n>Last week, we buried my father in the Long Island cemetery plot that had been waiting three decades for him to arrive. When I recall my mother’s 1990 funeral, in the pre-COVID era, I can still feel the love that came from the crowd surrounding us, and the support I drew from the Hebrew prayers collectively chanted. This time, however, standing before his open grave, the absence of a crowd was deafening. My iPhone was on a tripod, allowing my sister in Manhattan, my step-sister in Jackson Heights, and my cousin in Pennsylvania to look along as my rabbi Zoomed us together from his living room. My 11-year old daughter played surrogate, shoveling dirt onto the casket as I stooped to hear their final farewells over the traffic from the adjacent highway. Read Full Article »