JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
When Martin Mendelsohn died in September, his brother’s plans to have the remains cremated ran into some surprising opposition: The Hasidic owner of the dead man’s retirement home sued to have the body buried instead. Philip Schonberger, who runs the Evergreen Court Home for Adults, in Spring Valley, New York, thought Mendelsohn’s brother, Steven, was…
In March 2014, May Peleg paid for her own cremation at Aley Shalechet, the only funeral home in Israel that offers this service, considered taboo in Jewish tradition. Peleg should have been cremated soon after she committed suicide. The prominent 31-year-old transgender activist had made her wishes clear in her will, her lawyer said, where…
The body of an Israeli transgender activist will be cremated as she requested in her will, despite objections by her haredi Orthodox mother. The Jerusalem District Court ruled Wednesday that the body of May Peleg will be cremated, the Hebrew-language news website Walla! reported. Peleg, 31, committed suicide, according to a statement released from the…
The ultra-Orthodox mother of an Israeli transgender woman who killed herself is battling the woman’s lawyer over plans to cremate the body. May Peleg, 31, an activist in Israel’s LGBT community, filed a will with attorney Yossi Wolfson the day before her suicide stating her desire to be cremated, Haaretz reported Tuesday. The Israeli newspaper…
An Orthodox Jewish man is suing a Chicago-area hospital for cremating his amputated leg instead of preserving it for burial as he requested. Moshe Lefkowitz, 43, had surgery to remove his left leg below the knee in March 2011. He said in a lawsuit filed in court in Cook County that he made his wishes…
In August 1963, “The American Way of Death” by Jessica Mitford sold out its first printing on its publication date and topped The New York Times best-seller list for weeks. Inspired by her husband, Robert Treuhaft, a radical Jewish labor lawyer who was an unnamed co-author of the book, Mitford brought a sparkling British wit…
After a two-year battle with cancer, Joseph Fitzgerald was determined to leave his final resting place to Mother Nature. On a quiet February day in rural Florida, Fitzgerald’s body was carried through the Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery on a bamboo stretcher made by family members. In an ecologically approved “green burial,” he was laid to…
Jews are increasingly choosing to be cremated, funeral professionals say, despite Jewish law and thousands of years of tradition. The numbers are still small, relative to the non-Jewish community. But they bring with them considerable angst. According to Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, a prominent Conservative rabbi in New York City, family members increasingly struggle with the…
THE TEMPLE EMANU-EL STREICKER CENTER and Virtual
Aug 10, 2022
7 pm ET ·
Will the last Jew left in New York’s congressional delegation be reelected? Will New York’s senior congresswoman receive another term? Or will one of the newcomers upend Manhattan politics?
