Regina Sandler-Phillips is a rabbi, chaplain and educator. She is the founder of the Hevra Kadisha (sacred Jewish burial fellowship) at Park Slope Jewish Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. She has kept the vigil over Jewish dead in hospitals, private homes and funeral parlors, and is an acknowledged authority on Jewish funeral issues.

Charlton McIlwain is Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is the author of Death in Black and White: Death, Ritual and Family Ecology (Hampton Press, 2003), which examines African-American funeral practices.

Elizabeth Westrate wrote, produced and directed A Family Undertaking, a documentary about the home funeral movement.  

Maurice Lamm is an Orthodox rabbi and lecturer at Yeshiva University in New York, N.Y. He is author of The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning (Jonathan David Publishers, 2000).

Read an Aug. 2, 2009, article from the New York Times about how declining funds have led to turmoil in cemeteries.

Louis H. Bolce teaches a course on religion and politics at Baruch College in New York City. Bolce’s research interests include what he calls the anti-Christian fundamentalist factor in contemporary politics, and he and Gerald De Maio (also at Baruch College) are working on a book about the rise of secularist influence in the Democratic Party.

The Rev. James Forbes Jr. is senior minister emeritus at Riverside Church in New York City.

Samuel Abrams is a political science professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He is the author of Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America.

Melody Barnes is vice provost for global student leadership initiatives at New York University. She previously served as President Barack Obama’s domestic policy adviser.