The only couple to die in the Pittsburgh synagogue bloodbath were laid to rest Thursday. Late on an overcast Thursday morning, mourners trickled into the Ralph Schugar Chapel for the funeral of Sylvan Simon, 86, and his wife, Bernice, 84, who had been married for nearly 62 years. He was a retired accountant, she a…
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…
(JTA) — A coroner’s office in London has come under fire after multiple families have complained about delayed Jewish burials. The London-based Jewish Chronicle reported Thursday that one woman made 210 phone calls to the St. Pancras coroner’s office in central London before being assured that her father would be buried four days after his death. According…
Fifty years ago I became a military widow when my husband of three years was killed in the Six Day War. I was pregnant with our first child. I was a young wife, 23 years old. I saw my husband before his death. Burnt beyond recognition, he was desperately gasping for air. I looked for…
CHICAGO (JTA) — A Jewish family is suing a Chicago-area funeral home for botching a burial so badly that the casket toppled and splintered in the grave, exposing the deceased’s white shroud to a gathering of over 100 traumatized mourners. After three months of trying unsuccessfully to settle the case, the family of tax attorney…
“Daniel’s bright smile brought joy to many,” read the obituary for Daniel “Ae Roo” Beer, an 11-year-old who died Monday at Jewish summer camp and was mourned at a New Jersey funeral Wednesday. “Tennis, swimming, piano, basketball, soccer and of course video games were some of the favorite things Daniel enjoyed,” the obituary continued, touching…
We were living in Dublin when the first emergency phone call came in. My father, then 80, was heading into surgery in Baltimore. They ended up removing a lung and reaming out important arteries full of cancer. In my mind’s eye I saw the rogue cells that would then pump through his body and lodge…
Starting today, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) will begin a five day performance run one of the all time great “lost works” of music – Igor Stravinsky’s “Chant Funebre” (Funeral Song). The piece, a short orchestral work, was written in 1908 on the occasion of the death of Stravinsky’s mentor Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. As the story goes,…
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