Mourning and Memorial in the Internet: The Israeli Case

Mourning and memorial culture on the Internet :The Israeli case

Abstract

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the relationships between the Internet and the Israeli culture of mourning and memorialization. The study examines the question as to whether the Internet renews the culture of mourning and memorialization, and what are the characteristic traits of expression of very painful and difficult emotions of bereavement over the Internet in the Israeli context. The study is primarily based on an ethnographic study taking place through and on the Internet, examining the Israeli sites and the virtual support communities for the mourning and bereaved. We will present the reciprocal relations and the links that exist between the culture of mourning and memorialization over the Internet and between wider processes taking place on the level of Israeli society.

Key Words: Ethnography, Internet, Methodology, Virtual ,Qualitative, Memorial sites , Israeli society.

Author's Note: The author wishes to thank to the Hubert Burda Center for Innovative Communications and the Bereavement Fund at the Bob Shapell School of Social Work of the University of Tel Aviv, in cooperation with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, for funding this research.

Introduction

Shiri was a very special person. Gifted with beauty, joy, talent and goodness of the heart. Shiri was a proud Jewish Israeli young woman. She was murdered on Tuesday, June 18th 2002 by a Palestinian suicide bomber on her way to work. We will never forget her.

]http://www.shiri.us/eng-main.html]

The above excerpt is from the opening page of Shiri virtual memorial site. It is not alone; there are many such memorials on Israeli Internet sites. Along with the sites, there is an active Israeli support communities for the bereaved and those in mourning. One of the sites administrator’s greetings details the community’s goals:

People often want to share, release feelings, let it all out, tell stories, be comforted, embrace and be embraced in return. This is the place. You already know me, I am one of you, member of the huge clan of all those who have lost someone near and dear to our hearts…I am here for you exactly as you are here for me, to listen, to respond, and often just to be silent. [http://www.tapuz.co.il/tapuzforum/main/anashim.asp?forum=105&pass=1]

The aim of the present article is an examination of the following questions: Has the Internet rejuvenated the culture of mourning and memorialization, and if so, to what degree? Is it expanding the sphere of mourning, reorganizing the field, or changing it from the bottom up while restructuring new patterns? What characterizes the way in which painful and difficult emotions of loss are expressed on the Internet, which is a system constructed on impersonal communication without physical visual interaction? How does the Internet contribute to the Israeli culture of loss and memorialization, especially given the processes of change, leading to increased sectorialization and privatization of the past few years.

Since the Internet is a new medium, with many implications for Israeli society that I will examine in my article, I feel it is best to begin with a brief description of he Internet and its affects on society:

The Internet and its social implications

In contrast to other media, the Internet integrates personal and mass media. It has, in fact, created a new mode of human communication, enabling participants to take part in two-way communication. Users of the World Wide Web are no longer passive audiences of data consumers as in media such as television and radio, but are active participants controlling the contents of the desired information. They shape the quality of the data and respond to them.

The Internet opens up a simple virtual topography of sites and “addresses” to users, allowing travel from site to site by moving from link to link. Cyberspace, or cybernetic space, through which users move, does not imitate the real world, but rather creates a rapid, new, immediate, multi-layered world, thanks to the 24/7 accessibility to the Internet and site structure (Nunes, 1997).Vast amounts of data and links to additional, related sites provides a huge storehouse of available information; thus, the Internet is a technological innovation tightly linked to social change. These social changes have clear implications for the patterns of mourning and memory to be detailed in the research and described below.

In order to distinguish the characteristics of expression of painful emotions of grief and loss on the Internet, we shall discussion about emotions in the net. On-line communication on the Internet facilitates the expression of emotions (output) and the input of emotional messages, thus developing and reinforcing important social ties between users, forming a system of relationships similar to ties of family and friendship, all taking place without participants being physically present. Thus, the Internet may be said to aid in preserving personal and intimate ties in cases where face-to-face contact is impossible due to physical distance between parties. On-line interaction through the Internet functions mostly as a writing medium, operating within a communications framework that takes place in “real time,” i.e., the Internet transforms the act of writing into “speech”.

On one hand, communication through the Internet provides immediacy, accessibility and continuousness to the expression of emotion; on the other hand, it differs from face to face communication. When both parties are present, physical and visual interaction provides details on the identity of users and about the situation eliciting the emotion. This phenomenon questions the essence of emotions, the degree to which they are concrete, and their mode of expression in virtual space. Can emotions really be expressed through an “impersonal” or “alienated” computer technology? Can we express emotions of love, pain or sorrow through a communication medium based on reading and writing, but lacking any visual physical expressions?

The social space from which we can learn about the expression of emotions through the Internet is formed by virtual communities, such as e-groups. Studies that have investigated interpersonal communications in these communities, primarily studying virtual support groups, have found that on-line communication enables users to freely express emotions and reach a high level of self-disclosure. This exposure is accomplished through expressive codes developed among users as a sign language and vocabulary of abbreviations, and through written descriptive emotions (in short or expanded form) in “real time” in a genuine, spontaneous manner (Weinberg, Schmale, Uken and Wessel, 1996; Salem, Bogar and Reid, 1997). As a new medium, the Internet facilitates the expression of emotions through on-site memorialization through participation in grief works support groups. A closer examination of these phenomena brings us to focus on the next issue:

The culture of mourning and memorialization on the Internet

Communities define their identity in the present through the design and restructuring of the collective memory that they have in common. This factor forms the group and unifies the community, but can also become the battleground between various agents of memory as to which memories should be conserved and which forgotten. Communities fix and conserve their collective memory through different practices, such as museums, contracts, cemeteries, special memorial days, history books and more. Nora (1989) has defined these manifestations of collective memory as “places of memory” (Lieux de Memoire): He does not relate to the limited definition of the word in space, but emphasizes its broadest interpretation. He characterizes these “places of memory” as the visual expression on the public sphere, as events found on the real-time calendar, and as mental spaces existing within the consciousness of people who remember, expressed in dialogue, dress and behavior.

The virtual memorial wall for American soldiers who died in Vietnam

The Internet technology influences the memorial culture since it transforms the concepts “place of memory” and “community of memory,” placing them in a space cut off from specific time and place, with direct and unmediated access 24 hours a day. In addition, it expands the virtual memorial sites into meta-places of memory. Each site can simultaneously use several practical memorial methods, and exhibit several places of memory at one time: photo gallery, monument, poem, condolence book and linking users to other memory sites.

All this is made possible thanks to the multi-layered presentation and hypertext resources of virtual sites.

Internet technology can transform the virtual social space into a place where those who are grieving can receive group support, participate in discussions and chats, and memorialize the departed in virtual memorial sites on differing levels of the personal, communal, national and global. Memorial sites may include many elements of traditional mourning ceremonies, such as biographical details of the departed, dates of birth and death and selected photographs. There may also be formal or religious items enabling mourners and visitors to participate in a wide range of meaningful activities or ceremonies, such as building a monument, lighting a virtual memorial candle, and writing in the memorial book of condolences.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.,

Sofka (1997) described several goals for memorial sites; the sites can bring together a memorial community of support from among the mourners, and primarily from among others who are dealing with daily mourning. With the help of the site, those experiencing loss can receive affirmation of their emotions during difficult times. Visiting memorial sites assists the mourners in overcoming their feeling of isolation and loneliness, and helps them identify with other bereaved. Such sites allow the users to express their condolences to public figures and to private citizens, while allowing the bereaved to receive support from a wide sector of people through the virtual “condolence book” or through a link to e-mail.

The site can host discussions on emotions and conflicts that arose following the death. Development of memorial sites can help fulfill the obligations and needs of the mourners, primarily in cases in which the body was not found, or for people who were buried at a place very distant from those mourning the departed (Andsager, 1997; Sofka, 1997).

Examples of centralized Internet memorial sites are the virtual patchwork quilts of AIDS victims, [http://www.aidsquilt.org/] the virtual memorial wall for American soldiers who died in Vietnam,[http://www.thevirtualwall.org] and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., [http://www.ushmm.org/], (Andsager, 1997). Virtual memorial sites and the grief support community exist in Israeli society. The rise in the number of these sites is linked to processes of change taking place in Israeli society over the past two decades, as I shall proceed to describe:

Israel’s mourning culture: What do Israelis remember?

Israeli society has shaped its civilian social culture in accordance with the Zionist narrative through the “founding myth” that described the establishment of the State of Israel as part of the continuum of Jewish historical heritage (Zerubavel, 1995). The founding myth was structured and maintained, among others, by state-established to remember Independence Day and memorial all of the fallen who contributed to the struggle. Independence Day was made part of the fabric of the Jewish religious holidays, such as Passover and Hannukah, symbolizing the heroism of the Jewish people. Alongside of Independence Day ritual, there developed within Israeli society a culture of mourning for the fallen Israel’s wars, expressed in the concept “the family of bereavement” (Witztum and Malkinson, 1993).

In contrast to the ritual of Independence Day and the ritual of memorial Israel’s fallen soldiers, the Israeli society found it difficult to cope with the trauma of the Holocaust. The Israelis succeeded in doing so only by embracing it within the Zionist ethos through heightening the link between the Holocaust of the Jewish people and their rebirth as the State of Israel.

The chipping away at the status of the hegemony of Zionist memory over the past 25 years within Israeli society has led to the privatization of collective memory and changes in the culture of memorial. The first example of this process may be seen in the transition in the memorial processes for the Holocaust and for the fallen in Israel’s wars. The emphasis is passing from collective national memorial to memorials that express a more personal meaning of bereavement, plus the integration of personal and communal mourning in official government memorial sites (Wiesel and Shamir, 2000).

Another example of this trend may be observed in the struggles by bereaved families against the Israel Defense Forces and government agencies as they press for full disclosure of circumstances surrounding the death of their fallen son or daughter. Yet another example is seen in families’ appeals for personal grave inscriptions in military cemeteries, instead of the standard IDF formula (Naveh, 1998).

The second type of sectorialization processes which memorial culture is undergoing in Israel, including the increase in the number of agents of memory, is observed in the many memorial activities celebrating the memory of the prime minister, the late Yitzhak Rabin. The many memorial activities for Rabin that were intended to unify Israelis actually express precisely these deep rifts in Israeli society (Feigeh, 2000).

This picture is a part from a virtual exhibition “Tears of Shock” in memory of Yitzhak Rabin. The 33 photographs in this exhibition were taken during the week after the murder, in Rabin's square in Tel Aviv, by Tal Gluck.

Changes in the culture of commemoration and memorialization in Israel are linked to the rise of virtual Israeli sites on the Internet that the writer examined in studies. Two surveys using the Net’s search engines showed that currently there are hundreds of such sites, and they are constantly increasing. Based on an initial survey, memorial sites can be classified into two major categories: government sites and private and community sites.

The site in memory of Israel’s fallen soldiers

Government sites are more overall and general, providing less personal expression of bereavement. For example, the site in memory of Israel’s fallen soldiers,[http://www.izkor.gov.il], presents a set format: a single portrait of the soldier, birth and death dates, short biography from the Ministry of Defense Yizkor [memorial] Book, and gravesite. In contrast, private and community sites are much more detailed, and provide much greater freedom to their initiators. They contain combinations of several shrine practices simultaneously: opening photograph, detailed curriculum vitae, eulogies and condolences, letters, poems, visitors’ book and contact link for the family and those who set up the site, such as Racheli’s site [http://www.racheli.org/]. Other, more complex sites, include audio-video clips, background music, photo gallery and added extras such as referral to an existing monument set up by a bereaved father.

On Internet research methodology

“Webshrines” are a virtual space in which commemoration, bereavement and private and public mourning meet and maintain a dialogue with events in the real world. Sites therefore supply complex and varied materials for ethnographic research, although studying these data only through virtual fieldwork produces one-dimensional and simplistic findings.

In order to fully study the entire complexity of the fieldwork, the researcher integrated three methodologies of qualitative data-gathering that complement each other: offline and online, online observations, interviews and documentary analysis as well as analysis of articles from the press and Internet databases.

In the initial stage of the fieldwork the researcher chose to gather data through the online observation in order to take full advantage of the relative advantages of Internet research: the expanded field of research, which covers more ground geographically and has higher accessibility to subjects than traditional fieldwork.

As part of the observations, the researcher visited official government virtual memorial sites, private sites and memorial services, and performed content analysis on their components. Along with these analyses, the researcher followed-up the support communities involved with bereavement and loss, focusing on various issues such as the “Second Generation” of the Holocaust and victims of Arab terrorist attacks, documenting the processes and activities that took place in these sites over a one year period.

At the same time as performing observations, the researcher carried out content analysis on documents and various articles on the issue from the press and databases on the Internet, such as virtual newspapers as “Captain Internet” and “TheNet.” Using these two methods enabled the writer to collect factual data from the field, i.e., from the sites themselves: the quantity of sites and communities, classifications, structure, contents and components.

At a more advanced stage of the research, the writer made the connection between the virtual field and the real field through a transition from online data-gathering methods to offline data collection methodology structured on thirty interviews with research subjects. Based on the observations and content analysis, the writer took a random representative sampling of layers among the research population including those who initiated virtual Israeli memorial sites and those who built them, on various levels (personal, group, national); directors of private and other sites supplying memorial services; and facilitators/directors of virtual support communities dealing with loss and bereavement.

Interviewees were approached through an e-mail notification including a short description of the research and the request to take part, as well as phone numbers. The e-mails of interviewees were located through on-site links to “Contact Us,” “Write Us,” “Reactions,” “Visitors/Guest Book” or “Forum Manager” on various sites. 70% of those contacted gave their consent by telephone or e-mail to the interview request.

Interviews were semi-structured, seeking the personal viewpoint and world-view of the interviewee, while, at the same time, posing specific questions that limited and bounded the range of answers. The interviews provided the writer with a means to attain information about a particular person and the wider social-cultural context in which the interviewees live. In the interview setting, subjects acted both as respondents who described their personal experiences, outlooks and place centering around the virtual shrine or support community and as informants, when they examined and described in general the processes and phenomena associated with memorialization on the Internet.

Use of three complementary methodologies of data-gathering, online and offline, enabled the researcher to collect comprehensive information from various realms about the sites: who is behind them; why did they choose this method; what characterizes them as compared to other means of memorialization; what characterizes the subjects of the memorial sites (individuals and communities); and what is their association with existing memorial sites.

The study of the sites that are involved in painful emotions of loss and bereavement provided this researcher with an outlook on the expression of emotions on the Internet. The writer studies issues such as how emotional messages can be transmitted, despite limitations of lack of physical and visual interaction; what are the characteristics of expression of emotions on the Internet; and why people select this medium for transmitting their deepest feelings.

Preliminary findings

Before turning to the discussion of the findings, it must be noted that this researcher is currently involved in the early stages of processing of the field data, and therefore, the following data are initial findings only, without representing the overall complexity of the research field.

During the fieldwork, we noted that the number of memorial sites on the Israeli Internet has risen constantly and consistently. It seems that this trend is associated with the rise in the number of deaths of young people in military action, terror attacks and fatal road accidents, as well as rising public awareness of use of Internet technology. Currently, sites are created and updated within days, sometimes even hours, of the time of death, in contrast to the past, when it may have taken several years.

Changes in the culture of mourning and memorialization in Israeli society are reflected in official governmental memorial sites, such as the public discussions of the design of the site in memory of Israel’s late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Arguments are expressed between those who wish to forget that his death was the result of a political assassination, as opposed to those who refuse to do so. An additional example of this phenomenon is the personalization of national memorial Internet sites, such as the Yizkor site for fallen soldiers. Formerly run by ironclad rules for respectful and uniform length of each entry, it has now ceased to limit the curriculum vitae of the fallen soldiers, and has even recently approved links to the personal memorial site for the particular soldier at the end of his “page”.

Simultaneously with these processes, we have also seen a rise in public awareness in Israel of the existence of these sites. This shows up in the dramatic number of hits on such sites, mainly around national solemn days such as the Day of Remembrance for Israel’s Fallen, or when there are terrorist attacks or military actions with a very heavy price in human life. This intense activity often results in the collapse of sites that were unprepared for such “heavy traffic” and require site managers on the state sites to beef up the sites around these dates.

The Holocaust Heroes’ and Martyrs’ Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem

An additional process is the way the official state sites function as alternatives for the traditional national sites of former times: the Internet site for Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Heroes’ and Martyrs’ Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, has become a pilgrimage site for those wishing to remember individuals and communities who perished in the Holocaust over the past two years, while the number of physical visitors to the Yad Vashem Museum has dropped dramatically over that same time period. Thus, too, the Yizkor site has made the traditional Yizkor memorial books irrelevant due to the enormous amount of time involved in producing and publishing the books compared to the ability of the site to update information within a very short time.

Most of Debica`s Jews were shot by the Germans during the Second World War.

We will never forget the victims!!!

Shattered tombstones in Debica Jewish cemetery

memorial monument site for the Jews who lived and died in the Shtetl Debica (Dembica-Dembitz)

An additional interesting development can be seen involving Holocaust memorial sites: there is a rise in the number of “Second Generation” and even “Third Generation” of Holocaust survivors who have been going on “Roots Journeys” to their family’s homes in Europe and the FSU. Upon their return, they are constructing a private memorial site for their family or their family’s lost community for example the memorial monument site for the Jews who lived and died in the Shtetl Debica (Dembica-Dembitz) near Krakow, Poland. A similar phenomenon may be observed in the second and third generation of communities annihilated in World War II who are pushing for the construction of memorial sites for their parents’ lost communities as part of the struggle to prevent the annihilation of the memory of the first generation of their elders.

Despite the more individual character expressed by the personal sites as compared to the official national sites, they share several aspects: most of those commemorated are children, teens and young people who met untimely death under tragic circumstances, making it exceptionally difficult for their families to cope. The circumstances of the death led to a deep feeling of isolation for the families, expressed in very strong longing for the child and the desire to see, speak with and touch the departed. Due to these feelings, the site serves the bereaved relatives as a means of communicating with the external world, and as a location for the activities of a virtual community composed of family, friends and strangers who visit. This type of place cannot exist in any other place in the “real world” due to the geographic distance separating the people.

One bereaved parent defined the memorial site as “the only place where a dead person still has an address.” This statement expresses the feeling of many bereaved, for whom the site becomes a place that takes on extraordinary meaningfulness as compared with the physical gravesite, which is often neglected. The Internet site becomes the location of ritual actions involving, among others, from several entries per day to per week, updates and examining the e-mail account or visitors’ book. The Internet site becomes a private museum describing the departed in a living, dynamic manner, open to visitors from anywhere in the world, on a “24/7” basis.

The meaning of time in the virtual world has changed, since it creates a link between the past, present and future. In other words, digital reality enables us to “freeze” time and to sever the virtual existence of the departed from the expanse of physical space and real-time into an hypothetical ‘forever’. In this sense, the site serves also as a very private corner in which the bereaved can continue their dialogue about the dear one, who is no more, as they did during the person’s lifetime.

The departed commemorated in memorial sites usually have socially legitimate and acceptable reasons for their death, such as automobile accidents, terror attacks, incurable diseases, war, and the like; thus, there is no problem posed by telling the story of their lives and deaths in public. Accordingly, there are very few sites for people who died under controversial circumstances surrounding their death, such as suicide, murder, drug overdose, domestic violence and murder. However, in this context, when there are such sites, they are usually memorials to departed celebrities, such as the model Anat Elimelech, who was murdered by her fiancé, or other sites providing “extras”, such as the memorial site for Eran Aderet, who committed suicide. His site is a portal to support for suicide prevention.

In contrast to the traditional mode of memorials dictated by governmental memorial agents from the top down, the Internet facilitates democratic commemoration due to the ability of all users to be one’s own memory agent, by constructing one’s own personal site. Due to this differentiation, some of these memorial sites serve as instruments for raising public awareness of protests by bereaved families against the Israel Defense Forces’ faulty behavior. In some cases, the families have taken the army to court or maintain public fights for new commissions of inquiry to conduct new investigations of the circumstances under which their children died. One example of this type of site is dedicated to the late Yochai Porat.

Memorial sites constitute a place that blends public and private eulogies in two directions: the “family of the bereaved” and friends see the Internet as a space facilitating public expression of their emotions, while the Israeli public sees the Internet as a space in which they can touch upon and participate in private sorrow through visiting sites, similar to the traditional Jewish house call during the mourning period.

Most of those involved in building and maintaining Internet sites are male – bereaved fathers or brothers, family friends, professional site designers and others. Most had some familiarity, whether basic or professional level, in IT in their daily life, which made an Internet memorial the natural thing for them. From their point of view, virtual reality is no less concrete than actual physical reality.

The experience of loss often leads to a feeling of isolation, or as one interviewee stated, “to be a bereaved parent is a totally different language.” Meeting other people in the same situation can assist the bereaved in coping with societal expectations to “get back to business as usual” after a set period of mourning. Internet support groups were found to provide an efficient meeting place, and, indeed, alongside of many memorial sites on the Israeli Internet memorial sites are many virtual support communities dealing in bereavement and loss. Most are non-professional, led by experienced laypersons, yet they do succeed in providing very strong support to participants both on the web and outside of it through face to face meetings between members. Participation in the community can be permanent or temporary, according to the desire and capability for closure and ability to continue with daily life. Some find support over the Internet to be sufficient, while others see it as their first stop on the road to professional therapy.

In total contrast to the masculine majority involved in establishing the sites, females constitute the overwhelming majority of members in virtual support communities. We may distinguish gender differentiation as part of the different reactions exhibited by men and women to loss and their ways of coping. Throughout the interviews, the women expressed the need to express their emotions, and share them, as compared to the men who stated that they found it difficult to contain the emotional load, and preferred to focus on active activities that included, among others, setting up a website. They programmed the site as early as the seven-day mourning period as a way to cope with the pain, but primarily the impotence that they sensed.

Works Cited