Officials promise speedy restoration of ‘compromised’ Newark cemetery

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

Officials of the Beth El Memorial Foundation are promising speedy restoration of a historic Jewish cemetery in Newark, where some graves may have been “compromised” by heavy rainfall and construction of a housing complex adjacent to its eastern wall.

Rabbi Steven Kushner of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, who chairs the foundation, and Lori Price Abrams, who oversees its operations as director of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey’s Community Relations Committee, hope that the job will be completed before the High Holy Days in September.

Nevertheless, a Brooklyn-based burial society is charging that the grounds of the cemetery were inadvertently desecrated when a construction crew uprooted trees in June and warns that a similar unearthing of bones could happen there again.

In past decades, the cemetery was the burial ground for several burial societies, some defunct, as well as at least two synagogues once based in Newark, Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange and Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston.

The cemetery is now part of a largely African-American community on South Orange Avenue and South 19th Street, east of the Garden State Parkway and the Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery, which is being demolished.

Rabbi Edgar Gluck, head of Chesed Shel Emes, a burial society in Brooklyn, visited the site on June 13 after a passerby alerted him that construction workers building a row of townhouses had possibly disturbed some graves in the Newark cemetery.

Gluck is convinced some graves were disturbed by the construction.

“There is no question,” he told NJJN. “It is not an issue. There definitely was desecration. We found human remains. It was not on spite. But whoever gave permission to the builder to work on the retaining wall was not there to supervise when the builder had an idea to start pulling trees out from underneath graves that were there since 1893 and on.”

Once the bone fragments were identified as human, the rabbi said, they were “given a proper burial as close to the original graves as possible.”

On a July 16 walking tour of gravesites, Gluck pointed out areas where, he said, construction machinery was used to pull out trees whose roots extended beneath graves. “So as they pulled the trees out, it caused the graves to collapse,” said Gluck. “We not only found broken stones, but we found bones.”

Three days earlier, on a visit to the cemetery, where severed tree branches still protruded from holes dug near the retaining wall, Kushner suggested that if any damage was done to gravesites, it was minimal.

“We’re talking very small pieces,” he said. “It’s not clear they were human bone fragments. They could have been God-knows-what in there.”

He also said that all of the graves that were “compromised” are more than 100 years old.

“There was nothing there anymore,” he said. “It’s not like they were put into concrete vaults. They were wooden caskets put into the dirt. There hasn’t been anything there in generations. There were no body parts. People can get gruesome about this kind of thing.”

To those who deny any desecration occurred, Gluck said sharply: “I don’t know where they are coming from. I don’t know what their expertise is in this.”

Kushner has been a trustee of the Beth El Memorial Foundation since its inception 10 years ago and is an active guardian of the historic Jewish cemeteries in Newark and its environs. “In my mind,” Kushner said, “desecration implies malice of intent. I respect Rabbi Gluck’s concern, but he doesn’t speak for the cemetery. As chair of the Beth El Memorial Foundation, I do.”

Kushner and Gluck do agree the damage was clearly unintentional.

“There was no viciousness, no anti-Semitism, no swastikas painted here,” said the Brooklyn rabbi. “But it definitely shows neglect. It means that people should not just give an OK to a builder and let him come in and do what he pleases. When we met with the builder, he said he had gotten permission to pull out the trees.”

Sanford Epstein, a cemetery manager retained by the foundation to provide care and maintenance at its cemeteries, said he was present when the builder uprooted the trees and made sure that the graves were undisturbed.

“We cut all the trees down, but the stumps could not be cut because they were in the metal fence. The builder came along at no charge and with our cooperation he tore out the roots of those trees,” said Epstein.

Interviewed on June 13 by WABC-TV News, contractor Pedro Ortiz said his crews did not disturb sacred land. “We’re trying to do a favor here, working hand and hand with the caretaker [Epstein] and someone comes in and says we are desecrating a cemetery, which is not true,” Ortiz told Eyewitness News reporter Kemberly Richardson.

“I’ve been in this business for over 50 years,” added Epstein. “If anybody is a pro in this business, it’s me. There was no desecration to the cemetery. Gluck is making much ado about nothing.”

Not only were no bodies disturbed, said Epstein, but the gravestones allegedly dislodged by the construction crew “have been down for over 25 years. We are going to fix those foundations and reerect those stones.”

Long-term partnership

Price Abrams said “there was a fairly clear plan” to repair the damages done since construction began and trees were uprooted at the burial ground’s eastern end. “The ground has been filled in, so there is no further issue of anything sliding or moving. There will be topsoil added and grass planted on top of it. There will be a new fence erected.”

She said the beginning of the housing construction gave the foundation “a moment of opportunity to access the site.”

Completing the eastern side would tie in well with the memorial foundation’s restoration and maintenance efforts, Price Abrams said. The three-way partnership among the foundation and the current congregations of B’nai Abraham and Oheb Shalom is engaged in a nearly completed project to re-erect fallen tombstones.

“Maintaining cemeteries is a constant ongoing effort,” she said. “Things are going to fall apart. They are not going to fix themselves.”

Gluck said he is also worried that future construction of a planned shopping mall adjacent to the cemetery’s northern and western sides could possibly do damage to graves just inches away from another wall.

Thrusting his hand between the wall and a tombstone to show their proximity, Gluck predicted that “if this wall is knocked down, this grave is going to go. The question is: Are they going to guarantee that this wall is going to stay?”

He vowed to keep close watch on the cemetery.

“We have people who work in Newark and the surrounding areas, and we keep telling them to drive by,” said the rabbi. “We tell our guys, ‘If you have to go anywhere in the area, make sure you go through South Orange Avenue,’ and hopefully, they will keep us informed.”