Our focus at Jewish Heritage Europe is (naturally) on Jewish built heritage issues in European countries…. but sometimes we like to post articles and links that show these issues in broader global context.
JTA runs a lengthy report by Julie Wiener titled Lacking Long-term Plans, Many U.S. Jewish Cemeteries in Neglect. “Most Jewish communities,” she writes, “don’t have any central association to deal with cemeteries, and those that do often have minimal funding or limited purviews.”
Sound familiar?
It is instructive to read about the problems of Jewish cemeteries in the United States, home to the world’s largest Jewish community outside Israel — and also some of the hoped-for solutions in resolving future care, financing and maintenance.
NEW YORK (JTA) — For years, the historic Jewish cemetery was so overgrown with weeds, plagued by toppled headstones, and littered with fallen branches, beer cans and snack-food wrappers that at least a quarter of its graves were impossible to reach.
Even now, after a $140,000 cleanup and improved maintenance procedures, the 35,000-grave cemetery relies on the generosity of a non-Jewish volunteer to repair its tombstones, fences and mausoleums.
The cemetery isn’t in Eastern Europe. It’s the Bayside Cemetery in the Queens borough of New York City, and it’s among countless Jewish cemeteries across the country in varying states of disrepair. Some 40 to 50 of them are in the New York area alone.
There are a plethora of reasons for Jewish cemeteries’ troubles. Many are owned by synagogues, associations or burial societies that no longer exist or are on their last legs. Once a cemetery stops bringing in revenues – i.e. fresh graves — the operating budget dries up unless sufficient money has been set aside for the long term. At Bayside, annual cemetery upkeep costs $90,000.
“Based on current practices, substantially all Jewish cemeteries will be unable to pay for their upkeep within 25 to 50 years after their last grave is sold,” said Gary Katz, president of New York’s Community Association for Jewish At-Risk Cemeteries, a group founded in 2007 and funded largely by UJA-Federation of New York.
Read full story at: http://www.jta.org/2013/12/19/news-opinion/united-states/lacking-long-term-plans-many-u-s-jewish-cemeteries-in-neglect#ixzz2o0WK7Bdb