West Babylon, N.Y. – Donna Smith was working as a missionary in Scotland five years ago when her 94-year-old mother took ill. Smith flew home to Utah for what turned out to be their final visit.
A week after Smith returned to Edinburgh, Mary Estella Dunn died.
Although Smith couldn’t travel home again, she was still able to watch her mother’s funeral using technology: a live video broadcast over the Internet.
“It was like a miracle,” she said. “I realized that it was just technology, but to me, it was a miracle.”
The same technology that let Smith view her mother for the last time is being offered at a new memorial chapel in West Babylon.
The Star of David Memorial Chapel was built with video cameras and Internet servers so that funeral services could be put online. The webcast accommodates people who are too old or too far away to attend the funeral.
“There are just so many times when family members can’t get to the service, and they feel like they’ve missed out,” said Kevin Gray, who co-owns the chapel.
The funeral chapel, Gray says, is the first in the New York metropolitan area to webcast funerals.
Viewers can see the funeral from two angles: a panoramic view from the back and a close-up focusing on the speaker and the first few rows of seats.
The services aren’t saved in an online archive, but funeral directors can make DVDs.
Both features are included in the funeral’s price.
So far, of the four families that have had services at the chapel, one chose to broadcast the service. They did not want to answer questions about the funeral so soon, a family representative said.
A few other New York chapels have looked into webcasting, said Randy McCullough of the state’s Funeral Directors Association, but Star of David is the first he has heard to implement it.
McCullough and other industry experts expect webcasting to become more popular as younger generations of funeral directors take over and as Internet connections in family homes speed up.
The demand for webcasting is higher because people have spread out more than in the past, said Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a Manhattan-based think tank on Judaism and contemporary society.
According to Jewish tradition, a funeral allows people to deal with the loss and honor the dead by listening to the retelling of that person’s life. “The more people that get to hear that, the better,” Kula said.
Jewish law also states that a body be buried less than 24 hours after death.
Although Jewish families often stretch that time limit so relatives can come in from out of town, webcasting could encourage families to hold the service sooner, Gray said.
In New York, chapels do not officially designate what religion they serve, but Star of David was built with Jewish tradition in mind, Gray said.
