Over the next week, the Forward will be collecting impressions and recollections from women about their role in Jewish mourning rituals. To share your story, click here. Catching a glimpse of your rabbi discreetly sneaking out of the room as you begin a eulogy for your grandfather is a little disconcerting. Two months ago, I…
Marseille’s chief rabbi has denied allegations that his employees tried to extort illicit funds from a bereaved family. The allegations were made in a complaint filed with police last week in connection with the passing of Jeannine Timsit, the La Provance Daily reported Tuesday. Several of Timsit’s family members said that employees of the city’s…
The earliest evidence of flowers being used in funerals has been found in ancient graves unearthed in Israel, archaeologists said on Tuesday, releasing results of a research project that began a decade ago. Impressions of stems and flowers, probably from mint and sage plants, were discovered in four graves, between 11,700- and 13,700-years-old, at a…
The annual meeting of the Jewish death care radicals is no place for a funeral director. That became clear just after lunch on the second full day of the North American Chevra Kadisha and Jewish Cemetery Conference, when an attorney named Efrem Grail unloaded on the coffin hawkers. “This is about a protected profession which…
Consolation is on my mind, doubtless because just the other day I addressed a convention of a truly extraordinary organization called Kavod v’Nichum, Honor and Comfort. They’d gathered in Philadelphia, and because I once wrote some words expressing my awe at their devotion and their decency, they invited me to be with them. They are…
In this week’s Reporters Roundtable podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward news editor Larry Cohler-Esses to discuss a recent gathering of Jewish activists who want to take back funerals from the death care industry. Then, Forward intern Frimet Goldberger drops by to discuss a massive rally organized by the Satmar Hasidic sect in…
Egypt’s tiny Jewish community, a frail remnant of a once flourishing minority, held a rare public ceremony on Thursday in memory of its veteran leader, Carmen Weinstein, but the country’s Islamist leaders stayed away. Weinstein, 82, died last Saturday at her home in Cairo where she was known over the past two decades for leading…
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch was memorialized on Monday as an in-your-face, wisecracking leader who helped transform the city from a symbol of urban decay to the vital, glittering metropolis it is today. As Koch’s casket was led out of Temple Emanu-El, a soaring Fifth Ave. synagogue opposite Central Park, an organ played…
די צװיי יאַטן פֿון „ייִדלײַף־קריזיס‟ אַמפּערן זיך וועגן גאָט בשעת חיימי ווערט באַהאַנדלט אין שפּיטאָל צוליב אַ דעליקאַטן ענין
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