New York, NY – A new electronic device that breathes life into tombstones is coming to New York.
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The $225 Memory Medallion allows cemetery visitors with smartphones to point the units at a gravestone and get pictures and biographical information about the deceased.
One of the first places to be equipped with the medallions will be a 9/11 memorial to Queens firefighters and cops at St. Michael’s Cemetery in East Elmhurst.
The stainless-steel disks are glued to the monuments. They contain a bar code that can be read by phones such as the iPhone and the Droid.
The medallions will upload as many as eight photos of the deceased and a 1,000-word biography.
innovative, don’t se any prob with this halchoically or otherwise
Doesn’t Chalacha forbid photos on tomb stones for Jews? Though Jews from Soviet Union have a custom of adding photos on tomb stones. I think it is very appropriate to put a face of the person on tombstones so people at least know who that person was, instead of looking at a slab of rock with some writing on it.
Can we also get regular updates from gehonim or gan eden? Or maybe a gehenim livecam?
I think the idea is great
the reason against pictures I can understand especially when all tombstones were engraved but the electronic devioces give an oppurtunity to add a lot more information about the deceased.
Imagine if the person was known as a great posek or Talmud Chacham we would be able to learn from them directly when visiting their tzion.
If a person was a musicion we can hear his songs.
Children and grandchildren would be able to get a much greater feeling of who the niftar was even years later.
The old tombstones in Europe were usually a lot more elaborate than those that we have today. many had figures of animals, books, or other designs depending on the occupation of the person. I even saw one matzevah in Warsaw of a mohel that is of a hand holding a knife.
So I don’t see anything wrong from updating tombstones with electronic technology.
Wow! next time I get a composition on the holocaust, early life in usa, etc, I’m spending a night in the cemetery!
enlightened-yid,
“I think it is very appropriate to put a face of the person on tombstones so people at least know who that person was, instead of looking at a slab of rock with some writing on it.”
So go to an Italian cemetery they all have pictures.
Next step is to make a Madame tussuad wax of the head of the person, and male a tape recording of the person before he she dies and let the person talk to you
when you visit the grave. It’s the closest thing to techiyas hameisim or resurrection of the dead.