Shiva
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Life What We Talk About When We Talk About Death
One sunny Thursday evening in June, eight people, ranging from thirty-somethings to senior citizens, sat around a table at the Manhattan Jewish Community Center nibbling on cookies. In front of them stood Sally Kaplan, one of three facilitators present from the organization What Matters, a New York City-based not-for-profit that facilitates group and individual conversations…
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Life When Holocaust Memories Are Too Heavy – A Survivor Considers Assisted Suicide
I didn’t lay a hand on her — all I did was propose a suicide plan. My mother broke her hip this summer, and quickly went from being a remarkably mobile 86-year-old to facing a convalescence that began with a high degree of helplessness. During her first week of rehab, when she still needed two…
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Food Top 7 Foods To Bring To A Shiva House
It’s not always easy to know what to say to someone in mourning. A lot of times people can make the mistake of saying ‘it was meant to be,’ or ‘at least they didn’t suffer,’ or ‘well, she was pretty old, wasn’t she?’ So instead of putting your foot in your mouth, consider giving your…
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Sponsored When Tragedy Strikes, New York Jews Turn To This Historic Funeral Company
Riverside Memorial Chapel has witnessed over a century of New York’s Jewish history. From its beginning in 1897 as a livery stable on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, to the opening of a funeral business in Harlem in the early 1900s, all the way to the inauguration of the four-story chapel on the Upper West Side…
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Breaking News In Pittsburgh, Those Who Take Care Of The Dead Need Care, Too
When the deadliest attack against the American Jewish community in history struck the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday morning, 30 members of the community knew they needed to get to the crime scene immediately. These 15 men and 15 women were not rushing to the scene as police or paramedics. They are…
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Fast Forward Pittsburgh Victims Were Part Of Jewish Group That Prepares Dead For Burial
One victim murdered and one who remains in the hospital following Saturday’s mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh were members of the chevra kadisha, an organization of Jewish men and women called upon to ensure that deceased Jewish bodies are properly prepared to be buried. Jerry Rabinowitz died in the rampage and Dan Leger…
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Life I Don’t Believe In Prayer — Yet I Say ‘Yizkor’ Every Year
Like many families, I go into the Jewish holiday season with some sense of sorrow and regret. There is nothing sad about these holidays themselves — even Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and forgiveness is pervaded with a sense of hopefulness and expectation that God will forgive us and inscribe us in the “book…
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The Schmooze Jewish Death Maven Hosts ‘FUN-eral’ Parties, Celebrating Death
Most people stay far away from talking about mortality. Others, like the 88-years-young Shatzi Weisberger, the proud host of what she calls “FUN-eral parties,” are preparing for the end of their lives with gusto. Weisberger is just one of many members of a movement for enthusiastically accepting death. The Death Acceptance Movement, surprisingly, does not…
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News Scoop: Heritage Foundation plans to ‘identify and target’ Wikipedia editors
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Music For Bob Dylan’s biographer, ‘A Complete Unknown’ is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction
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Culture In Peter Yarrow’s legacy, an uneasy blend of Jewish values and personal transgressions
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News ‘Do you have the Torahs?’ Synagogue races LA wildfire to rescue its past and future
In Case You Missed It
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Opinion What a remarkable Torah rescued from Iran — then LA’s fire — can teach about community amid devastation
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Fast Forward Israel’s judicial overhaul is back. So are the protests.
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Opinion After 15 months of war, Israelis are all scaffolding, helping hold each other up
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Fast Forward Their Pacific Palisades synagogue is standing, but all three rabbis lost their homes
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