In ‘Last Flight Home,’ a Jewish family helps their father end his life

(JTA) – When Rabbi Rachel Timoner’s dad Eli told his family of his decision to end his life, Rachel knew what would soon be asked of her: to officiate his funeral, something he had told her he wanted since she became ordained.

This presented a challenge for Rachel, the senior rabbi at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim. Being her father’s rabbi “wasn’t what I wanted,” she says in the new documentary, “Last Flight Home,” which chronicles Eli’s final days from the perspective of his family. The film, directed by Rachel’s sister Ondi Timoner, is a raw, intimate document of the realities of end-of-life care, as well as a meditation on the ways Jewish law encourages setting one’s affairs in order before the moment of death. 

A former airline executive and prolific fundraiser for Miami’s Jewish federation, Eli Timoner was felled by a stroke in his 50s and spent 40 years of his life with a physical disability — the first in a series of painful steps that led to him losing much of his wealth and stature in the business and philanthropy world. (He suffered his stroke a few months after a plane operated by his airline, Air Florida, crashed into the Potomac River, killing 78 people; the film doesn’t discuss the crash, but January, one week before its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, marked 40 years since it happened.)

Read full article here: https://www.jta.org/2022/10/07/culture/in-last-flight-home-a-jewish-family-helps-their-father-end-his-life