Saturday - Third and final Yizkor at New Montefiore Cemetery posting

Mourning is both a personal and communal activity. Nobody but the mourner feels the particular loss they are grieving, but many feel or have felt something similar, and can both sympathize and empathize. I cannot get inside the head of someone who has lost a parent recently, but having lost my parents and remembering how I felt, even if the sharp pains of that moment are blunted by the passage of time I can sympathize and offer honest words of condolence. If I can bring those old feelings back and let the grief wash over me for a moment, in silence I can empathize.

When the children and their children and grandchildren of the Radomers gather at the cemetery, we let some of the pain come back but ease it with the companionship of our fellows who are all in the same place. It's not the words of the prayers that make us better, it's saying them together that allows us to put aside differences and share our humanity. 

Beginning in March 2020, many of those whose close relations and friends passed away often had to mourn with their community kept at a distance. Video chats and conferences don't compete with the warmth of a person sitting next to you, perhaps in silence.

The Jewish mourning ritual is a step by step process that begins with the burial. If it is a parent that is being mourned, the stages will take a year to complete, though most of the last 11 months the mourner has returned to their normal routine.

For a person who is Ashkenazi, toward the end of that year or later, the stone on the grave is unveiled in a brief, usually meaningful ceremony. There is a tradition among the Radomers to hold the unveiling at the Yizkor if it is near the anniversary of the person's death.

It was good to get back together. Now we all have to practice good community/public health measures to show that community and communal responsibility is a way to express personal liberty.

Here's the final group of photos I've selected. I take too many and it takes time to select and edit a posting. I am glad I can do it.

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Friday - Second Yizkor at New Montefiore post

Every year now, before the service, I stop at the cemetery office to pay a courtesy call on their grounds manager, Tommy Whelan. We chat for 15 or 20 minutes and catch up on each other's year as well as dealing with any issues that can't be taken care of with a phone call. This year, he told me about how hard it was for him and his crew, as well as everyone working at the cemetery during the first months of the pandemic.

He said that normally that get a handful of funerals every day or during a week, but that every morning when the cemetery gates were opened there'd be a line of hearses waiting, sometimes more than 30 burials in a day, and that number was that low because the cemetery only accepts Jewish deceased. Nearby Pinelawn, a nonsectarian cemetery was getting 2 1/2 times as many. One morning, a panel truck was waiting and inside were stacked a half dozen or more coffins. The funeral director didn't have enough hearses. Coffins were arriving in all sorts of vehicles because people were dying in droves. It must've been horrible.

So as difficult as it was for me and the other members of the Radomer Society's cemetery committee, I think he had it worse.

Here is a few more photos. One more post will follow.

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Thursday - A Yizkor to remember the Shoah and the remnants of a community

It is the tradition of the survivors from the city of Radom in Poland, their children, grandchildren and now, great-grandchildren, to gather on the Sunday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at their communal burial grounds at New Montefiore Cemetery in Pinelawn, NY to solemnly recall those who were lost, those who survived and have now passed on and to keep the memories alive. Last year, for the first time since the tradition began, no service was held because of the Covid-19 Pandemic. This year, we were vaccinated and comfortable gathering again.

Most of the First Generation has passed away. It's more than 76 years since the end of WWII and the liberation of the camps. This year only one survivor of the Shoah was there with us, but nearly 100 children of survivors and their children and grandchildren made the trip to New Montefiore to stand together remembering our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and friends among whose graves and memorials we stood. 

During the first months we suffered many losses from the virus and we feared the end of the line for the generation of survivors. So little was known and so many errors were made but the number of deaths tapered off, though we did lose 18 members from the beginning in 2020 until we met. It was a difficult time. To memorialize them with a gift of life, the Radomer Mutual Culture Center is donating and ambulance to the Mogen David Adom.

This will be the first of three postings of photos I took. 

As you already know, click to expand.

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