Ever wished you knew where your great-great-grandparents were buried? Ever wanted to visit the grave of a distant relative but don’t know where to find it? There’s a new social network designed to help you out.
Shelly Furman Asa has created Neshama.info, a website where you can search for the location of graves of ordinary people. Asa got the idea when she realized that there were sites that helped you find graves for Israeli soldiers killed in battle, Holocaust victims, and heroes of various stripes, but none for everyday Jews who died in everyday circumstances.
The site has pictures of over 120,000 headstones in Israel and is adding more. You can search for names, and write notes about a person or a grave. Technically speaking it’s not a social network for the dead—so far as we know they’re not very social, except in Chicago, where they vote—but for living relatives and friends who want to find graves and share memories about the deceased.
Right now Neshama (Hebrew for “soul” or “breath”) only covers graves in Israel, but they’re looking to expand. Soon, you could be chatting with distant relatives on Great Aunt Sadie’s Neshama page. And maybe one day, if the technology really takes off, with Great Aunt Sadie herself.
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