etz ahaim

Cemetery Vandalized

Headline: Vandals tip tombstones, trash graves
Are we in Eastern Europe? The former Soviet Union? No, no, this took place right here in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Nathan Reiss of Congregation Etz Ahaim said Sunday’s vandalism at the Poile Zedek Cemetery came days after a similar incident was discovered on Thursday. Families of the buried will have to pay for all this damage. Many of these families are descendants of immigrants from Salonika and Turkey, hard-working people who became model American citizens. Read more about some of the families in Voices of Etz Ahaim. Others are Holocaust survivors, such as Menachem Simcha.

My husband said it will cost $200 and up just to repair one headstone. Some are not repairable. 499 headstones toppled.

Finally, the police is now calling this a bias crime. See the comments on Dov Bear.

“To say it was premeditated is an understatement,” said Poile Zedek administrator Caryn Lipson. “It had to be hours and hours of work by several people.”

From the Star Ledger:

Jack Oziel picked his way through the ruins of the vandalized Jewish cemetery yesterday, surveying hundreds of headstones toppled like dominos or lying in crumbled heaps.

He managed to locate the fragments of a granite Star of David that had marked his father’s grave lying on the grass. His mother’s tomb had cracked in half. And everywhere else Oziel looked, he saw more headstones of family and friends knocked down.

“I knew them all. I buried all these people. Now they are all in pieces,” Oziel, 91, said with red eyes as he surveyed the damage at the Poile Zedek Cemetery in New Brunswick.

And I know Jack Oziel. So I feel like I know all of those people buried there, too.

How can this be prevented? A surveillance camera? And who would do something so nasty?

Voices of Etz Ahaim

Attention local history buffs! Here’s a book you won’t want to miss:
Voices of Etz Ahaim. Nathan Reiss and Seth Rubenstein paired up to create a wonderful collection of biographies of many of the diverse congregants of Congregation Etz Ahaim, a Sephardi Orthodox synagogue in Highland Park, New Jersey.

Learn about how Rabbi David Bassous was born in India, grew up in London, became a rabbi in Israel, had his first pulpit in Vancouver, and then came to Highland Park. Liselle (Elisheva) Badache grew up in war-torn Algeria. Behzad Hakakian, brother of Roya Hakakian, speaks of growing up Jewish in Iran. One of the oldest members of Etz Ahaim, Al Benzilio, whose parents were from Salonika, reports on the original building in New Brunswick, and how the synagogue was named after one in Salonika.

Pictures enhance each of the biographies. Twenty two people of varying ages and backgrounds were interviewed for the book.

The book was available via the Etz Ahaim website, etzahaim.org; you can probably contact the webmaster to see if you can still get a copy. There is one copy in the reference section of the Highland Park Public Library.