In recent years, a growing number of Americans have sought innovative ways to grieve their departed friends and family members, ranging from the touching to the bizarre. New businesses and professionals have even risen up to facilitate and advise such efforts. To Devorah Goldman, these trends reflect a sense of confusion about how to deal with death. A forum on the social-media platform Reddit, for instance,

offers countless examples of befuddled people left to figure out mourning for themselves. Some complain of the effort involved in planning Instagram-worthy “celebrations of life” while exhausted and anguished. Others seek advice on things like how to manage social obligations while grieving, or they wonder how many months of grieving is excessive. Countless people feel abandoned.

Mourning etiquette has all but vanished in mainstream secular culture—the term “mourner” sounds almost archaic. A search of the Reddit grief forum’s main page brings up no instances of the word “mourn.” . . . Grief, of course, is a private affair; mourning is public.

Drawing on her own recent experience mourning the death of her mother, Goldman contrasts traditional Jewish practices surrounding death with this sense of uncertainty. Jewish traditions prescribe a specific formula for comforting the bereaved (so that no one is at a loss about what to say), successive stages of mourning of diminishing intensity, and a host of other customs and rituals. Take, for instance, the well known custom of shiva, which involves not leaving one’s home for several days after the funeral:

Shiva stops you from hiding; there is nowhere to go. If at all possible, work is suspended. Daily prayer services with a quorum are held in the “shiva house.” Community members send an endless parade of dishes and serve the family at mealtimes; mourners are not to provide for themselves. We were charged with yielding control over our lives and residing in a state of partial dependence. Existence in this liminal space serves as an ongoing, visceral reminder of an altered world. It is also an ongoing act of accompaniment for the departed.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.