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Cemetery
Care

Weeding and litter removal is
a perpetual uphill battle around
loved ones' gravesites.

Barbara Lewis I Contributing Writer

Barbara Kohler

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Memorial, has another complaint: The
With 26,000 graves (11,000 without per-
ground above his loved one's graves is sink-
ing.
petual care), Hebrew Memorial is the largest
of the Detroit area's Jewish cemeteries.
Cemetery administrators say weeds and
Every day, Shafer and her colleagues move subsidence are both to be expected.
through the cemetery pulling weeds and
"Each cemetery has its own challenges,
piling them at the nearest roadside, where
but there's not a cemetery in the city that
they're picked up by the tractor crew, which
hasn't had people complain; said Ralph
also handles the mowing.
Zuckman, executive director of Clover Hill
In addition to the weeds, they have to con- Park Cemetery in Birmingham and cur-
tend with trash that blows in from the busy
rent president of the Greater Detroit Jewish
Gratiot Avenue commercial strip nearby.
Cemetery Association.
Sometimes visitors themselves leave trash,
"People are emotional when they visit a
Shafer said.
cemetery, and they're concerned about their
"My attitude is if my parents were
one small area; he said.
buried here, I'd want it to look nice, so I
Subsidence is natural
do my best; she said.
because cemeteries change
"We can't do everything instanta-
the typography of the earth,
neously; said Rabbi Boruch Levin, exec-
Zuckman said. "You're digging
utive director of the Hebrew Benevolent
holes and filling them back up;
Society. The society operates the Hebrew
he said, creating pockets that
Memorial Park and several smaller cem-
cause the earth to shift.
The phenomenon is more
eteries.
Ral ph
If people visit in spring, their loved
pronounced in Jewish cemeter-
Zu ckman
one's grave may not be yet planted with
ies, because traditionally Jews
flowers. Fighting weeds is an ongoing battle,
are buried without embalming, in wooden
and it takes about a month for the workers to caskets and without cement vaults, making
get through the entire cemetery. By the time
decomposition more rapid. In any cemetery,
the grounds crew makes its way through the
it's easy to see undulations in the earth, he
entire property and starts over, the first sec-
said, and it shouldn't reflect badly on the
tion is full of weeds again.
cemetery.
Steven Schooler of Royal Oak, who
"I had an open grave once and water
has family members buried at Hebrew
seeped into it; Zuckman said. "The rabbi

Bedecked
In Begonias

Visit any of the large Jewish cemeter-
ies in the Detroit area and you'll see
waves and waves of begonias bedeck-
ing the graves of people whose loved
ones paid for "perpetual care."
There's nothing particularly Jewish
about begonias, but planting them
as the flower of choice has become a
minhag — custom — in the Detroit cem-

8 October 1 • 2015

etery business, said Ralph Zuckman,
executive director of Clover Hill Park
Cemetery in Birmingham and head of
the Greater Detroit Jewish Cemetery
Association.
Machpelah Cemetery in Ferndale is
the outlier. Most of its planted graves
are festooned with perennials, includ-
ing pink sedum and daylilies.
Begonias grow in a neat fashion,
are less susceptible to heat than
many other annuals and are easy to
maintain, Zuckman said. "They're a

was annoyed. 'Who put it there?' he said.
IlaShem put it there!' is what I told him7
Hebrew Memorial Park has a tougher
maintenance problem than the other cem-
eteries because all its graves are marked with
stone frames to prevent people from walking
on them or mowing over them, Levin said.
It's much easier to maintain a cemetery
like Oakview in Royal Oak, and some sec-
tions of Beth El Memorial Park in Livonia,
where all the grave markers are flush with
the ground.
Almost 70 percent of Hebrew Memorial's
graves are planted with flowers, thanks to
family members who made a one-time pay-
ment for "perpetual care" or who pay annu-
ally for the service. But signing up for flow-
ers is not always a matter of money; many
Orthodox families prefer not to have flowers
on their loved ones' graves, he said.
The graves without flowers attract weeds
more quickly.
Jewish law has much to say about death
and mourning but very little to say about
cemetery maintenance. There is a tradition
of respect for the dead, but there's no clear
definition of what that means after burial,
Levin said.
Jewish graves should be marked so that
people will recognize them and not desecrate
them, he said. Jewish graves may not be dis-
turbed or moved.

When Barbara Kohler visits the Hebrew

Memorial Park, she says she is upset
by the weeds on the graves of her par-
ents and also litter on some others,
like these. (In this photo she took, the

grave identifications have been photo-
graphically obscured by the JN).

Biblical History
The first mention of a Jewish burial is in
Genesis, Chapter 23, when Abraham buys a
cave in which to bury his wife, Sarah.
In Talmudic times, many families buried
their dead on their own property in family
graveyards, says an article by Rabbi Sefton
Temkin in Encyclopedia Judaica.
Soon after Jews settled in the New World,
they realized they needed a cemetery. In
1656, the governors of New Amsterdam,
which became New York City, granted land
to Congregation Shearith Israel for burial
site. By 1776, congregations in Newport, R.I.,
Philadelphia and Charleston, S.C., had also
established cemeteries.
American Jewish cemetery practices tend
to follow those of the Christian culture,
Zuckman said. Just as gentile burials moved
from family plots and churchyards to large
memorial parks; so did Jewish cemeteries
grow from small properties maintained by
congregations or landsmanshaften (orga-

"

Cemetery on page 10

good choice for the Michigan
climate."
But perennials are less
expensive than annuals like
begonias because they don't
have to be pulled up in the fall
and replanted in the spring.
Zuckman predicted that more
cemeteries will eventually move
to perennial plantings as a
cost-saving measure.

❑

Beth El Memorial Park in Livonia

