LA Jewish cemetery's restoration begins
Hundreds of thousands of dollars raised to rebuild abandoned, vanadalized Mount Zion Cemetery so that people buried there are never again forgotten
Tombstones are toppled over, cracked and broken. Some have been vandalized with graffiti. Photos of the deceased were shot out or had been pried away. Nearly 1,000 graves are in ruins.
Video courtesy of jn1.tv
Mount Zion opened in 1916 as a place where impoverished Jews could be buried for free. The organization responsible for upkeep is now defunct, and there wasn't enough money to properly maintain the grounds.
It might have remained that way if it weren't for Yiddishkayt Executive Director Rob Adler-Peckerar. He found the cemetery in disarray while hunting for the final resting place of famous Yiddish writer Lamed Shapiro.
"His monument fell face up," Adler-Peckerar says. "He chose to be buried in this cemetery so that he could be buried near his wife, who had died 20 years before. Her monument actually had actually fallen face down."
Local media published reports about the cemetery, prompting leaders in the Jewish community to form a non-profit organization, called Friends of Mt. Zion, to restore the abandoned cemetery.
"I was deeply, deeply sad. I cried," says Rabbi Moshe Greenwald of Friends of Mt. Zion. "And after about 20 minutes of being just totally overwhelmed, I said alright, we need to roll up our sleeves and make a huge project out of this, which is what we've done."
Some of the graves were damaged by earthquakes, but Rabbi Greenwald says most of the damage was caused by vandals. Even though some tombstones weigh thousands of pounds, they are easy to knock over.
The organization has hired construction crews to pour new concrete ledgers, fix cracked tombstones and secure them with rebar and concrete. But they won't be able to replace damaged or missing pictures.
"Even if nobody came to visit here, Jewish tradition is very, very clear that a cemetery is sacred ground. It's holy ground. The people that are lying here, they're all people that deserve respect and their souls are still connected with this place to some degree or another."
Restoration could take two years to complete and cost upwards of $ 800,000. Whatever the price, the Friends of Mt. Zion Cemetery organization wants to make sure that the people buried there are never again forgotten.
