Category: Death & Mourning

New boats come each week as the familiar ones start to leave. You connect, once a week, to the lost soul...

Ritual helps us pay attention. From the joy of a recovery to the grief of a funeral, ritual helps us inhabit the breadth of human experience.

Here I was ... singing about the purity of souls with a room full of Reconstructionists: queers, gender outlaws, patrilineal Jews, and so many of us who are so used to being reminded that our souls are anything but.

As we enter the month of Av, which includes the holiday of Tisha b'Av, a day of mourning for communal tragedy, we are reminded of the power of ritual to sustain us during times of loss. However, for grieving families, the pain of loss can often make funeral planning challenging. In that spirit, we present an interview with Sharon Litvinsky and Jennifer Ross, founders of By Your Side, a funeral and memorial planning service in Princeton, NJ.

Here’s our message: if you suffer, get help. You’re worth it.

After more than half a century of struggle with mental illness, mired in despair, my father died by suicide.  

Whoever saves one life, it is as if he has saved the whole world. (Talmud)

I continued to wonder how a Jew-by-choice goes about honoring a dead loved one in a way that doesn’t offend non-Jewish relatives and honors my adopted Jewish traditions.

Four months ago I was about to get ready for bed when my cellphone rang. I ignored it because it was from an unknown caller. When I ignored it a second time, the caller left a voicemail. It was my stepmother's friend, whom I had never met, calling from a hospital in Texas.

This past Friday afternoon, we hosted the third in our series of #ReimagineRitual Twitter chats, this one on #ReimagineLoss. We discussed ways to remagine Jewish mourning rituals, touching on subjects such as how ritual provides structure for our grief, making sense of the phrase "Baruch Dayan Ha-emet," and grieving practices in Jewish interfaith families. We appreciate the many voices represented in this chat. The aim of these chats is to be the first step in ongoing conversations.