Mountain View Cemetery

Or Shalom’s new cemetery

Or Shalom Rabbi Hannah Dresner, reciting psalms, leads the congregation around the Or Shalom cemetery perimeter. (photo by Robert Albanese)

Or Shalom Synagogue celebrated a major milestone on Oct. 15 with the dedication of its new cemetery.

In March, after four years of discussions with the City of Vancouver, the synagogue signed an agreement for a small area within Mountain View Cemetery (MVC). The area runs along the west side of Fraser Street extending south from 33rd Avenue.

Rabbi Hannah Dresner noted that the dedication helped “connect our bayit (our home in life) to our beit kavurot (our home in death).”

The ceremony, attended by more than 50 people (and a few dogs), began with a service at the synagogue, followed by a walk along Fraser to MVC. After reciting psalms while circling around the Or Shalom cemetery perimeter seven times to consecrate the area, participants proceeded to a reception at the MVC Celebration Hall.

Or Shalom is affiliated with Aleph, the Jewish Renewal movement, whose core values support efforts to explore and redefine Jewish traditions in ways that are egalitarian and inclusive. Accordingly, the cemetery offers a choice of all-Jewish and interfaith sections, a green section and double burials.

The area contains 64 lots (burial sites). However, Jewish custom allows multiple burials in one grave in locations where land is scarce, such as Jerusalem and Vancouver. Many older Jewish cemeteries in eastern Europe followed this practice. The Or Shalom section permits two people, related or not, to share a lot. Due to the small size of the cemetery, purchases are limited to individuals who have been Or Shalom members for at least five years.

Lots are purchased directly from MVC, which is owned and managed by the City of Vancouver. MVC manager Glen Hodges supported the project from the beginning and Or Shalom member Catherine Berris, a landscape architect with Urban Systems, helped with design.

Referring to Abraham’s purchase of a cave at Machpelah to bury his wife Sarah (Bereishit/Genesis 23) as the “first Jewish cemetery,” Dresner said, “It is beautiful to be buried in community, and this is what we will now be able to provide for one another at Mountain View: community in death.”

Dodie Katzenstein is a member of Or Shalom and a founding member of the cemetery planning committee.

Or Shalom cemetery

Vancouver City Council has voted in favour of an agreement giving Congregation Or Shalom the right to develop a section of Mountain View Cemetery for use by the synagogue’s members. This follows three-and-a-half years of discussion and negotiations with the city, which owns and operates the historic cemetery.

The agreement will provide 64 burial plots (128 if shared) for purchase by Or Shalom members. The section is located along the west side of Fraser Street, extending south from 33rd Avenue, slightly north of the original Jewish section managed by Congregation Schara Tzedeck.

The Or Shalom cemetery committee is now focusing on the layout and landscaping of the site, developing policies for rights of purchase, and planning for a formal dedication of the section.

On April 19, Rabbi Hannah Dresner and Rabbi Susan Shamash will present a teaching on halachic issues that will help the congregation shape its burial practices. A community information and feedback meeting is planned for May 11, with the dedication ceremony tentatively scheduled for June 11. Policies relating to the cemetery will be available for comment before the community meeting.

The creation of a cemetery marks a major milestone for Or Shalom, giving it, for the first time, the opportunity to provide “cradle-to-grave” services for members. All purchases will be made directly with Mountain View after being authorized by Or Shalom.

Mountain View Cemetery dates back to the early days of Vancouver. Land was set aside for the cemetery in 1886, the same year as the city’s incorporation. The second mayor of Vancouver, David Oppenheimer, secured a portion of Mountain View for Vancouver’s Jewish community.

Mountain View remains the only cemetery within the city limits of Vancouver. A visit to the grounds, open to the public, gives a view of the past 130 years, with graves dating from the Gold Rush era, through two world wars and other military conflicts and various epidemics. It provides a glimpse at the ongoing growth of diversity in the city’s population.

The idea for an Or Shalom section of Mountain View came about somewhat coincidentally, when, in October 2013, several Or Shalom members – including Dodie Katzenstein, Marty Puterman, Pat Gill and John Fuerst – attended a walking tour of the cemetery sponsored by Schara Tzedeck and the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia. This ad-hoc planning committee, with the board’s consent, began to explore the possibility of finding space for the Or Shalom community. Working with the cemetery’s manager, Glen Hodges, the committee was able to negotiate a legal contract with the City of Vancouver, which City Council approved on Feb. 8.

The cemetery committee, in addition to its four original members, now includes Dresner and Shamash, with input from Dave Kauffman. Catherine Berris, an Or Shalom member and an experienced landscape architect with a special interest in cemeteries, has volunteered her assistance in planning the site.

More information will be provided as the project proceeds.

Sunday’s trio of milestones

When counting blessings, our community has much to celebrate. If proof were needed, there is plenty at the newspaper. Not only have we been sorting through 85 years’ worth of the Jewish Independent in preparation for our special anniversary issue next week, but we joined hundreds of other community members this past Sunday to mark three significant community milestones.

In the early afternoon, a remarkable event took place at Mountain View Cemetery. The city-owned burial site has, since 1892, included a small section consecrated as the Jewish cemetery. In recent years, that section has declined. A dedicated group of volunteers set about to return it to the stature it deserves and, on a very sunny Sunday, the community gathered to see the results and celebrate the place. There was, it’s not inappropriate to say, a sense of festivity mingling with the solemnity of the event. While we were marking the rededication of a Jewish cemetery, we were also explicitly honoring and celebrating the lives of the people who built this community – and all those who are working to maintain and grow it.

Later that day, Temple Sholom held a siyum hasefer, marking the completion of a new Torah commemorating the congregation’s 50th anniversary. This “Torah of volunteerism,” in which the hands and spirits of so many people are ingrained in its beauty, is another symbolic and tangible act uniting the past, present and future of our community.

The day’s festivities drew to a close at the new Beth Israel, one of the oldest congregations in our community. The rebuilt synagogue provides some of the city’s best new meeting spaces and, in this case, we celebrated one of Judaism’s greatest achievements – well, of the modern era, at any rate. Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University, Vancouver chapter, convened an evening of education, entertainment and tribute in honor of that institution’s 90th anniversary.

It is hard to overestimate the impact of Hebrew University on the modern life of the Jewish people or of Israel. Founded by luminaries, including no less than Albert Einstein, it is a monument to the Jewish commitment to learning. However, to call it a monument is almost an aspersion, because it is an organic microcosm of Jewish life – and, as Jewish life has been throughout the ages – a light to the nations, welcoming scholars from around the world.

Attending these three milestones was affirming in several ways. It was a reminder of just how many people – of all walks of life, ages and affiliations – are dedicated to this community, working to make it better and trying to make sure that it has a future. It was also a reminder that, while the internet has its many advantages, there is something very special and irreplaceable about tangible records. There is something very special and incomparable to sharing a moment – joyous or sobering – with other human beings.

Headstones in a cemetery, a Torah scroll, the pages of a newspaper – they physically mark the path on our way long after we’ve made our way. We can touch them, which somehow connects us to them and each other in a way that cannot be reproduced in the virtual world. Laying a stone on a grave, scribing or reading from the Torah, even flipping through decades-old copies of the community newspaper – these present-day acts place our lives solidly in the continuum of humanity. This is both humbling and reassuring.

As we celebrate the minor miracle of the newspaper’s presence in and contribution to the community for 85 years, we are proud, not only of our own accomplishments, but those of the entire community. Together, may we go from strength to strength!

Sign of significance at Mountain View

Forty-three years after it was dismantled, the Jewish section of Mountain View Cemetery has an arch once more. (photo from MVRP)

A replication of the historic archway for the Jewish section at Mountain View Cemetery went up on Nov. 20, 43 years after the original had been dismantled.

The cemetery, consecrated in 1892, is the only Jewish cemetery in Vancouver. Under the leadership of Shirley Barnett, chair of the Mountain View Restoration Project, it is being restored to reflect its historic significance. Other amenities include a kohanim bench outside the cemetery, two benches inside the cemetery, washing and pebble basins, new pedestrian gates and garden walls. More than 350 headstones are being cleaned and stabilized, and small headstones will be laid for 80 babies buried there.

For more information about the cemetery or the restoration project, contact, Myra Adirim, project administrator, at myra.mvc@gmail.com.