Met Mitzvah

Must the “right” or “good” thing always be hard, or is a quick fix just as good?

“Rabbi Fraenkel, my mother is set to be cremated, her body burned and pulverized, her soul never to find peace,” her voice cracked in obvious desperation.

“I’m sorry,” he told the shocked family. “We took out the wrong casket.”

Under the rural northwestern Arizona scorching sun, I trekked through the dusty red rows of the cemetery, looking for a grave with no name. The investigator had told me that the deceased person I was looking for rested at the end of a row in the county se...