Leadership in Turbulent Times

Akiva opened his Gemara and began to learn, but he was soon interrupted by urgent knocking. He found a frantic-looking woman standing at the doorway and asked how he could help her.

The woman, who introduced herself as Pamela from Eugene, Oregon, explained that she was en route to Germany, where she would be meeting with some old friends. She then began to share the chain of events that had brought her to the doorstep of Agudah South.

Pamela was Jewish and had only one living relative, an uncle who was a resident in the Cheltenham Care Community, a long-term care facility located farther up Bathurst Street. She communicated with this uncle relatively frequently and saw her trip from Eugene to Germany as an opportunity to visit him. She arranged to spend Monday, the day of the eclipse, in Rochester, New York, which was in the path of totality, and then make the three-hour trip to see her uncle in Toronto. Tuesday, the following morning, she arrived at the facility and asked to visit her uncle.

“Your uncle passed away nine days ago,” she was told. “The body was sent to the Affordable Burial and Cremation funeral home in Hamilton, Ontario.”