Death and Mourning

My mother passed away on 2 shevat. When do I finish my year mourning?

Dear Rabbi: When I was a kid, my father was not much of a religious man, but he often stated to my family his wish to be buried in Israel. He expected to live to an old age like his parents and grandparents did. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and despite the appearance of good health, he died of a sudden heart attack in his forties when I was just 15. My mother, my siblings, and I could not afford to bury him in Israel and instead interred him locally at a ‘Jewish’ cemetery operated by a Reformed temple where many people who were not actually Jewish are buried. Now many years have passed. I am married with children, as are my siblings, and even my mother has remarried, and I have a close relationship with my stepdad and step siblings. Family life is great. But it still nags me to this day that my father didn’t get buried in Israel like he wanted. Today we have the money to transfer his coffin if that is possible. We don’t know if that’s a thing one can do. Does Jewish law allow this?

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?