away.”

The women on these ghusl teams have a spiritual connection to these rituals and feel an obligation to perform ghusl. Based on Islamic teachings, if someone in the community fails to carry out this responsibility, there is a sin on the whole community.

The ghusl ritual is a cornerstone of Muslim deathcare practices. “The washing of the body is integral,” said Omer Bajwa, director of Muslim life for the Chaplain’s Office at Yale, “Islam doesn’t have many requirements [for death rites] but the washing of the body is one really prominent requirement.”

According to Bajwa, Islam sees death as a departure from our mortal life where the body is fundamentally vulnerable to degeneration. “Islam is very realistic about the human body and human limitations,” he said.

In line with this thinking, the ideal Islamic burial is simple. Muslims prefer not to use a casket for burial and certainly not a burial vault, a concrete container that encases the casket and prevents the grave from sinking. In strict Islamic tradition, Muslims are laid to rest in a simple burial shroud in the soil.

Bajwa quotes a verse from the Quran to me: “From the earth We created you, and into it We will return you, and from it We will extract you another time.”

For this reason, embalming is also frowned upon in the religion. By wrapping the body in nothing but three plain cotton sheets, the body can naturally decompose and return to the earth.

Erum Hassan

But in practice, very few Muslims are able to fulfill their vision of a simple Islamic burial. Many modern cemeteries have regulations that require burial vaults. One such cemetery is Beaverdale Memorial Park, a modern nonsectarian cemetery in New Haven founded in 1929.

The manager, Dan Krueger, has a neat, white beard that trims his slim face. He has been working at the cemetery since he was 35 years old. He is soft-spoken and kind, almost as if he is anticipating what you are about to say. He says “yes” a lot.

At Beaverdale, it is a requirement that all caskets are encased in a burial vault. The reason is practical: Without the concrete vault to prevent the grave from sinking, the ground covering the burial site can drop several inches. It would be harder to maneuver trucks and equipment and excavators over the grounds. Visitors could trip.

When Muslim or Orthodox Jewish families approach Krueger to help with the burial of their loved ones, Krueger has to explain that regulations require the burial vault for safety reasons. State regulations on burial tend to be permissive, according to Krueger — the body doesn’t have to be embalmed by state law and burial vaults are not required.

However, cemeteries tend to set stricter policies. “We put in regulations so we can maintain the cemetery in the manner we think is fitting,” said Krueger. Being the final resting place of loved ones, a cemetery has to project an atmosphere of serenity and order befitting of the dead. Sunken graves, overgrown grass, and faded plastic flowers littering the grave sites are high on the list of things that Krueger tries to avoid.

Since he was the imam for Masjid Al-Islam from 1996 to 2001, Saifudeen Hasan has been responsible for managing funerals for the mosque and its members. He has noticed that in the past 10 years, cemeteries have started imposing more restrictions on burial procedures.

There is a cemetery in Enfield, Connecticut, where Muslims in New Haven have been buried for over 25 years. After years of burying Muslims the traditional way, without a casket or vault, the cemetery began imposing requirements on using a burial container. Hasan explained that the cemetery was concerned because of its proximity to residential housing and the risk that human remains could contaminate the water.

There’s nothing in the Quran that says the use of a burial container is strictly forbidden, but Muslim burials without a vault or casket are a matter of tradition.

“Sometimes, you have to conform to the state laws as long as it’s not completely against Islam,” said Hasan. “If it was, we would try to go to the state to make exceptions for religious reasons.”

However, given the high cost of funerals, the requirement on burial vaults only increases the financial hardship of a loved one dying.

Death is expensive in America. In 2017, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the price of funerals in the United States had risen almost twice as fast as consumer prices for all items since 1986. There are transportation fees to pay the funeral home, burial plots which can cost upward of $1,000 and burial caskets priced at $2,000 or more, among other costs.

Muslims funerals are considered to be on the cheaper end of deathcare rites: Hasan estimates the average Muslim funeral would set a family back by about $5,000. In comparison, the average cost of a funeral with a burial and vault in 2017 was $8,755, according to National Funeral Directors Association statistics. Still, for many members of the mosque, he says, cost is an issue.

“Our community is more blue-collar taxi drivers and social workers, whereas a lot of other communities have doctors and lawyers and engineers,” Hasan said. According to 2017 data by the Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans report lower household incomes and are less likely to be middle class than the general population.

“Muslim families, especially Muslim American families, don’t always have the money to pay for it because they don’t have the insurance,” said Hasan. “So a lot of the time the cemetery will waive the fees or the masjid pays for the funeral.”

But the mosque does not always have the funds on hand to cover the funeral and burial costs of their members. When accounts are running low, the mosque leaders will appeal to the congregation for donations to contribute to the funeral expenses of deceased members. If members don’t have the money, the mosque makes an appeal to other mosques in the area.

Between the Muslim communities in Orange, Hamden and New Haven, they have always managed to pull together the funds in the end, Hasan said. He cited the Muslim concept of “Sadaqah,” or voluntary charity, as the reason for the mosque to shoulder the financial burden for families that cannot afford it.

“Honestly, economically, people are struggling right now so the donations are not as great as they used to be in the past,” said Hasan.

Technically, the Connecticut Department of Social Services offers burial assistance of up to $1,400 for individuals with very limited means. But in practice, Hasan says the assistance has not been immediately useful as it takes days to process.

Since Muslims do not embalm the body, they prefer to bury the dead as quickly as possible, within 24 hours. If they delay until after state assistance is approved, the body will deteriorate.

Hasan recently buried a Muslim man whose family could not afford the funeral. Although they applied for state assistance, it took too long and by that time, the mosque had already covered funeral expenses.

“We don’t get any support from the government,” said Hasan. “Everything is done individually by the mosque.”

~~~

When Farooqi’s father passed away seven years ago, she inadvertently found herself becoming acquainted with the rituals and regulations of death — both Islamic and state-imposed.

Connecticut law generally prohibits people from bringing dead bodies into their homes, unless they have special permission. But for Farooqi, part of Muslim tradition is that a body should never be left unattended.

Farooqi gained permission from the state to bring her father back home where she stood vigil over him through the night, saying prayers over his body. Outside, a state official was parked all night to ensure that the body was buried the following morning in line with state health and safety regulations.

At that time, the only Muslim cemetery in Connecticut was located in Enfield, almost 60 miles and an hour’s drive from New Haven. So to Enfield Farooqi went.

For a Muslim, it is ideal to be buried in a Muslim cemetery. Bajwa explained that the idea of community is deeply rooted in Islam. Even after death Muslims see themselves — irrespective of race, nationality and ethnicity — as part of a global ummah, or global Muslim community.

“These are people who you will be resurrected with on the day of judgement,” Bajwa explained, “Muslims believe at the end of time, it was prophesied by the prophet that all souls will be resurrected from the graves. These are brothers and sisters of faith, co-religionists, that you will be resurrected with before you go to meet god.”

For many years, Enfield was the only option in Connecticut for Muslims who wanted to stay together as a community after death. That changed three years ago, when the Tariq Farid Foundation, a philanthropic organization that has funded U.S. soup kitchens and the rebuilding of schools in northern Syria, opened a second Muslim cemetery in Cheshire, just a half-hour drive from New Haven.

There is still no Muslim cemetery in New Haven, however. For the Elm City’s growing Muslim community, it may be quite some time before that becomes a reality.

~~~

After her father passed away in 2012, Farooqi felt an urge to give back to her community and attended a workshop by Sister Matiniah Yahya to train women in washing and preparing bodies.

Farooqi didn’t know it then, but Yahya would become instrumental in mentoring Farooqi in the ghusl process. Eventually, Yahya passed the role of leading the women who do ghusl in New Haven to Farooqi.

Yahya has been involved in the ritual washing of bodies for most of her adult life. She was 21 when she first participated in a ghusl for a dead person. The imam at a mosque in Quincy, Massachusetts, had called to ask if she could help wash bodies — they were short one person. Her heart pounded as she entered the preparation room where she was to assist the ghusl team in the washing. She told herself, “Don’t faint, just stay there.” She said a prayer to calm herself.

 

The room was very hot. The air was thick with the piquant aroma of camphor and sweet aroma of oils for ghusl. But despite the heat and her nerves, she felt a sense of calm. The women were all quiet as they methodically worked. All attention was on the body.

“Everything became real to me at that point, all the questions about who is going to wash me? Am I going to be too fat for them to roll over? What is it going to be like? My family, are they going to be here? And the angels are going to come and question me?” said Yahya.

When she arrived in Connecticut after getting married, women were doing ghusl without formalized classes on the ritual. Motivated by her knowledge of Islamic theology, Yahya developed a detailed three-day workshop that explained the scriptural basis for ghusl, examined the ritual’s origins in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and taught participants how to wash and shroud dead bodies.

Back then, a large group of stay-at-home wives and mothers volunteered their time to do ghusl. But it has since become harder to find women to help. In the past 15 years, Yahya has noticed more women going back to school or work, with less and less time to volunteer.

Yahya and Farooqi have begun to reach out to towns around New Haven to find other women willing to shoulder the responsibility of ghusl. They have a list of women they know they can call when a Muslim sister dies. But Yahya admits it takes a special kind of person to do this task.

~~~

On the day I met Farooqi in the mosque on George Street, a crying toddler being consoled by his older sister — barely adolescent age herself — and an elderly woman in a hijab sat in the corner of the room. When Farooqi, the girl and the elderly woman lined up for the sunset prayer, they stood from youngest to oldest, a physical reminder of the inevitability of aging and mortality.

“I have seen so many people who have been dead that I [often] think about my own death and what am I going to leave behind,” said Farooqi later. “It’s something I think all Muslims are supposed to think about.”

I thought of my visit to Beaverdale Memorial Park, the secular cemetery, less than two weeks before. I had stood with Dan Krueger before the yawning grave — 36 inches wide, 8 feet long and 5 and a half feet deep, standard-issue size. The sides and bottom of the grave were perfectly flat, like the bottom of a big chest. Below my feet were 32,000 graves, people buried between 1929 and 2019, men, women, large and small, all stacked side by side in this resting place for the dead.

Looking at the grave, I had found it easy to think of death and burial as a strictly mechanical process. The excavator that digs the grave with its metal claws would belong just as much on a construction site or a scrapyard as in a cemetery.

But then I remembered what Bajwa told me.

“Death is a powerful, profound reminder on how you should live your life: You can live your life, be obsessed with your job, your career, accumulate power and prestige, but when you go to the grave … no wealth, power will go with you,” he said. “You were born into this world naked and you will go to the grave naked. And, at that moment, you will hear the fading footsteps of your loved ones. That is a moment of feeling profoundly alone.”