One of the most painful consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the horrific loss of lives. To date, the death toll from the virus is upwards 407,000 worldwide.
Another painful consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic has been that those who suffered these losses have not been able to pay tribute to their loved ones because of restrictions of social distancing.
A team of young women at Carmel 6000, a prestigious National Service project under the auspices of AMIT, created a way for mourners to commemorate these Jewish victims of COVID-19 worldwide.
Developed in partnership with The Jerusalem Post and the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affiairs, the team at Carmel 6000, which uses technology to find solutions for society’s challenges, created Yizcor.
Yizcor.carmel6000.com is the website they developed whereby families and friends may honor their loved ones who died in the pandemic. The symbol is a memorial candle, as it’s the tradition to light one for someone who died.
“At Carmel 6000, we work on technological solutions for different society challenges, such as creating apps that help those with physical disabilities, autism, or the elderly,” said Shalva Eisenberg, one of the bnot sherut on the team that created Yizcor.
With restrictions of social distancing, family members and friends weren’t allowed to gather at cemeteries for the funeral and burial of their loved ones. Nor were they allowed to have people visit in-person during the seven-day shiva period. The bereaved had almost no community to share their sorrow.
“With corona came along a whole new set of difficulties,” said Shalva. “The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs saw that Jews all over the world were losing loved ones to corona. These people were struggling, not only with the grieving itself, but with the loneliness of no shiva, and not being able to share their sorrows with other people because of social distancing and all the precautions we had to take. The idea was that technology might be able to help, even just a little bit, and offer them some nechama, some consolation.”
The team worked day and night to launch the website. It went live the day before Pesach. Viewers are able to log in to see a picture of the departed person and read a description. They can add information, stories, anecdotes or thoughts to the page. It could then be shared on social media.
The dynamic website has had a tremendous impact, especially during the height of the pandemic’s most difficult days.
“We got some incredible feedback from people who knew the victims and even from those who didn’t know the victims,” Shalva said.
People can still log on and add information about Jewish COVID-19 victims. (Yizcor.carmel6000.com).
As the pandemic’s weeks stretched into months, Carmel 6000 helped in another project for the bereaved. This time, to help people pay tribute to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives in Israel’s wars and the victims of terror for Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day.
In partnership with Elyasaf Peretz, son of Miriam Peretz, Carmel 6000 created Connect2Care, a Zoom platform on which people could commemorate their loved ones. Typically, on Yom HaZikaron, which this year fell on April 27 to April 28, family members would visit the cemetery to pay tribute to their loved ones and say kaddish. But because of social distancing restrictions, this couldn’t take place.
Connect2Care successfully connected those who needed and wanted to be together. There were more than 1,000 Zoom meetings and 121,000 participants who were able in these challenging times to mark Yom HaZikaron with memories of their fallen family members and friends.
