There are two types of people when it comes to obituaries, those who enjoy reading them and those who do not. Thankfully for the J, I am a person that does.

Many know me on campus as a teacher in various ways: art at camp, pre-k during the school year, art events in the evenings. While much of my experience has indeed been in art and education, my master’s degree is actually in museum studies. So when approached with the project of digitizing and organizing the Jewish Cemetery records, Eric Maurer apologized for the “not very exciting” task. Truth was that I genuinely enjoy working with historical and material culture, and thankfully because of my background, I know my way around collections management. What Eric did not know is that he would end up with a detailed, color-coded spreadsheet of nearly 2,000 records to start the transition of digitizing this priceless information. Later I would come to find out that carrying on this work truly was kismet.

Sure, reading obituaries can seem morbid, but I would argue it honors those no longer with us, fully embracing zichrona livricha, and allowing their lives to continue blessing ours. For weeks I would go through the cemetery records in file folders, reading each obituary that was included. The staff in the office humored me as I excitedly shared tidbits of lives I found fascinating, whether it was the dentist that was also a stained glass artist or the woman who was finally bat mitzvah’d at age 73.

Judaism teaches us that honor, respect, and caring for a person who has died is one of the greatest mitzvot we can do. Changing our physical relationship with the person into a spiritual one, enriching our lives with their life and their wisdom. Within these records, each person had a story to tell and I eagerly listened.

This was not the first time cemetery records were compiled to get a better understanding of who, and where, our community members are located within the historic Rosenbaum cemetery. A few have taken on the task over the years including a name I recognized: Stan Glasofer (z”l). Long before I taught at the J, or before my children attended school there, my husband and I bought a house that happened to be owned by Stan and his wife; one of many small ways connecting us to this community - again, kismet.

In reading I learned that Stan’s father, Seymour Glasofer (z”l) was a veterinarian who would take him to the now Mariners’ Lake to vaccinate the ducks.

I learned that Lillian Diamondstein (z”l) was a coffee girl in WWII that once borrowed a handkerchief from a soldier to blot her lipstick. That soldier then kept it as a good luck charm to get through the war and they met again two years later. Yes, he still had the handkerchief, lipstick stain and all.

I learned that Edwin Joseph (z”l) earned his first job in a fish market by reciting “excellent” Hebrew he learned for his bar mitzvah.

I learned that David Cohen (z”l) was a professional magician by the name of “The Great Cohini” that sadly had a heart attack mid-show.

I learned that Lotte Goldstein (z”l) was born in Sieburg, Germany and as a young girl her parents sent her to America in 1936, alone on a ship, to avoid the Holocaust. I learned that Jeanne Cohen (z”l) was known as “an immaculate dresser.”

I learned that Sybil Heilberg (z”l) was instructor of Chinese cooking for NNPS. Her husband Max (z”l) was barred from practicing law by the Nazis so he left Germany. He met Sybil in England and the two moved to Cuba, then the US.

I learned that Lawrence Lieberman (z”l) was a medical administrative officer in Normandy after D-Day.

I learned that Irving Goldstein (z”l) earned a scholarship to study art all across Europe.

I learned that Donald Rosenbaum (z”l) wrote his own obituary, opening with: “Why should I cause my wife the anguish of composing an obituary?”

I learned that George Lebolt (z”l) was an award- winning bonsai artist, donating most of his collectionto the Montreal Botanical Gardens where you can still visit today, in the George LeBolt Bonsai Collection.

I learned that G. Ben Levinson (z”l) helped repopulate livestock across Israel post-WWII. I learned that Freda Wolf (z”l) had an “uncanny ability to come up with a show tune for nearly every occasion.”

I learned that Rachel Melamed (z”l) survived the horrors of Stutthof Nazi Concentration Camp.

I finished inputting each record around the same time my family was getting ready to move out of Stan’s house. Before we left, I grabbed a small stone from the front yard and wrote our house number on it, then made the drive over to the cemetery. After reading through file after file of plots, I feel like I know the cemetery so well already despite it being my first time there. I walked around and found Stan, and left my stone on his marker, what I have come to learn is a sign of respect, a mitzvah in honoring the deceased. It was an honor to carry on work after Stan, in our home, and again within this community.