Religion > Antisemitism

What Obituaries Can Teach Us

Plus what they will teach us about those who are still with us.

Joan Swirsky | March 5, 2026

When I was growing up in New Haven, Conn., my parents subscribed not only to our local newspaper — The New Haven Register, still extant — but also to The New York Times and the now defunct (since 1966) New York Herald Tribune.  I think I was about eight or nine years old when I was idly flipping through the Times and came across the obituary section.  From that very moment, I was hooked.

In fact, I cannot remember any classes in elementary or junior high or even senior high school that taught me as much about people and life and destiny and justice and injustice and courage and cowardice and virtue and vice and motivation and laziness and the way people cope with illness and face and fear and sometimes celebrate death.

From the famous to the infamous, from regular unsung heroes in everyday life to larger-than-life egomaniacs, from actual giants like Winston Churchill to saints like Mother Teresa to villains like Joseph Stalin, from fabulous glamor girls like Bridget Bardot to sanctimonious feminists like Betty Friedan — there was nothing more compelling and interesting to me.

As I got older, reading obituaries was like acquiring advanced degrees in history, psychology, political science, and philosophy.

No wonder I was a chronic truant!

One of the more interesting things I learned was that over their lifetimes, many of the people I read about changed, sometimes significantly — not just in their interests or careers or marriages, but in their thinking.  Here is just a tiny sample of how a number of prominent celebrities  went politically from left to right and from right to left.  And here, for pure inspiration, is how some prominent people — among them Steve Jobs, Ulysses S. Grant, and Mark Twain — hit rock bottom but came back stronger.

Of course, most of us have never met the people we read about in obituaries, compelling as their death notices may be.  But what is even more interesting is watching — in real time — the living history being made by the people who have immense influence over our own lives, be they in politics or the media.

Interestingly enough, or maybe I should say ironically or hilariously, the idea for this article came to me when I was passing a beautiful bowl of fresh fruit in my home and spotted — ew — a rotting orange.  I quickly removed it and then washed all the fruits that touched it, just in case the rot was contagious.

And then it hit me: I’ve been watching rotting fruit in the political arena........

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