The Rev. Dr. Beth Glover, who oversees nearly 50 chaplains in the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital system, told me about one chaplain who stood outside a dying patient’s room with the patient’s wife on the phone, praying and describing to her what he was seeing. It was “a way of being present to her and bringing her husband’s presence to her, even remotely.”

Rabbi Tav calls it “tele-chaplaincy.”

The Rev. Dr. Rachelle Zazzu, a chaplain at Mount Sinai Hospital in Queens, has adapted the bedside memorial to suit the new reality. She will stand outside a patient’s room, put her hands on the door and “pray out loud for God to receive this person with mercy and grace.”