Jewish families and clergy are trying to find ways to uphold tradition while keeping loved ones safe. For some, that means holding funerals while mourners attend via Zoom.
Many times immediate mourners cannot attend but wish to take an active role in the funeral. Kirshner uses the spotlight feature on Zoom if someone attending virtually wants to read a eulogy. He does his best to create the feeling of a chapel.
Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner of Temple Emanu-El in Closter, N.J., conducted the funeral of Madeline Satnick via Zoom.Kirshner conducted the funeral and shiva of Madeline Satnick via Zoom. She did not die of coronavirus, but the pandemic did affect her burial. Her grandchildren couldn’t attend and had to watched the funeral from home.
The family found comfort in the virtual funeral, but felt the Zoom shiva was clunky and sapped of the intimacy one craves during mourning. They decided to have a second, drive-by shiva, with permission of the local police, so friends could say their condolences through a car window. Bensimon often has to tell her customers that cemeteries in the hard-hit New York area are struggling to keep up and she’s unable to get burials done on the prescribed Jewish timeline.
Since everyone within a family is mourning separately, she has had to give out more candles for each death and is now running low. She arranged a recent funeral for a family with six adult children and one spouse. Normally she’d give one candle for all of them but all seven family members needed their own.
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