How can we possibly mark, in a respectful and personal way, the passing of so many corona victims?

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here do you even begin? When faced with tragedy of such immense dimensions — infinitely larger and weightier than a print magazine — how do you respond?

If you’re like me your first response would be: You don’t. Just give up. You will never be able to scale such staggering tragedy.

How can we possibly mark, in a respectful and personal way, the passing of so many corona victims? How can we capture the humanity, the individual contributions, of so many people?

Print media is finite. There are only so many words that fit on a page. Only so many pages in a magazine. Only so many writers, so many hours. (And only so much dark news that our readers can digest over a single Shabbos.)

But the names of the victims — each one a world — just keep coming.

During an ordinary time, so many of those names would make their way onto a magazine cover. We’d devote full-length features to these people who marked our world with their talents, their efforts, their smiles or kindness or prayers. But this isn’t an ordinary time. As much as we wish and want and aim to pay proper tribute to the victims, there’s no feasible way to give them adequate respect within this limited media form.

What to do? How to proceed? We dare not ignore so many tragedies. And we don’t want to make the macabre selection of who does or doesn’t “deserve” a tribute.

When we first raised these questions, we also raised the tantalizing option that this Yom Tov we’d finally see the true liberation, erasing all sorrow and all wretched editorial dilemmas. So we shut off our computers and closed our screens for those first few blessed days of Yom Tov, locking the world of newsflashes and updates and warnings out of our locked-down homes.

Then, over Chol Hamoed, with the redemption still not arrived but another horrific list of losses pouring in, our editorial and management departments started a conversation. We began listing, then debating, all the imperfect options — and weighing the logistics that came along with each one.

Here’s the imperfection option we embraced: We’ve built a channel on our website, “Every Soul a World,” where we will be posting individual tributes to each victim, written by our staff in collaboration with the bereaved families. We hope to build a collection of pieces that captures the humanity, the individuality, and the contributions of each precious soul snatched away by this terrible virus — a collection highlighting what we as a nation have lost.

Pdfs of each piece will be made available for those who wish to download and print them. Families, friends, or relatives who can help provide information and memories are invited to e-mail tributes@mishpacha.com; we will then get in touch with you to prepare a piece to be included in this project.

We know it’s not enough, but in this surreal era where all our givens and must-haves and it-isn’t-the-real-thing-unless have suddenly been ripped to shreds, we hope this approach can pave a path forward. A path paved with humility and acceptance that we’re not plotting the scenes, writing the script, or building the set — but doing our best to play the roles we’ve been given and to see the beauty and greatness of all those who’ve ascended to a Higher view.

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(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 807)