Death and Mourning

May a person with a tattoo be buried in a Jewish cemetery?

My family has a foundation for a son that died young. This foundation is in his name and helps Jewish children. If a friend's father died and they designated three places to donate in his honor BUT I choose to donate to my family foundation in the father's memory, is that okay? I have always thought it is okay to donate in memory of someone, no matter where you contribute. I thought it is okay to plant a tree in Israel, or give to your favorite charity or ....if you want, give to who the family designates. Whatever you do is a mitzvah. Am I wrong??

I live together with my sister in the house where we grew up. Since our father died, it’s now just us and no one else. When we were sitting shiva for our father, a local rabbi we don’t know paid us a visit and at first seemed helpful. He soon discovered our living arrangements. He approached us as the end of shloshim neared and told us it’s forbidden for us to live together on a permanent basis. Now he is pressuring us to find separate places to live. We can’t afford to live separately and we don’t want to either. We just went through many years of caring for our elderly parents and we do not want to further change what’s familiar to us. We want to ignore him and be ourselves, but he keeps calling us and acts like it’s his business. We are not incestuous. We are just a brother and sister who never married and we take care of each other. We have other siblings who did marry and have children and they are religious people and they don’t oppose us living together. Only this one rabbi we don’t even know is bothering us.

Can or may a Jewish Conservative rabbi officiate at the burial of a Jew in a public non-denominational cemetery?

My friend and I have tickets to a concert that we purchased several months ago. Unfortunately, my friend lost one of her parents two weeks ago. She is therefore not permitted to go to this concert. Except she is refusing to observe this halacha that she knows full well exists and insists on not observing. If she independently got herself there, I couldn’t stop her. But she depends on me for transportation to the theater because she doesn’t drive in the dark. She wants me to provide her transportation to this concert. If I refuse to take her, she will probably have no other way to get there. What this boils down to is if I cave to her demands and take her to the concert, which I promised her I would do before her parent’s death, I will be sinning by helping her sin. To avoid committing the sin of aiding another’s sin, I would have to stand up to her and be an enforcer of Halacha, which I simply do not have the spine to do. She is a dear friend. I feel I cannot let her down by controlling her behavior and her Torah observance in the worst time of her life. I feel torn.

How long does it take for the human body, and parts thereof, to be de-souled. How long before the body, and parts tyhereof, become completely disconnected from all levels of the soul. Thank you.

As far as I know a person who is in his shloishim after the loss of a parent even if the shloishim was cut back because of a Yom Tov that occured within the 30 days he is still a chiyuv as far as Davening as a Ba"al Tefillah is concerned. What happens if another person in the minyan has Yahrzeit for a parent, who takes precedence and should be Ba"al Tefillah?