WE KNOW BECAUSE WE’VE SEEN IT FIRSTHAND: LIFE IS PRECIOUS.” They treat each family as family, not as a client or a chance to make another buck.” Wohlberg concurs: “The truth of the matter is that in the 40 years that I have worked with them, not once has there been a single problem, disagreement, misunderstanding. “There has not been a need for another funeral home in this community because we do a really nice job.” “I think that the community trusts us,” Matt offers. Though it hasn’t always been the only Jewish funeral home in the Baltimore area, it is now. “There ain’t much competition, so that makes the choice much easier,” jokes Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg of Beth Tfiloh in Pikesville. So how has it not just survived, but thrived? This isn’t even its first global pandemic. Levinson’s has persevered through fires, wars, riots, and everything else the world has thrown at it during its 128 years in business. When Max Levinson opened a funeral home in 1892, he used a horse and buggy to transport the deceased. When a company has stayed in the family for five generations, it has to adapt to changing times. One of the things we love to do, why we do what we do, is to help people. We’re not shaking their hand or giving them a hug. “That’s a struggle right now for us because we’re not meeting with people in person. “We create a personal relationship with families,” says Matt Levinson, president of the company that his great-great-great grandfather started. There’s hardly an aspect of society that the coronavirus has not affected, but perhaps no in dustry has paid an emotional toll more than the funeral business. In the before times, this space was a carport for the company’s fleet of limousines. Oscillating fans are plugged into outlets in the back. A hand sanitizer station sits on a red carpet near the entrance. Black folding chairs are spaced in groups at least six feet apart. Mourners are directed not inside to one of Levinson’s two chapels, but to a makeshift, albeit tastefully decorated, outdoor one. Because of the virus, a maximum of 20 people are allowed to be present at services. The greeters direct the drivers through the massive asphalt lot on the six-acre campus, but in the age of COVID, most of the spots will remain empty. Like almost every day of the year except for Saturdays (a day of prayer in the Jewish religion) and Jewish holidays, there’s a funeral here today. the temperature is already an unpleasantly sticky 84 degrees. Each sports a black mask that covers their mouth and nose. funeral home off Reisterstown Road, they are met by a young man wearing a black suit and a young woman in a black dress. As mourners pull their cars into the parking lot of Sol Levinson and Bros.
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