PRESS RELEASE
"Even Gravestones Become Luxuries for Poor as Jewish Burial Groups Cut Back."
www.forward.com/news/national/355945/even-gravestones-become-luxuries-for-poor-as-jewish-burial-groups-cut-back/
"Even Gravestones Become Luxuries for Poor as Jewish Burial Groups Cut Back."
www.forward.com/news/national/355945/even-gravestones-become-luxuries-for-poor-as-jewish-burial-groups-cut-back/
"Even Gravestones Become Luxuries for Poor as Jewish Burial Groups Cut Back."
By Julie Masis December 1, 2016 We often hear stories about how hard life was for Jews in Russia back in the day. Still, after they passed away, even poor Jews in the Russian Empire got to have gravestones. If you travel around Ukraine and Poland these days, you’ll stumble upon Jewish cemeteries in almost every village where Jews used to live. They’re often located in the most picturesque part of the shtetl, frequently on a hill overlooking a river. The inscriptions on the ancient stones tell stories in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian and German of lives long past, and they’re often adorned with pictures of animals and symbols. In America today, though, we can’t afford gravestones anymore — not for everyone. And, in fact, there are Jewish organizations that are preventing people from putting gravestones on their loved ones’ graves. “It is a matter of fairness,” said Stan Kaplan, executive director of the Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts, the largest Jewish cemetery association in North America. The association provides discounted funerals for any deceased person who died on Medicaid, a program for those with few assets. Citing its own costs for these funerals, the association recently changed its regulations to prohibit such individuals from getting a traditional upright gravestone on their graves. The prohibition holds firm even if the deceased person’s family wants to buy the gravestone out of pocket. Instead, the cemetery provides them with just a flat marker — a small flat stone, which has room for some words, though not as much as a gravestone would. In winter, a flat marker may not be visible under the snow. A flat marker costs about $500, while the price of an upright stone starts at around $2,000. “Our feeling is if they can afford an upright monument, then they can afford to pay for the services that were donated to them,” Kaplan said. According to Yosef Hildeshaim, president of Jewish Monuments, a monument manufacturing company that ships gravestones across the country from its production sites in New York and New Jersey: “Definitely, “Definitely, 100%, every cemetery has unmarked graves.” |
Every now and then, Hildeshaim said , he puts up stones on graves that had been unmarked for years. Recently he put up a stone on the grave of a mother who died 50 years ago after her son grew up and found his mother’s grave. Escalating Costs The problem comes down to the fact that the cost of an average Jewish funeral in the state has now reached about $10,000. In Massachusetts, the state provides $1,100 toward the funeral expenses of low-income residents — which is, clearly, only a fraction of the total. The cemetery buries the dead by discounting the cost, Kaplan said.
In addition to not being permitted to have a gravestone, those who get discounted funerals are also not permitted an obituary in the newspaper and must be buried in the cheapest caskets. Similar practices exist in other parts of the country as well. For example, in San Francisco, Jews whose families or friends do not have the funds to pay for a funeral end up in a separate cemetery, the Eternal Home Cemetery. Their graves are marked with flat markers, said Sharon Brusman, executive assistant at the Chevra Kadisha. If relatives want to erect an upright stone, they have to pay back the cost of the whole funeral, Brusman said — a policy that has been in place for a couple of years. In Miami, upright stones are also not permitted for those who had discounted funerals. “The cemetery knows not to accept delivery of any upright stone,” said Ari Oberstein, the funeral director at Florida Jewish Funerals, which provides discounted burials to Jews. “If the grave is being sponsored by charitable organizations, then the modest marker should be [enough].” Unmarked Graves In some parts of the country, the graves of poor Jews have no stones at all. In Houston, the government provides no assistance toward the funerals of low-income people. If the deceased Jew left no money, the case is referred to Jewish Family Service. JFS organizes a Jewish burial (the cemeteries rotate to provide plots), but does not provide a gravestone, said Linda Burger, CEO of Jewish Family Service of Houston. Read More > |
