Jewish Cemetery Crimes of Violence

Jewish Cemetery Crimes of Violence
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Overturned headstones lie adjacent to the burial plot of the author’s great-grandmother Sarah Serkin in Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in suburban St. Louis.

Overturned headstones lie adjacent to the burial plot of the author’s great-grandmother Sarah Serkin in Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in suburban St. Louis.

Eric Mink Photo

I DON”T KNOW if the recent attacks on Jewish cemeteries in the St. Louis suburb of University City, the Wissinoming neighborhood of Philadelphia and, most recently, in Rochester, N. Y., were crimes of hate. What I know beyond any doubt is that they were crimes of violence.

I actually staggered − just a little, just for a second – when I saw the first group of fallen tombstones at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, my hometown. I had to steady myself against a monument next to me, one that had not been attacked, that was not among the 154 pushed, pulled, kicked, rocked, shouldered or dragged to the ground, that was not one of the 16 damaged so badly they require repair or replacement.

On Monday, Feb. 20, when staff members arrived for work at Chesed Shel Emeth, a place where people pray that the dead may rest in peace, they found the aftermath of violence. It wasn't there when they left at 4 p.m. the Friday before. The cemetery stayed closed that first day so police could work the crime scene. Aerial shots of the damage from a TV station helicopter were startling but lacked depth and perspective.

Neither quality was lacking at ground level Tuesday morning.

I MET MY SISTER at the cemetery an hour or so after it opened. Like most of the other people we encountered, we needed to see if violence had struck the burial sites of relatives. Our mom and dad, two of four grandparents, two of eight great-grandparents and many aunts, uncles and cousins are buried there. The cemetery is barely a mile from our childhood home and only half that distance from where we went to high school.

The family headstone most in jeopardy had been that of our great-grandmother Sarah Serkin (1865-1931). It was immediately adjacent to at least 10 stones that had been overturned (see photo above) and close to many more, but it had not been disturbed. The graves of our other family members were far from the area of concentrated attack and also undamaged.

Even so, the formidable slabs strewn on the ground and the knowledge that violence had put them there tempered our personal relief. It was impossible to not feel connected with the families whose relatives' stones had been so crudely assaulted.

OUR FAMILIAL DUTIES DONE, I left my sister and one of her sons who had joined us and walked to a part of the cemetery I'd visited before: an expanse of lawn with widely scattered grave makers close to the ground and fragile-looking headstones maybe two inches thick, 15 or so inches wide and no more than 30 inches tall. They mark the graves of children − infants, toddlers and pre-teens who had died at ages from three months to 13 years.

Words carved into these stones speak of "Our little boy," "Beloved sister," and "Our brother." The stone of one girl, dead at age three, reads "Loved and sadly missed by your family." "Darling daughter" died in the spring of 1914, eight days shy of completing her third month on Earth. The family of a 13-month-old boy, an October 1926 casualty of who knows what tragedy, had the child’s headstone carved with a tender message "To our own brave buddy." It concluded with a promise, "Until we meet again, brave son."

Some of the children's stones were broken, but the exposed edges seemed well worn, suggesting old fractures from time and weather. In a couple of instances, though, the breaks looked more recent. As recent as the weekend of February 18? I don't know. But a person bent on violence and wearing decent boots would have had no trouble shattering one of these headstones.

TROUBLED BY THAT THOUGHT, I left the field of children's graves to rejoin my sister and nephew. As I searched for them, I noticed a woman 30 or 40 feet away walking in my general direction. We happened to make eye contact and continued walking until we were standing face to face. I must have looked deeply sad, something she apparently detected even at a distance, just as I had sensed something similar in her.

Without a word, she opened her arms, and we embraced. Several seconds later, we stepped back and asked about the headstones of our respective loved ones. I told her mine were okay; she said she hadn't yet found the ones she was looking for; I tried to suggest how she might locate them. And then we parted, strangers then and still.

We were two people brought together by distress over the cemetery violence and by concern for our families. We were two people who looked briefly beyond ourselves, saw another human being in need of kindness and compassion and paused to comfort each other without hesitation or explanation.

The subsequent outpouring of decency and expressions of solidarity from ordinary people, institutions and diverse religious denominations of St. Louis and respectful cemetery visits by Vice President Mike Pence and Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens were heartening. But they could not fully erase the impact of the violence visited upon Chesed Shel Emeth.

Nor did humanity's nobler impulses prevent similar violence a week later at the Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetery of Philadelphia, two weeks later at Waad or Vaad Hakolel Cemetery in Rochester, an earlier attack at the Catholic Holy Redeemer Cemetery close to Mount Carmel, four fires at Islamic mosques in three states in the last two months or more than 100 anonymous bomb threats so far this year against close to 90 Jewish schools and community centers in 33 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.

I DON’T KNOW THE MOTIVES of those who did violence to Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery under cover of darkness. But I know that love, understanding or even mere tolerance of Jews and Judaism were not among them.

I also don’t know if the perpetrators are aligned with the extremist, white-supremacist, religious/ethnic bigots who felt legitimized and empowered by the election of Donald Trump and who comprise a minority of his base of support.

In his address to Congress this week, President Trump referenced the Jewish cemeteries and bomb threats and spoke of the nation's unity in condemning "hate and evil." But just hours earlier, Trump suggested in a meeting with state attorneys general − without a shred of proof − that the anti-Jewish actions could be the work of his political opponents trying to trick the public into blaming Trump supporters.

I know that in the year and nine months since he announced he was running for president, Trump has had multiple opportunities to explicitly reject the anti-American ideologies of these extremist groups and the support of their followers. And I know that he has failed to do either.

A version of this column originally was published by the St. Louis Jewish Light.

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